Posted on 06/17/2006 5:15:15 AM PDT by 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.
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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.
70 thousand a year would not afford a shack in southern California.
Look at the salaries of places like KS, OK, NE. It is certainly not 70 grand here, I will tell you that much.
Teacher strikes are also illegal in Texas.
At my kids school this year, when teachers quit they couldn't find teachers to replace them.
Where is this? Sounds like the fictional school in 'Ed' where all I ever saw 'Miss Vessy' do is water plants, go out to lunch, and put books away.
Two aides/class? I had to cry and scream to get one parttime aide with 4 special ed kids along with several SEP kids and 16 reg. ed. kids.
Tom McClintock for one, and also another Assemblymen cannot recall at the moment.
But 50% is the known for quite sometime, heard it also on radio. Interesting, the disparity don't you think.
I don't know what school you went to bub, but most of my teachers were never gone ONE DAY the entire year in high school.
Have you heard of No Child Left Behind? Obviously not. Teachers will lose their jobs if students do not improve every year, including those students that don't give a damn.
She is a bad teacher.
Don't attack the entire profession because of bad apples like her.
That is absurd, there certainly are plenty of excellent, dedicated teachers. My experience though, with the teachers my 2 children had through 9 years of public school, and the friends and neighbors I've known who are teachers, is that those are few - maybe 10-15% of teachers. My old neighbor told us bluntly she chose teaching (elementary) because she wanted a job with summers off, and so when she had children she'd be off when they were. She taught at the elementary school down the street from me, where the teachers left before the buses were gone (to avoid the slow traffic) and arrived 15 minutes before school. She didn't grade papers at home, she did them during her free periods or had her aide do them. I have a friend who would have been an outstanding, dedicated teacher, but when she was offered a job in our district teaching high school biology (she had degrees in both biology and elementary ed) she said no, she wanted to teach elementary. They've used her as a substitute teacher for over 20 years, but wouldn't ever give her an elementary job because she refused their offer. That's how life is, and I understand it, but hundreds of children would have been better off with her as an elementary teacher than they were with the drug-head my son had for 4th grade...
We're sending our daughters to private school this year. It has nothing to do with the teachers. I actually liked their teachers, and I'm good friends with one of them.
I would love to have vouchers. One of my daughters is special needs (brain damaged proved by an MRI). This year, her reading level did not go up like it should and she is now reading about 6 months below grade level. The district will only provide a reading program when she drops 2 years below grade level, even though she has a certifiable disability.
A voucher program would really help special needs parents. They could actually use them to go to a school that is better suited to their kids disability.
Now, my husband and I have to come up with the money to send my daughter to private school, pay for a reading program, and pay for private speech therapy. It will cost around 20K. We have the money this year, but we don't know about next year.
Group projects don't reduce workload. Planning them so all students work and actually learn is an art.
On reading the working conditions in your #235, I can understand why. ;-)
It depends on the field and the location. On the secondary level, I think social studies and English teachers are relatively easy to find, science, math, and foreign language teachers are more difficult, as are special education teachers.
I am not a member of a union. I am a member of a Christian Educator's Assocation. We get liability insurance etc. through membership, the same stuff of value you would get in a union.
I had an aide for one period a day part of one semester. It depends on the aide of course, but this one wanted to talk to the students during lessons and basically disrupted class more than she helped.
Nonsense. Most every teacher who came from my conservative college is conservative. Most of them have jobs.
Public school teacher isn't a state government employee? Maybe it's just the pensions that are through the state. Or maybe it's just a Pennsylvania thing...
I agree with you 100%--vouchers would be a huge benefit to parents such as yourselves with special needs children. Resource teachers are stretched to the max because these days, if a child is not performing, then it MUST be a learning disability (couldn't possibly be just maturity or lack of effort!). I have been at this for a long time and I have never seen so many kids who have been labled with LDs. As a result, students with real serious needs do not get the attention they require/deserve from PSchools. It's a shame.
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