Teacher Salaries: More Attention Needed to Specifics ( The Millionaire Next Door)

EducationNews.org ^ | June 16, 2006 | David W. Kirkpatrick

[wintertime]

One of the ongoing controversies in the public schools is the issue of teacher salaries. Teachers largely claim they are too low while taxpayers are equally vehement that they are more than adequate.

(snip)

Then there are the actual salary levels. Statistics in 2005 showed the average teacher salary in the nation was $46,762, ranging from a low of $33,236 in South Dakota to $57,337 in Connecticut. Even this ignores the additional compensation teachers receive as fringe benefits, which may add an additional 33% or more to the costs, primarily for very good retirement and health coverage plans. Further, averages include starting teacher salaries, which may begin at $30,000 or less, which teachers gladly mention, but ignore the high salaries of career teachers at or near the maximum on their salary schedule, important because retirement pensions are often based on the best three or so years.

(snip)

Last year, the New York State Department of Education issued a study that reported maximum teacher salaries in that state of $100,000 or more and median salaries as high as $98,000 per year. That is, there were districts, in Westchester County for example, where half of the teachers earned more than $98,000 a year.

A novel approach a few years ago by Michael Antonucci, director of the Education Intelligence Agency in California, compared teachers average salaries to average salaries all workers state by state. First prize went to Pennsylvania where the teachers received 62.5% more than the average employee. That difference is even greater when it is further considered that teachers average a 185 day work year while most workers put in 235.

(snip) Women who had been educators were 7.4% of the total deceased that year but 20.6% of them, nearly three times the statistical expectation were among the affluent few. Former male educators didn't do quite as well but even they were represented among the wealthy decedents by a ratio nearly 1.5 times the anticipated numerical ratio.

[PeoplesRepublicOfWashington]

$70K/yr for a teacher is equivalent to $89K/yr in the real world--not bad at all.

[Amelia]

I'd quit my job (senior computer planner) and home school them. Anyone with a logical braid could teach more in 1/2 / day than they do in a month!

If I were focusing on just a few students who were of similar abilities and experiences, I could teach them a whole lot more than I can teach 30 different students of varying levels and experiences.

Not to mention, a parent who is homeschooling should have a much higher stake in what happens to his or her own children.

[meyer]

I'm curious. I would like to know what everyone here thinks the average salary of a teacher should be.

Tough question, as there is such a small real-world (non-government) market from which to derive wages. Realistically, I'd put the range in the $30,000 to $60,000 range depending on location (and keep in mind that the cost of living in somewhere like middle Tennessee is about half of that in, say, Manhattan, New York).

In a free market, it would certainly be based on performance, but that performance would be a bit harder to measure than one might think. Test scores are a good indicator that the student has or has-not learned the subject material, but test scores don't differentiate between the teacher's efforts and skills and those of the student. A great teacher can easily be hampered by bad students. Conversely, a good student can bump up the apparent abilities of a mediocre teacher.

[Porterville]

Try teaching. Try passing the test. Try getting a job as a teacher.

I have a hard time watching bankers, real estate agents, and sales people make cash. Talk about no skill easy money.

[reformedliberal]

In a lot of rural areas, like mine, EMS and Firefighters are volunteers. We hold fundraisers for their equipment. LEO are poorly paid, although probably 2x the average per capita for the area, it is still only about $24k-$30k, plus ok benefits and I hear more complaints than gratitude about their union. It used to be rare that a rural LEO even drew their gun. Today, we have an influx of perps from the large urban areas looking for new hunting grounds.

We have declining enrollments, due to demographics. Our one small town of under 4500 residents (another 27k in the county) has 5 private schools, 3 of them religious. This reflects dissatisfaction with the schools, but the parents still pay property taxes.

Administrators make the standard $190k plus generous benefits and function as grants facilitators, for the most part. Teachers make about the same as LEOs, although some can crack $50k, with extra assignments like coaching, especially if they have a Master's.

However, taxes are high on all but agriculture land. A rural
5 acres with a new, large, modern home can be taxed at 3x the amount of an 80-acre grandfathered former farm that hasn't yet changed owners. That retired farmer pays about the same as the homeowner in the town with a smallish corner lot and an old Victorian home.

The services for water, sewer and garbage pickup in the town are expensive. In the country, we pay for our own well, septic and hauling our separated trash to the dump, where we pay extra of disposal of some items, like old appliances.

Now, the taxes are mandated by the State. The teachers are paid from those taxes and the politics are such that no one who is in business for themselves or who is in private professional practice will even run for the unpaid School Board positions, because when the taxes go up, the taxpayers take it out on the Board members with boycotts aimed at economic marginalization.

So, we have taxation w/o representation for the schools. We have the usual liberal indoctrination, although, parents have been able to get some of the most egregious teachers fired. However, there are social/economic consequences for mobilizing against such teachers. Basically, advocating for non-indoctrination in education in rural areas can have huge repercussions for those willing to stick their neck out. Your children will be subject to hateful comments, fights, and grade retaliation; you will not be able to obtain some business services if the contractor is related to any teacher; your practice and business will be boycotted and talked down and you may find that the various water, sewer and trash employees go out of their way to find you out of compliance with ever-increasing ordinances, as will the Historic Preservation Nazis and the Main Street sign ordinance commissars.

This is a huge national problem. It is eating up tax money, providing barely acceptable to failing services and polarizing communities. There are no local solutions that are palatable to the majority, state solutions are totally dependent upon political majorities and ultimately, a Governor's veto or signature.

Once upon a time, teachers were respected. Today, they are resented, except for a very few, very gifted individuals nearing retirement. Once, we all were persuaded to vote for school bonds. Today, if we vote one down, it is just recycled and presented over and over until there is an election with low turnout or vote fraud, where it passes. Then it is guaranteed to turn out that the amount of money allocated is inadequate, supplementals are discovered to be buried within the original bond language (sometimes in perpetuity) and taxes rise independent of state mandates. To add insult to injury, within 5 years of such referendums, the very same schools will be consolidated or closed due to falling enrollment.

It is a mess.

[Porterville]

I think he meant braid because his brain is clearly tied up in knots.

[maine-iac7]

An influx of conservative teachers into the field could stem the liberal tide in education as well.

try being a conservative teacher in the lion's den of liberalism - it isn't just the colleges that are stacked top heavy with liberals - conservatives need not apply - only a few will squeak through

[HungarianGypsy]

All I remember about teacher's salaries are the two married English teachers who both drove BMWs.

[Amelia]

try being a conservative teacher in the lion's den of liberalism - it isn't just the colleges that are stacked top heavy with liberals - conservatives need not apply - only a few will squeak through

I am a conservative teacher, although I'll admit my area is pretty conservative, as are most of the teachers I know.

Yes, there are a lot of liberals in the teachers' colleges, especially if you're taking graduate-level classes. Classroom teachers mostly laugh at them behind their backs, and figure that if they got out of their "academic ivory towers" and "into the trenches" with us they'd change their tunes soon enough. ;-)

[Florida native]

Then you wasted a lot of money.

No she didn't! MsEdie went into teaching for the reasons most don't - she realizes it's a CALLING, not a profession - money is not the reason she is there.

She did the right thing getting the best education to do the best job possible for special needs students.

And I commend her for doing whatever she can to enable these children to become the workers who may fill the jobs that illegals now fill.

[Doctor Stochastic]

You experience is more typical. Wait for the teacher bashers to attack though.

[Amelia]

All I remember about teacher's salaries are the two married English teachers who both drove BMWs

You wouldn't believe how many teachers like that are in hock up to their eyeballs.

I'm sure you know people whose standard of living is only limited by how much the bank will loan them.

[maine-iac7]

Citizens' taxes should not be confiscated to pay greater benefits to the people the citizens hire than the average citizen themselves can obtain

Amen

(How to get that on a bumper sticker?)

[Clara Lou]

I am a conservative teacher, although I'll admit my area is pretty conservative, as are most of the teachers I know. ... Yes, there are a lot of liberals in the teachers' colleges, especially if you're taking graduate-level classes.
This is my situation.

[maine-iac7]

I met one last week. ( Really!) She was a teacher at one of the Challenger schools. A PRIVATE school. This really happened. ( fire teachers for poor performance)

Ahhh - yeah. the catchword is PRIVATE school.

we're talking about gummint warehouse sckoools

[Doctor Stochastic]

Yep. The private companies paid a much larger part of health care (with better benefits) than I ever got as a teacher or other government work.

[Sisku Hanne]

"First prize went to Pennsylvania where the teachers received 62.5% more than the average employee."

Also average teachers salary in Pennsylvania is the highest in the country when adjusted for cost of living.
Thirty-eight states do not allow public school teachers to strike. Pennsylvania is not among them. Guess which state leads the country in number of teacher's strikes? Anyone?... Bueller?

[blinachka]

$70,000 IS a lot of money for a teacher, but $70,000 divided by $400,000,000 = When this teacher has worked 500 years {!!} they still will not have earned as much as the parting gift to one oil company employee.

One has NOTHING to do with the other and nor should it. This is apples and oranges. Only SOCIALISTS make these type of comparisons and actually believe they have any merit to them. If you want to make more money get a different job.

[frankensnake]

I agree, in theory, that teachers are underpaid. I know home-schooling works great, but not everyone is in a position to do it. That's why teachers are important. And, all of the teachers I know are hard-working and dedicated. Don't confuse the individual teacher with the Unions.

Now, if I were a teacher, I'd be asking whether my Union was really serving me. The Teacher Unions are, for all intents and purposes, wholly owned subsidiaries of the Democratic Party. Yet, it's the Democrats that have created massive bureaucratic education beasts that suck up all the education dollars.

And there's plenty of money in the system to pay them more! The problem is that the education bureaucracy sucks up all that money. I live in California, where a huge chunk of education dollars never makes it out of Sacramento or the regional school district offices. It's ridiculous. And it's why I don't vote for more money for education. EVER. The problems will never get fixed if we keep funding the beast.

[Amelia]

Well, see, that's part of the problem. Everyone thinks the average teacher is like a teacher in Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey. Those states are highly unionized, with high teacher salaries.

Many states are very different. Our state has comparatively high salaries for our region, thanks mainly to Zell Miller, a former teacher himself, who felt that higher salaries would attract more qualified individuals to the field.

We are not very unionized, however.