Teachers

[rudder]

Most teachers don't care about what they do. They view it as a shitty job, and they are a shitty teacher as a consequence.

A few teachers really care and want their kids to learn, and they go above and beyond to achieve this. Its sad to see these few teachers, who put so much effort into their job, be paid like they do, but I really can't justify giving the other 99% of lazy, crappy teachers a payraise just for the 1% that are decent.

Some states are trying merit based pay for that reason. However... this is something very difficult to quantify. You have standardized testing.. but a elementary school child can take the test and try to do well. Whereas you can have a high school student purposely fail to make the teachers life miserable since the testing does not count towards a grade. Also there is no means to determine child improvement over the course of a year. If a crappy teacher send 12 neglected students up one grade... this will negatively effect the next teachers test scores.... even if that new teacher was able to get the students up to their grade level.

And I wouldn't say most teachers don't care. There are so many school districts and so many different working conditions... and just no way you can put out a blanket statement like that.

 

[rh71]

out here on LI it is a known fact that they are overpaid. With a masters, which is common among them, they make 6 figures. The superintendent makes over $400k/yr. Cops are the same, the unions rule out here. And our property/school taxes are through the roof ($10k/yr for a small ranch house, $6k of that is school). I'm looking at $15k/yr after they do my assessment soon.

If we vote down the budget in a given year, who suffers...? The kids because they can't take it out of teachers' pay, they cut supplies, events, and trips, etc.

 

[Dumac]

Well no, not at all that makes absolutely no sense what so ever, in the UK a private school teacher get's a hell of a lot more than a public school teacher.

With rich parents paying for their kids to go the school, obviously the school has a lot more money.

There are many types of private schools, at least here in the US.

Sure, there are wealthy private schools where tuition costs 25k and teachers get paid like a professor...

but there are also many religious private schools that operate on church/donation money and don't require a heavy tuition.

I assume that teacher pay is directly related to private school tuition.

 

[HAL9000]

There are many types of private schools, at least here in the US.

Sure, there are wealthy private schools where tuition costs 25k and teachers get paid like a professor...

but there are also many religious private schools that operate on church/donation money and don't require a heavy tuition.

I assume that teacher pay is directly related to private school tuition.

Ahh those I hadn't considered, but I assume they are an extreme minority...? Surely averaging them out would result in a higher average...

 

[shiner]

Based on the people I know who are teachers:

Underworked and overpaid

 

[Dumac]

Some states are trying merit based pay for that reason. However... this is something very difficult to quantify. You have standardized testing.. but a elementary school child can take the test and try to do well. Whereas you can have a high school student purposely fail to make the teachers life miserable since the testing does not count towards a grade. Also there is no means to determine child improvement over the course of a year. If a crappy teacher send 12 neglected students up one grade... this will negatively effect the next teachers test scores.... even if that new teacher was able to get the students up to their grade level.

And I wouldn't say most teachers don't care. There are so many school districts and so many different working conditions... and just no way you can put out a blanket statement like that.

Good point. I qualified my statement.

 

[NFS4]

Considering the hours and job requirements, VERY overpaid and underworked. In my state average teacher salary is close to 60K for teaching kids that 7+9 = 15. Or 17. Or pi. Either way, close enough, you pass, move on to the next grade.

$60k? Must be nice

My wife is a second grade teacher (starting her sixth year next week) and makes $34,000 a year, non-union.

She gets to work at 7:30am, school starts at 8am and is over at 3 pm. She normally is there until 5:00 or 6:00 every damn week day (this is the cause of many arguments in our house) preparing lessons, in grade level meetings, calling parents, etc. And she often works on school stuff during the weekends as well.

I'd say she's way underpaid for the amount of time and effort she puts into her job. But I don't expect most of you here to understand that -- there is a huge anti-teacher sentiment on ATOT from what I've gathered from past posts.

 

[Dumac]

Ahh those I hadn't considered, but I assume they are an extreme minority...? Surely averaging them out would result in a higher average...

Growing up, I only knew about the religious private schools. It wasn't until I moved to Los Angeles that I learned of schools with tuition that was a high as a university.

I was shocked to find out about it.

EDIT:

http://www.capenet.org/facts.html

There are 33,366 private schools in the United States, serving 5.5 million PK-12 students. Private schools account for over 25 percent of the nation's schools and enroll about 10 percent of all students.
Most private school students (80 percent) attend religiously-affiliated schools (see table 2). And most private schools are small: 87 percent have fewer than 300 students (see table 1).

Put your kid in private school so they don't hear about evolution

 

[gothamhunter]

There are many types of private schools, at least here in the US.

Sure, there are wealthy private schools where tuition costs 25k and teachers get paid like a professor...

but there are also many religious private schools that operate on church/donation money and don't require a heavy tuition.

I assume that teacher pay is directly related to private school tuition.

Too many kids were leaving the local Private school to a new public one nearby because, of course, it's cheaper, and there wasnt enough donation/tuition money coming in, so they had to cut jobs.

Community contribution directly correlates how well the school will do for most, if not all, private religious schools.

 

[Capt Caveman]

they get 2.5 months off for the summer too

Yes, b/c they work a full year during the school year.

People don't consider that grading, meeting with parents, etc are all things that happen after school hours.

Try grading 150 essays over the course of a week. Ten minutes a paper including comments/feedback? 25 hours just for that.

 

[gothamhunter]

$60k? Must be nice

My wife is a second grade teacher (starting her sixth year next week) and makes $34,000 a year.

She gets to work at 7:30am, school starts at 8am and is over at 3 pm. She normally is there until 5:00 or 6:00 every damn week day (this is the cause of many arguments in our house) preparing lessons, in grade level meetings, calling parents, etc. And she often works on school stuff during the weekends as well.

I'd say she's way underpaid for the amount of time and effort she puts into her job. But I don't expect most of you here to understand that -- there is a huge anti-teacher sentiment on ATOT from what I've gathered from past posts.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

 

[HAL9000]

Growing up, I only knew about the religious private schools. It wasn't until I moved to Los Angeles that I learned of schools with tuition that was a high as a university.

I was shocked to find out about it.

Really?! Wow. There are so few schools like that in the UK, the vast majority are paid for, from between £1,000 and £25,000 per pupil, including the religious schools, I think there are some charity funded religious schools in London, but not many.

 

[gothamhunter]

Really?! Wow. There are so few schools like that in the UK, the vast majority are paid for, from between £1,000 and £25,000 per pupil, including the religious schools, I think there are some charity funded religious schools in London, but not many.

Time to move to England.

 

[TecHNooB]

For the bad teachers, overpaid and underworked.

For the good teachers, underpaid and overworked.

this.

 

[HAL9000]

EDIT:

http://www.capenet.org/facts.html




Put your kid in private school so they don't hear about evolution

Holy crap, that explains a lot.

Over here private schools are pretty much just the rich ones.

 

[HAL9000]

Time to move to England.

Teachers don't get that much over here, the starting salary for a secondary school (public) teacher is about £25k I believe. ($41)

Private school teachers get more like £60k and up. ($98k)

 

[gothamhunter]

Growing up, I only knew about the religious private schools. It wasn't until I moved to Los Angeles that I learned of schools with tuition that was a high as a university.

I was shocked to find out about it.

EDIT:

http://www.capenet.org/facts.html




Put your kid in private school so they don't hear about evolution

They still learn about evolution, but just in a scientific standpoint and not necessarily as our origin.

 

[PingSpike]

The money thing varies a lot actually. Private school teachers make a lot less and I'm sure many public school areas are still quite underpaid. But around here...

Their whining is pretty ridiculous lately. Around here their salaries seem a lot better than average, lets not forget the benefits (although they'll try to get you to if you bring them up) like solid medical insurance and a pension that fucking no one in the private sector is getting these days. The pension is huge and can't be understated...its entirely possible to collect benefits for longer than you ever worked. I wasn't aware that they are required to take classes all summer, you'd think they'd bring that up every time some one brought up the short work year. Perhaps that is a regional requirement...but even if that is true it just means they work a regular year like the rest of us.

I will submit they have to deal with a bunch of bureaucratic horseshit that hobbles their ability to do a better job. NCLB is a total failure and a waste of time and resources. The biggest factor to learning success is parent involvement which is more or less entirely out of their control. Disruptive students cannot be tossed out of school when they damage the entire class, meaning you have to suffer with those idiots ruining lessons for everyone. The union is good and bad. It does help keep their wages up but doesn't seem to be winning them any support with the public these days. It protects the most worthless members and makes the whole group look bad. It must be incredibly irritating to hear everyone whine about no results when the only things that could improve results either aren't on the table, aren't possible or aren't in your power. Still, people in other jobs have to deal with similar BS and they don't have the benefits or the occasional reward of teaching a child something every now and then.

One thing that is hard about being a teacher around here is actually getting the gig in the first place. Our enrollments are declining (cost of living and job availability make the area a tough place to raise a family in) and unless you are an administrator or current teacher's kid and/or are willing to be a sub for awhile to get your foot in the door I don't think you'll get hired. At my high school I can think of only one new hire that wasn't a current teacher's kid. I briefly considered a "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" philosophy but I'm not sure I'd make it through that wall after retraining. Plus, with the enrollments down and property taxes so high I wouldn't be surprised if there was a backlash soon.

 

[Dumac]

They still learn about evolution, but just in a scientific standpoint and not necessarily as our origin.

My SO went to a private school. They refused to teach about evolution.

I'm young (still in college), so this wasn't long ago.

At the other private school where I was growing up, I knew some attendees and they also claimed that they didn't learn about evolution either.

The biggest kicker? In the public school I attended, evolution was about a paragraph footnote that was mentioned just to say that it was covered.

GO LOUISIANA! Cutting edge...

 

[AstroManLuca]

Underpaid, definitely. I remember in my high school, the teachers were constantly running out of whiteboard markers and had to buy new ones with their own money because there just wasn't money in the school's budget for more. If I needed a little help in one of my classes the best way was to buy a big box of them and hand them out

At the administrative level, you've got busybodies who have to control everything and be the king/queen of their little domain. They come up with stupid wasteful ideas like buying a laptop for every kid when the books in the library are outdated and shit's falling apart. And it doesn't help that our government interferes too much with the curriculum, and seems to think more testing is the answer to everything.

 

[HAL9000]

My SO went to a private school. They refused to teach about evolution.

I'm young (still in college), so this wasn't long ago.

At the other private school where I was growing up, I knew some attendees and they also claimed that they didn't learn about evolution either.

The biggest kicker? In the public school I attended, evolution was about a paragraph footnote that was mentioned just to say that it was covered.

GO LOUISIANA! Cutting edge...

Holy shit, if you hadn't said "GO LOUISIANA" I'd have thought you lived in Iran or something, I heard things were like this in America but I thought it was a joke. My friend went to a private catholic school in the UK (£10,000 a year) and she learned about evolution.

 

[biostud]

The salary for teachers in either private or public schools are pretty much the same in Denmark I get around ~$75K/year including pension. ~$3.5K/month after taxes.

 

[Dumac]

Holy shit, if you hadn't said "GO LOUISIANA" I'd have thought you lived in Iran or something, I heard things were like this in America but I thought it was a joke. My friend went to a private catholic school in the UK (£10,000 a year) and she learned about evolution.

I don't think most of the U.S. is like that. Louisiana has one of the lowest rated educational programs. Last time I checked, it was something like 47 out of 51. That is what you get for living in the bible belt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Belt), not like I had a choice.

 

[DCal430]

Thoughts?

Some food for thought:

Teachers are required to take courses and pay for their license throughout their teaching career in order to maintain a license.

Some say the job is a cushy one because it's 8-3; most are usually there 7-4 at least, and then take work home and spend hours at home grading, reading, correcting, etc...

Breaks are usually spent taking courses, lesson planning, meeting with other staff, and learning the format of the new course material.

Parents are putting more pressure on teachers to also become the babysitter and parents for the students; a lot do not take or "have" the time to teach their children discipline or manners at home, which highly affect their behavior at school.

Average starting salary for private schools: $25,000
Average starting salary for public schools: $34,700

Neither amounts take into account cost of living for said areas, so $34,700 might seem like a lot to us in the Midwest, but over in Cali it's probably just above surviving - take that into account before you think that they're making an excellent amount of money. For example, average starting salary for public school teacher in Iowa is $27,200.

1. Here teachers are not required to do any thing like that here. There are no continueing education that is required to maintain your teaching credentials.

2. I know multiple teachers, no they do not spend hours at home doing work.

3. Wrong teachers spend the break going on vacation.

4. Average teacher salary in Cali is over 50K, all the teachers I know and I knew a few make over 65K a year.

 

[HAL9000]

I don't think most of the U.S. is like that. Louisiana has one of the lowest rated educational programs. Last time I checked, it was something like 47 out of 51. That is what you get for living in the bible belt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Belt), not like I had a choice.

Slightly off topic but I really want to know, is the bible belt area actually similar to how Top Gear showed it a while ago? I was really interested in visiting there but I figured I might get beaten up...