Are you sick of highly paid teachers?

[TheCainer]

Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work nine or ten months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do -- babysit!


We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and planning -- that equals 6-1/2 hours).



So each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day...maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585 a day.



However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.



LET'S SEE....



That's $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).



What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6-1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.



Wait a minute -- there's something wrong here! There sure is!



The average teacher's salary (nationwide) is $50,000.



$50,000/180 days = $277.77 per day / 30 students = $9.25 / 6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student -- a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!)



WHAT A DEAL!!!!

 

[gr8indoorsman]

IF we were paying them for individualized attention, as your math assumes, then I would agree that they are all underpaid. Economy of scale applies, kind of like shopping at a big box store vs. a custom installer. I think there are many teachers that are very good and deserve better pay. I also think there are many teachers who do the bare minimum to get by and are grossly overcompensated thanks to unions and tenure.

 

[GMM]

Yes*

*

 

[TheCainer]

Actually I did not expect a response. I get a number of chain emails from the other perspective and since this one was so rare, I just thought I would share as something different.

 

[gr8indoorsman]

The problem with most of these arguments is that both sides oversimplify things. We over generalize to say all teachers are _________. We oversimplify math to be minimum wage to baby sit 30 kids and how great a deal that is. It's a bunch of strawmen. IMO, it's about the value of the skill set involved. Anyone can walk a dog, very few can weld. Teaching - or rather the ability to fill a teaching position - is not a terribly rare skillset. Hundreds of new educators are created every year just at Purdue, which is a pretty small education school. Meanwhile, my graduating class of aerospace engineers was less than 30.

 

[qazplm]

I've taught

and let me tell you, it's a rarer skill set than you think. I won't pretend I was particularly good at it...then again, I was asked to teach math to 9th graders at a school for delinquents where the ages ranged from 13-18, and I was teaching 4-5 subjects from basic 1+1=2 to Algebra 2 and Geometry all in the the class hour.

Oh and half the kids were on drugs.

So my experience is probably skewed obviously, but having said that, I saw the difference between those teachers who had it, and those who did not, and I saw potentially that teaching is a tougher skill set then you assert.

We don't value teaching, and thus we don't attract quality folks.

I would equate teaching to a pharmacists. I would make it a 5-year degree. More than a bachelors, less than a masters. I would recommit to it being a professional degree. I would increase the standards, and I would yes increase the pay. Not a ton, but enough to attract quality people.

But we only say we care about education, we want to do it on the cheap, and we do it with folks who can't figure out what else they want to do with their lives.

 

[gr8indoorsman]

Re: I've taught


I said: "Teaching - or rather the ability to fill a teaching position - is not a terribly rare skillset."

And that's what it's all about.

I agree being a great teacher is a rare - incredibly rare - skillset, but it isn't hard to find someone to fill a teaching job, thus they are paid accordingly. Simple as that.

I summarily disagree that we'd attract better teachers simply by paying them more. We'd attract more in number, but we'd struggle even more to weed them out. Our requirements to fill positions should be more stringent, and then compensate them accordingly. Until then, they will continue to get paid commensurate with the difficulty in obtaining the required minimum skillset.

 

[qazplm]

again

being a good teacher is rare. And the idea that you can find anyone to fill the spot is the problem I'm talking about.

And I didn't say simply "pay them more." I said:

1. Treat it like a profession. That means making it harder to become a teacher. This will weed out those who do it because they can't find something else to do.
2. Extend the time frame from four years to five years (again making it harder and longer will increase it's relative importance)
3. Increase the pay

Treat like becoming a pharmacist or some other profession that is just short of being a lawyer or doctor. Bottom line make it a more reputable profession that demands and attracts a higher level of person, and a higher level of respect.

Until you do that, it's going to be "anyone can fill this role" and getting a great or even good teacher is going to continue to be based less on skill and more on luck.

 

[gr8indoorsman]

Re: again

Yep, I agree completely with your three steps. The problem I have is that the unions (largely) want the order of operations reversed: pay us more, then do other stuff to raise the quality within the profession. I understand why they'd want that, but I do not agree with it nor do I support simply paying teachers more money until the first two issues are fixed. As you acknowledge, and is a problem, the market does not dictate they get paid more "just because" as seems to be the defense.

Most every teacher I've ever been brave enough to discuss this with tells me, "you couldn't do my job." I answer, "no, I don't have the patience for it nor the desire, however the skill set for the position itself is not limiting. Thus, I (and many others) *could* do your job, I just have no desire." By that rationale, I *could* collect garbage as well, but I choose not to. In neither case is it a good rationale for raising the wage.

Part of the reason the skill sets are not limiting is that most places more or less dictate what will be taught and the manner in which it is taught. Only a very little bit of latitude is left for teachers to differentiate themselves as "good" or "bad" as we try to ensure equal educational opportunity by legislation.

 

[indyogb]

Having worked at a school district (not as a teacher) for nearly a decade, I can say I really have mixed feelings. In college I had little respect for "elementary education" majors (did that even really exist at Purdue, or was I being lied too? ). They started their weekend drinking on Thursday, maintained "A's" while I was killing myself for Bs and Cs in engineering. (I admit, I knew a few engineering majors who were also capable of such feats - but they were few and far between, and obviously very sharp)

They graduate, get a good paying job (last I looked - it's been a couple years - they made as much as the average person with a Bachelor's degree, while working an average of only 9-10 months a year). Even before they got screwed by the "evaluation" system in Indiana, they were ridiculous self-martyrs (really... teachers are NOT saving the world any more than doctors or nurses or engineers, etc.).

They do get screwed by their new "evaluation" system, as I stated above. Holding them accountable for not being able to get kids to learn, when some parents really do think of school as merely free daycare, isn't really their fault. Teachers may teach, but parents drive the kids to pay attention to their teachers and do the work. I'm a firm believer in that - even a "bad" teacher who shows up every day and covers the material, is doing the job their supposed to do. However, some of the perks they previously got were a bit... well, let's just say they were exceptionally good perks . Most of that is gone, and I know several younger teachers (some of them award winners, if that means anything) who switched careers because it was going to be hard for them to ever make the money many of their older (and in some cases, less capable) peers made.

It's not an easy job, but neither is anything else that pays the "average Bachelor's degree salary". They are valued as much as they should be - parental guidance is the problem (no amount of wonder teachers could fix most of that). The American education system is basically currently ranked where it has been for decades - middle of the pack in the "industrialized world" (for many reasons - we try to teach EVERYONE, we are honest with our results, and we have a much wider cultural disparity than most of those other nations). Besides, raw intellectualism isn't something American's have really ever hung our hats on - it's more about creative applications of ideas that made us great.



This post was edited on 1/6 10:18 PM by indyogb