The Incredible Efficiency of Teacher Salaries

[lokisnow]

-crossposted from facebook, originally written by Meredith Menden-

Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or10 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 plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours).

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 = $585.00 a day.

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

That's $585 X 180= $105,300 per year.

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 (nation wide) 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!

If all the posters that think teachers' make too much money can come up with a system that pays less than $1.42/per student to instruct them, I'd love to hear about it.

Now feeling your outrage, watch

by Taylor Mali.

*The average may be 50,000 but that is skewed high by much larger salaries in affluent and urban areas of the country. People love to use the Average, but never tell us the Median, which would help understand the reality of teacher salaries more (if you don't remember what that is, please return to 3rd grade for a refresher). Anecdotally, my mom's been teaching for years in a rural Missouri district where all the students are impoverished. She makes less than $30,000 a year like all the other teachers in the area. And no, she doesn't get three months of vacation, that's such a nasty little myth that ignorant people trumpet and perpetuate, a myth that ignores the reality of living off a teacher salary. She gets perhaps a month over the year if you were to count christmas break. She's expected to be at school from 7AM to 4-5 PM and always has at least two hours of work she brings home to do in the evenings. I've always considered teaching a 12 hour a day job when you consider how much take-home work is required nightly. She's also got a project for her classroom's science area on Donor's Choose, PM me if you'd like to contribute to getting first graders to love science with hands on learning.

[The Progressive]

Think of all the money you could save by home-schooling your kids!

[Ken Stone]

They should include the cash value of the benefits into the calculation of how much they get paid per student. Also, you don't really need a babysitter past age 11 so it doesn't make sense to couch it into the "babysitter" terms.

[The Anti-Targ]

Teachers have always been the most grossly undervalued profession. What profession contributes more advancement of society from one generation to the next? Teachers. Or at least the teaching profession has the potential much more so than other professions.

Farmers and Teachers, we'd be f#cked without them.

[Blaine]

Yeah, but bad farmers go out of business. Bad teachers stick around and ruin generation of kids and we can't ever get rid of them.

Also, are there really people running around saying teachers in America are overpaid?

[Swordfish]

This just confirms my pre existing opinion that nothing of any real value ever comes from a facebook status.

[Guest Raids]

Given the other costs besides teacher salaries, people proabably are paying something like that. Teachers just aren't getting it all because there is the cost the building, bussing, school lunches, maitenence, supplies, support staff salary, administrator salaries, etc., etc.

[The Anti-Targ]

They should include the cash value of the benefits into the calculation of how much they get paid per student. Also, you don't really need a babysitter past age 11 so it doesn't make sense to couch it into the "babysitter" terms.

Yeah, but then they would need to include the cash cost of all the unaccounted hours teachers put into their jobs outside school hours.

14 here, according to the law. Given the minimum school leaving age here is 15 the baby-sitter analogy works pretty well. Also who would seriously consider it to be good parenting to leave their 11-year old unsupervised for 7 hours a day 5 days a week? Hell I wouldn't leave my 14-year old unsupervised under those conditions.

BTW I'm not a teacher, never wanted to be, barely ever contemplated it as a remote career possibility.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

I suppose I should get paid my hourly rate per customer served too. As should retail workers. Heck, McDonalds workers earn 7.50/hr, but serve 500 customer's per day! 500 customers x 7.50/hr x 6 hours = 625.00/day! McDonald's workers are criminally underpaid!

[S John]

I don't think that teachers are overpaid by any means, nor do I think that they are horribly underpaid. I think a little more wouldn't hurt... but that they probably are in the range they should be based on the resources that are available to allocate. Teachers are college educated folks and its well known that teaching is not a profession that you enter into for the money. Each and every one of them had the opportunity to pursue a career in finance, econ, etc during their university days, but chose to go into education.

Now, money isn't everything and I give them all the credit in the world for making that choice, but I just can't bring myself to believe that the average American public school teacher has that bad of a gig. Pensions are basically gone from nearly every other profession, teachers do get more time off than your average private sector worker (sorry, nobody is going to be able to convince me that they don't), and they get a pretty reasonable salary that is always going to be commensurate with local cost of living and level of experience. Could it be better? Yes, of course, things could always be better. But I'm not crying myself to sleep over this one.

[Lord of Oop North]

This analogy totally fails because you have it set so that you are paying the teacher both by the hour, and by the piece. That makes little sense. If I'm being paid $20 per square foot, and it takes me 200 hours to construct 2000 square feet, do I also get paid $20 / hour on top of the $20 per square foot? That would be ludicrous.

[The Anti-Targ]

Yeah, but bad farmers go out of business. Bad teachers stick around and ruin generation of kids and we can't ever get rid of them.

Also, are there really people running around saying teachers in America are overpaid?

Depends what you mean by bad. Farmers that pollute waterways, use excessive amounts of herbicides and pesticides (which make their way into our food supply), clear fell forests, create erosion, rape the fertility of the land, and live of tax payer subsidies, tend to last long enough to do pretty well for themselves. But that's a bad farmer IMO. Often after a couple of generations (or even only a few years) the poor sap who buys the farm finds the land has become almost barren. And it's that farmer who has been a bit too trusting about the past stewardship of the land and ends up going to the wall because they can't get enough out of the land to pay the mortgage who is seen by the ignorant as a "bad" farmer.

Farming requires no qualification, no training, no pre-assessment of fitness to be a farmer. Though undoubtedly farmers who do these things are more likely to be "good" farmers.

In civilised jurisdictions Teachers must have university degrees, undergo specific training to be a teacher, be subject to spending several weeks of in-class practical experience and assessment by their peers, and subject to a police background check. Only then can they be registered with the education authorities with a provisionally registered status, recieving full registration after 2 years of working as a teacher, and after full registration teachers are subject to ongoing review by the education dept. In a civilised jurisdiction people who would make "bad" teachers rarely make it through the process of becoming a teacher, and those who do are subject to interventions to improve their quality. If a teacher is so bad that they are having a detrimental effect on kids (being abusive, or something along those lines) then they can be and are removed from the teaching profession (i.e. de-registered as teachers). That's what happens in civilised jurisdictions.

[Fez]

I've also got some issue with "doubling up" the wage calculation by using the hour and the kid. I do think teachers are rather badly underpaid in most cases, but this is not effective way to support that point.

[S John]

As has been pointed out, don't think the rationale works at all. But I also cannot fathom how we pay some teachers less than $30K.

A lot of jobs requiring degrees start at 30k or less... its very dependent on where you are. For a teacher starting in New York city, 30k or less is unacceptable.. but do NYC teachers make 30k or less? I very seriously doubt it. The teachers who make less than that live in rural areas where 30k or less is a livable wage. When your rent is $400/month you don't need to make 60k to survive. Again I'm not saying its ideal, but teachers are in no way alone in having a low starting salary for a position requiring a college education... and they probably get benefits that are better than those other positions on top of it.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

I've also got some issue with "doubling up" the wage calculation by using the hour and the kid. I do think teachers are rather badly underpaid in most cases, but this is not effective way to support that point.

Well, exactly. Even if you want to go with the babysitting analogy (and oh how I wish $3/hour was the going rate in my jurisdiction), the marginal child does not double the sitter's price. That is, assume that for one child, the rate is $12/hour. For two, the rate is, call it, $15. For three, maybe $18-20, etc. etc.

I'm not saying that teachers are often underpaid. I happen to believe that they often are, and that the compensation structure for teachers should be changed. However, the analogy is bad for all the reasons stated.

[Blaine]

Depends what you mean by bad.

What I mean is "bad at their chosen profession." You mention a ton of stuff that has a lot more to do with EPA regulations and "the next guy that buys the land" than actual farming to unnecessarily muddy the water. Why? Not sure.

So accept the most sensible definition.

Bad farmers are bad growing food to sell. Bad teachers are bad teaching children.

[Fez]

That's a good point about the location. I need to remind myself that not every costs what Los Angeles costs. I don't think I could find a room for $400 a month without providing sexual favors for my landlord.

And you're right that benefits also need to be factored in, but damn, -$30K seems harsh.

I'm not sure I could find a room for $400/month in DC near a metro station even if I did provide sexual favors. Yet one of my good friends from college is still in Buffalo and is renting an entire house, a nice house, for $200 a month (plus utilities). Its crazy how big variations can be. In some places, $30,000 is a very livable wage.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Teachers have always been the most grossly undervalued profession. What profession contributes more advancement of society from one generation to the next? Teachers. Or at least the teaching profession has the potential much more so than other professions.

Why is that, do you think? Look let's be blunt -- the barriers to entry in the teaching profession are low. Being a teacher does not required advanced, difficult training in academically difficult pursuits. There are lots and lots of articles out there on this, but education majors tend to rank near the bottom in terms of SAT scores compared to most other majors. I just found this really quickly, but there's bunches out there.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/2008/09/sat-scores-of-t.html

Teaching offers a lot of job security, and you don't generally have to work outside in really crappy weather, be on your feet all day doing retain or other jobs, or engage in the types of repetitive motions that tend to cause physical problems over time. It is neither as physically nor intellectually demanding as a lot of other jobs. Even college professors, who do need advanced degrees, make comparatively less than their private sector counterparts with equivalent degrees. Again, why is that? Well, the truth for both teachers and professors is that there tends to be much less of the hard, bottom-line, often unpleasant competition you see in the private workplace. Teachers don't have to constantly impress their bosses with the next sale, or have close supervision by supervisors breathing down their necks every 10 mintues. They have their classroom, and once they get good at teaching that curriculum, they can go into a form of cruise control when compared to higher-paid private workers.

In other words, there are a lot of non-economic benefits, including the pleasure of helping children develop, office working environments versus outdoor, physically-demanding stuff, to working in education versus working in the private sector. The pleasure you get from your job is a pretty important thing. The U.S. Justice Deparment, and particularly the U.S. attorneys offices, generally attract high caliber candidates but pay them comparatively little. And that's because the job itself is just more fun. You're generally dealing with more interesting things, cool public-interest or criminal matters, etc. And that same thing applies to teaching kids versus picking up garbage.

I'm not trying to denigrate all teachers here by implying that they are stupid and don't work at their jobs. There are some incredible teachers who routinely go above and beyond the call by constantly expanding themselves, trying to be creative, etc. But you don't have to be like that to get a teaching job, or to keep one. And because teachers don't have to be high quality, and don't have to work hard to keep their jobs, those jobs can be filled by a lot of folks who just, well, don't have to be all that good. And so because of those comparatively low barriers to entry, excellent job security compared to private employment, better benefits, etc., the profession attracts a lot of interest from folks who don't have the ambition to go into the private economy. And like any supply/demand situation, when you have so many people wanting those jobs (huge oversupply in my area, at least), you just don't have to pay them that well.

[S John]

That's a good point about the location. I need to remind myself that not every costs what Los Angeles costs. I don't think I could find a room for $400 a month without providing sexual favors for my landlord.

And you're right that benefits also need to be factored in, but damn, -$30K seems harsh.

My very first job out of college started me at 35k/yr and that company was based in Los Angeles. Most of my coworkers were making that much and living in the LA area. Some cheap ass insurance was our only real benefit. Fortunately for me, my job was to do field work for them, so I never had to work in the actual office and was able to continue to live in a pretty rural part of SW Virginia much more cheaply. To be fair, I'll admit that during the time that I worked for them I got per diem enough to cover my food when I was in the field - so I didn't have food expenses for 80% of the year - but at the end of 1 year working for them I had 10,000 in my savings account (which I subsequently pissed away after moving to DC :P ). I also suspect that my first job in the DC area, though a pretty good raise from the first job, was actually less than what teachers in the area make. Still, I survived, and so can they.

My point is that 30k does seem harsh, but when there are other factors working in your favor it is not as bad as it seems. Nor are teachers the only ones who get the salary shaft coming out of college. They're just some of the most vocal about it.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

http://www.nea.org/home/37872.htm

National average teacher salary = $54,319

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1987406

The Social Security Administration determines a national average wage index to determine a person's retirement benefits. The latest such figure as of March 2010 is the wage index for 2008, which is $41,334.97.

Other government entities also calculate a national average salary, which may differ because they are based on different criteria. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau shows a median household income of $52,029 for 2008.

Teachers on average make either far more or slightly more than the national average salary, and receive much better benefits. I don't get the whole "teachers are underpaid" thing.