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sc94597 on 06 February 2016
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Dulfite said:
sc94597 said:

The average starting salary for a teacher in the U.S  is about $34,000(which is close to the individual median of all incomes.) That comes out to something like 23-30$ /hr depending on the average number of hours said teacher works per day for 9 months. Considering teaching is a full time job with benefits and armageddon proof job security(tenure ) while babysitting has none of these things. It is not very comparable. How much people are worth to their employer depends on how much productivity or of what quality services they can perform. Of course public jobs are not as subjected to market mechanisms and consequently a lot of money is wasted on things other than teaching labor, which also do not constitute productive capital. For that reason teachers should take it up with school administrations and not the taxpayer, if they don't feel they are paid fairly. As it is now the U.S spends. more on education per kid than any other country. But then the standards of becoming a teacher are also much lower in most U.S states than other countries, with PhD's and Masters degrees being quite common among secondary school educators in other countries, whilst many teachers in the U.S were in the bottom half of their respective subjects (especially in stem fields.) I mean the unions representing police, teachers, etc are some of the most powerful and have gotten benefits which private workers envy, on top of an average salary. What kind of salaries do starting teachers want? Something comparable to doctors, engineers or programmers?

That may be close to the median of all incomes, but I'm sure it's a LOT less than the average of professional (degree requiring) jobs. Take out the minimum wage and non-certified jobs and I bet teaching comes out on the lower end.

Teachers work, often, in the 50-65 hour per week range, a lot more than 40, and we get paid for roughly 33-35 hours of that time that we do work, and the other stuff we essentially don't get paid for. We don't get summers "off" in the sense that we are paid. If we are paid during the summer, it is because we are voluntarily (or being forced by the district) to sacrifice money we get from our paychecks in order to spread it out over 12 months. Many teachers can't afford to take the summer off despite working far more hours and in a far more stressful environment than many jobs so they can't even take a break.

Tenure is something you get after years of working. I'm a 1st-2nd year teacher, still years away from getting tenure. All tenure does, by the way, is make it so someone can't be fired for no reason. If I get bad test scores, I could still be fired with tenure. Prior to tenure, I could be let go randomly for no reason.

Most teachers I know/work with have their masters, specialists, or Phd, and I work in a pretty undesirable environment (low income/high crime school and area). I graduated in 2013 and plan on starting my Masters in the next year or two. Teachers in other countries ARE paid the same amount as doctors and are VALUED in other countries. That's how it used to be in this country.

I pay 14.5% of my paycheck towards retirement. Teachers have some of the highest retirement payments of any job. I won't deny we have good benefits (at least, if your by yourself for sure), but the retirement payment hurts. Thankfully it doesn't go into social security where politicians get to waste the money on ridiculous things and we don't have to worry about the Baby Boomer crisis impacting our retirement age, but it's still a lot of money per paycheck.

Well yeah, because other professional (degree requiring) jobs produce more and have greater costs to get there. Doctors and lawyers have various insurances they must pay into, and go to school for 8-10 years. The same is true for college educators, research scientists, etc. Engineers and programmers make a lot of money from their employment, and have an advantage of being in short supply, while teaching is not so much an under supplied position (as a generalization, certain subjects, such as STEM need a lot more teachers.) As with anything else, wages are subjected to the laws of supply and demand. If there is a lot of demand which the supply can't meet, then employers are going to entice people with higher salaries. If two people can fill every one position, the salaries will drop. 

The average hours teachers work are comparable to other professional jobs, hovering between 45-55 hours per week (think of how much a doctor is on call or the amount of work an engineer/programmer does at home, teachers aren't the only ones who work off-hours.) One must also consider that the teachers working the higher number of hours are the ones who are older and are consequently paid more. New teachers have fewer responsibilities because they are starting out and are not involved in so many extra activities. (Source for this at end of page.) 

I don't see the relevance of your summer comment. For other occupations people must work summers and that is included in the final salary that you look at for being so much higher. Having said that, most teachers do get summer positions elsewhere and can make money on top of their already above-median salary. What is so horrible about that? 

All of my high school teachers except for two had bachelors only in the subject they were teaching. The ones who had higher degrees were paid more (a Biology teacher with a masters in Biology, and an English teacher  working on her doctorate.) Doctors in other countries don't have so many hoops to go through nor as high insurance costs like this one, and teachers in other countries are MUCH more qualified. This is clear enough by the results. Apples to oranges. 

Tenure is something not many other jobs have, regardless. You know you'll always have a job regardless of external factors. 

http://teaching.monster.com/careers/articles/4039-when-where-and-how-much-do-us-teachers-work

 Teachers aged 50 and older who were employed full time worked more hours per week than teachers who were younger- 6.7 more hours than teachers in their thirties and 5.1 more hours than teachers in their twenties

Average working hours per week

Ages 20-29: 37 hours per week

Ages 30-39: 36 hours per week

Ages 40-49: 40 hours per week

Ages 50-59: 42 hours per week

I found this statistic especially interesting since all of the schools where I have worked the veteran teachers seemed to be out the door at the end of the day while the new teachers where still perfecting their bulletin boards and planning lessons. Maybe it’s because those veteran teachers were choosing to do their work at home (see below.)