Underpaid at $34.06 an Hour?
The sad lot of public-school teachers in America:
Given the miserable state of education today, I think we ought to be looking at slashing education funding, not squeezing taxpayers who make a lot less than $34.06 an hour to feed the trough the educrats gorge at.
I've kicked around the military and business a long time, and the one thing that is for certain is that large bureaucracies don't start delivering until bloated budgets get cut.
Who, on average, is better paid--public school teachers or architects? How about teachers or economists? You might be surprised to learn that public school teachers are better paid than these and many other professionals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005, 36% more than the hourly wage of the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty or technical worker.
In the popular imagination, however, public school teachers are underpaid. "Salaries are too low. We all know that," noted First Lady Laura Bush, expressing the consensus view. "We need to figure out a way to pay teachers more." Indeed, our efforts to hire more teachers and raise their salaries account for the bulk of public school spending increases over the last four decades. During that time per-pupil spending, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled; overall we now annually spend more than $500 billion on public education.
Given the miserable state of education today, I think we ought to be looking at slashing education funding, not squeezing taxpayers who make a lot less than $34.06 an hour to feed the trough the educrats gorge at.
I've kicked around the military and business a long time, and the one thing that is for certain is that large bureaucracies don't start delivering until bloated budgets get cut.
posted by Teflon at 8:48 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I really don't know where they got this statistic from. I did the calculation. I made $34,000 last year after 6 years of teaching, and my salary is high compared to the rest of North Carolina. I am REQUIRED to put in 1520 hours a year. This does not include the hours and hours of time I put in before and after my hours of professional duty. This comes out to $22 an hour. I started off with a salary of only $26,500. That comes out to $17 an hour. If I were to go back and add in the actual hours that I have put in towards my job, that hourly figure would decrease tremendously. So think about it. We don't have time during the day to go the bathroom, we have 20 minutes to eat lunch while monitoring students, we get blamed for all of society's problems despite the fact that test scores prove the students ARE learning, we get cussed at by students and parents, we receive threats, we report child abuse, we worry about which student in our class has a gun in his book bag, we confiscate cell phones, we play nurse, we play mommy, we play daddy, we give the students all things they're lacking at home (love), and not to mention we teach the curriculum. Would you do this for $17 an hour?
Meredith-
As with all statistics, the answer is, "It depends."
Is North Carolina the highest-paid teacher salary state? I don't believe it is.
My sister in Massachusetts teaches kindergarten and makes significantly more than $34,000 a year, and significantly more than the $34.06 per hour figure given the amount of time she's taken for maternity leave (twice), maxing out her sick and personal days (which she does every year).
Situations are clearly different depending on state, school district, and even school, but I can also tell you my father and grandfather hefted 12-inch block up multiple flights of staging for significantly less than the average teacher gets paid, and in worse weather.
No one is saying that teachers are not important, but I think there's a justified backlash building against teacher's unions in particular for decades of increased taxes to support education which a) as many teachers attest never seem to materialize in the classroom and b) have been argued not in terms of results for students but as entitlements for educators.
Since not belonging to a teacher's union is not an option for most teachers, most teachers cannot be held accountable for the claims of the union and administrators. Teachers like my sister who talk very little about educating kids but very much about how much more they should be paid, however, cannot help but beg the question of what taxpayers get for their money.
As for test results rising, it's not at all clear that they are. Those that are widely administered over a long period of time are most telling, and I haven't seen anything suggesting statistically-significant improvement (Iowa test of basic skills, etc). Others like the SAT have actually been dumbed down to inflate the numbers (our readers may not realize that there is now an essay in the place of an historically-difficult section of the test).
The one constant has been the educational establishment's resistance to any measures of accountability standardized at the highest levels. No Child Left Behind is one example.
It also goes without saying that the current state of affairs in public education does not imply that there aren't good, professional, dedicated teachers out there. There are. The question is, "Do you as a teacher believe a majority of your colleagues are good, professional, dedicated teachers?" More importantly, are those teachers who've been at it the longest good, professional, dedicated teachers?
Would you say the same for the administrators? For the union officials?
I have served in the military and worked in corporate America, two areas where strict accountability is the norm. When it comes to compensation, I can assure you it is the men and women of the U.S. military who are the most underpaid in America, risking their lives for a lot less than teachers or businessmen make. They have no union or political lobby to speak of, either.
Thank you for doing what you do, and for keeping the focus where it belongs---on the kids you teach and their intellectual development.
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