Are teachers overpaid?

Wow, Froggy . . . I don't know what kind of school you were in, but most teachers, including myself, work their asses off day in and day out. I arrive at school at 7:30 every morning and often stay until 5 or later. I often give up my lunch hours to help children do their work or to coach. I spend many weekends during the school year planning, marking, and coaching extra curricular courses. I spend evenings marking, planning, and doing professional reading. I only show videos when they are related to the curriculum, not because I want to avoid teaching. I have to teach ALL the students I get . . . the good, the bad, and the ugly. This means that I may have to do several different tailored lesson plans to suit students with varying needs. I have also spend several summers taking upgrading courses so that I can do my job better.

So, anyone dare to put their money where their mouths are? Walk in my shoes for a day, just one day,or a week if you're brave . . . be the teacher, the social worker, the nurse, the drill sargeant, the coach, the cheerleader, and a human being all at the same time . . . and then let's see how you do. It's easy to be an armchair critic when you only get a small picture of what a teacher actually does.

Oh, and your spelling and grammar aren't all that bad, considering that you think only math and science should be required . . . and perhaps you should thank a teacher, or maybe all of your teachers, that you can communicate your thoughts so articulately. Or, perhaps you taught yourself?

Are you insane? Teachers are the most OVERPAID career that requires a 4 year degree ! In Pennsylvania, public school teachers are being paid $65K-$85K, while other people requiring a 4 year degree are getting $35K-$45K. And they have to work all year. If you calculate that 3/4 year that teachers work it comes to $86K-$113K per year of work. I recently had the oportunity to install a intercom system in a local school district and i observed how things are now. Teachers are constantly bitching for new schools, it's because they are making classrooms tiny , for 12-14 students. Once they get a school with tiny classrooms they know they won't have to ever teach a larger class. Also i noticed how the teachers are fighting over the A/V equiptment so they can run a videotape instead of teaching a class. They all have their teachers assistants to correct homework papers and tests. They always want new computers but do not teach anything about computers, but just have the kids play on the internet. Don't forget the worthless junk public schools have like gym, music and art class. Having these will never get you a job. History and geography will not get you a job either. All school should be is math and science. And most of the math should be knowing the difference between progressive and regressive taxation. Then by the time a student graduates he will know that public school teachers are the DREGS of america, the main cause of homelessness ! When i went in the NAVY, our classes were a videotape of someone teaching that particular class. There were no live teachers. Teaching the same presentation over and over is redundant. In the real world, robots are taking the redundant jobs. School teachers are the same as a court stenographer, something the government keeps even when they know that a cheap cassette recorder will do a better job and cheaper. Public school teachers are a form of government corruption in order to keep a lot of jobs. A person can learn more at HOME on a computer. We don't live in the stone age anymore ! Also don't forget about states having representatives to congress or even the governor. The government was created in a day when any kind of communication was unheard of. But today we have cell phones and the internet, the people can vote on all issues and not one person voting their opinion for thousands of people. Keeping more government jobs ! Whenever someone says they're afraid that someone will bring a gun to school and kill their kid, i say to them, why don't you home school. I swear that everyone comes back with the same answer, "i got to work, i can't afford to pay some to watch my kids". That proves why public school still exists today. It's FREE DAY CARE for people with kids.

Teacher for 24 years. Also a business owner / employer. Teachers / carpenters / anyone who complains about pay should get new jobs. By the same token, those who complain about teacher pay...come on in. Get your degree and give it a try. Then tell me what you think.

Teachers want new schools? No way. I've been through several builds. Nothing hurts our pay more. Community assumes the school is for you...not for the next generation of kids.. and small classes hurt our pay the most. Teachers wanting new schools and smaller class sizes are thinking of kids at a sacrifice in pay.

Performance pay? really?? Do the math. In our building (middle school) we have 62 certified teaching staff members. A full-time evaluator could spend a total of 3 days per person. Is that enough to evaluate a job as complex as teaching. "Pay for student performance" ? Really? Think about this. We have 178 class days in our school year. at 45 min per period, I see students of every ability level you can imagine. for a total of 134 hours a year. Oops... minus the days for the bullying retreat demanded by our community and state/ the day for the class field trip / minus class time for vision and hearing screening / flu shots / kids taking vacations / school pictures / end of quarter celebrations planned by administration. If I am paid bsaed on student performance, can parents still take kids on that week- long deer hunting trips / Disney vacation and hold me accountable? Am I accountable for the new girl who speaks only Cantonese Chinese and is in my 4th hour class which also has 9 special education students. I understand that it is easy to say that teachers should be evaluated on student performance. All other businesses are performance based.. Please remember, teachers work in an institution which is not of our creating. The system is NOT a teacher system. It is political. Community created. State government mandates control credits / classes / funding / programs. The popular reply to teachers is "no excuses" . I run a business myself. But I set up the workday, buy needed supplies, set employee rules, plan the advertising, make sales calls, and service accounts in a system of my creation...not of political creation . I control all the parameters which determine success or failure. In my business I am truly accountable for performance. Please consider how applicable a business model is to education before forming a hasty opinion or latching on to the popular wave of blaming the "teachers union / tenure" for shortcomings in education. In my opinion, as teacher and business owner. A business model is damaging for education. One of the co-authors of No Child Left Behind law has a book out now detailing the reasons why she has also come to that opinion.

RE: accountability. Our State's means of school accountability is a yearly test in Math / Sci / reading. In 2 years we will add social studies. This is a NO STAKES test for students. It does not apply to their grades or to graduation. Teachers did not come up with this system, but we live with it. ( BTW test days for all three tests come out of our instructional time too. )

Lets consider performance pay. Currently, the teachers at our grade-level reserve most homework time for Math. However, if my pay is determined by student performance, you better believe that I want my share of the homework time and will push kids hard. ( along with their SIX OTHER TEACHERS. I wonder how parents will react to that kind of pressure on their children? Also, if I happen to work with a lower performing population of kids and make improvements, but my kids do not score as well as another teachers kids....?? If I am a better teacher and am assigned a tougher group?....? Excuses?? walk a mile as a teacher and then tell me. In my business , I can, and do increase my employees pay if they generate more revenue. Performance pay for teachers is a farce on that level too because teachers have NO ABILITY to increase revenue in the way a business does. If I get paid more it is because someone else is paid less. Pay comes from the same limited pot. ( that's why small class sizes are not our friend in terms of pay ) Again, who will determine a teachers effectiveness? Our district has 6 elementary schools, a high school, area learning center. etc... There are well over 200 teachers. How many evaluators will there be for the 178 class days? Oh, I forgot, lets just test the kids and assign pay that way. Do you want your childrens scores determining the pay of their teachers? Walk a mile in the students shoes, the parents shoes, the teachers shoes.... Also, do you want your administrators focused on learning? ... or on the 200 plus separate negotiations per year, or per biennium which performance pay will demand a small rural district. That doesn't count the cooks / custodians / bus drivers / paraprofessionals / office secretaries / administrators who make up more than 40% of our district workforce.

RE: workday: I and most teachers put in work which goes far beyond a "union work-day". In fact, one of the ways teachers send that message during negotiation is called "work to rule" where we only perform duties specifically contracted for and keep only required hours. Schools have a hard time functioning when teachers work to rule.

There is a need for teachers to lead more in education. There is a need to radically change the system in some ways. It is frustrating to teach in a system which is not of our making, and to routinely get both credit that we don't deserve, and lately blame which we also don't deserve. Want to test your school's effectiveness? Go and observe students. Find the students who have been taught a good work ethic. Find the students who have been taught respect. Find the students with parents who follow through. Follow them to see if they succeed. If you find any numbers of them who are not learning, not able to succeed... then judge. My strong feeling ( in my experience ) is that you will not find ANY such students. Do we work hard for those other students? Harder than most can imagine. Sacrificially hard is the norm. can we always fix what the family teaching has failed to provide? NO. Is that an Excuse? Not at all.

wanted to add to the discussion and give folks some things to consider. Last thing. Next time you see a comparison of US students to foreign students. Dig deeper into school year, population being tested, number of subjects taught at school (phy ed? music? ) etc... you will sometimes find that the comparison is far from apple to apple.

Thanks!

No, in fact they are underpaid, especially in the UK where they have to deal with disgustingly overcrowded classes, physical and mental abuse and insufficient teaching facilities.

I would say that the work for pay part falls rather low. Many are excellent yet there are the lazy ones who really should never recieve a pay

Most of them are. The good ones may not be but being a good teacher is dangerous. The other teachers will resent you and do all they can to sabotage you and your career because they view you as a threat to them.

The only real talent most teachers have is that of sucking any and all interest out of perfectly good subjects and making the kids hate school and learning.

We are enjoying the fruits of the public school system right now in our economy.

No.

I don't think so. They are probably more underpaid than overpaid.

Underpaid but too tied into tenure.

Froggy, I agree COMPLETELY with your post about teachers!! They most certainly are overpaid and underworked! It's time that these lazy bums realize what it's like to do a real day's work! Good for you for pointing it out!

I am 19 and I plan to be a teacher in the future but i through my experiences i don't believe they are overpaid. Maybe certain teachers take advantage of their job and don't teach but in the end those are your kids that are suffering. I wouldn't generalize that all teachers are lazy and don't deserve anything throughout my whole school experience there were probably only 3-4 bad teachers. Also When it comes to staying after school many do because they have to mark test, assignments and prepare for next teaching day, if they don't stay at school they are definitely working at home. Also the amount of work a teacher puts in differs depending on grade for example elementary school teachers teach all subjects except for music and gym in some cases. They have to deal with 28-30 children, never have i ever been a class with 14 kids. High school teachers on the other hand don't have as much work to do because ones a lesson is plan it can be passed down the years, still its hard because sometimes certain children need more help than others and they have to change their focus. All teachers don't get a guaranteed lunch break if a child needs help a teacher has to give up his or her lunch break and you can probably guess that more than one child asks for help. I think you are basing your knowledge of teaching on your wife and maybe she is just mediocre because most teachers who put their whole in teaching are amazing and usually don't have as much free time as you think.

Been a teacher for 13 years. The GOOD teachers are NOT. The teachers that do the bare minimum to get by - YES - SEVERELY! I've been one of both.........

Teachers have the easiest job on the planet IF THEY CHOOSE FOR IT TO BE! Teaching is what you make of it.

I don't stand by and listen to my colleague complain about all the Extras they do and not get paid for - because all those extras are by CHOICE! The union contracts lay out the minimum - 7 hour days, paid lunches, planning times, 196 contract days a year........

The same salary (let's say average of 40,000) given to a receptionist who works from 8-5 and an average of 235 days a year. Yes, teachers are overpaid.......

OH yeah, not to mention the cheap, if not free health benefits (even though they suck - we have them, others don't) and retirement plans that adds a significant amount to our salaries!

To first note, I am not a teacher, but have friends who are teachers.

Teachers are way underpaid. The hours they put in is not calculated into their annual salary. They have so many tasks beyond just working the normal 8 hours that are not counted in their salary. They are also forced to parent kids along with teach them since many parents often fail to do so themselves. If all they had to do was worry about actually teaching students, I'm sure we would hear a lot less complaining about being underpaid.

The major problem that we are beginning to see with overcompensating teachers is that the good ones are smart enough to realize they aren't being paid enough and leave. They will find jobs that pay similarly or higher and only have to work 8 hours a day. What's left is a group of teachers that don't care or aren't qualified enough to be teaching our kids. Is this the future you want? To have a group of individuals that don't care about the quality of education they are providing to our kids?

This is a type of job that you don't want the employees to only put in the minimum effort to get paid. If we began to pay teachers more, we would get more people WANTING to be teachers a not just doing it for a job. Only the best would be hired and our kids would get a much high quality of education. I can't believe there are people here who want to skimp on making sure that our kids are properly educated.

While they aren't paid much yearly, and may in fact be under-appreciated, I think this persistent claim of being underpaid needs to be put in perspective. In my opinion, it stems for a feeling of entitlement, which is reflected by their continued use of unions and collective bargaining for wages. Without the unions, better teachers could be paid their market value, and worse teachers could be either paid less or simply dismissed.

The following refers to teachers as a group, not individual teachers. They are in fact over-paid, even based on the new numbers your mentioned, emjay. 6.5 hours a day, 180 days a year, do the math. You don't get to count out-of-class preparation or lunch break, people don't get paid for that in other fields either. At $43k per year, that's $37/hour. At $57k, it's $49 an hour. What other job, bar none, pays like that with only a four year degree?

I happen to be in the construction and engineering department at my university, and graduates are averaging 45k to 65k per year. Want to know why? Because they work 10 hours a day, 220 days a year. That's $20 to $30 per hour. Not only that, I happen to be in an industry where liability is a serious issue. If I make a mistake at any point, a past or current client, or even someone I've never worked with could sue me for all I'm worth. Not so with teaching, how often are individual teachers successfully sued for screwing up kid's educations? Not only that, it's almost impossible for a teacher in the public school system to lose his job. The high pay of teachers ignores the principle of risk and reward.

I disagree with parts of Froggys post, such as inaccurate "facts" or the categorization of music, art, history, and geography as "crap". This does in fact show total ignorance on his part. Music is highly beneficial in development of the mind, and increases performance in math and science. The same is true for art. History? Surely a self-proclaimed Navy vet would know the value of not repeating the mistakes of civilizations past. And geography? Are you kidding me? How could we have diplomatic relations with a country of which we don't even know the location?! Not only that, but all of the above topics are highly beneficial for people seeking higher degrees such as law or medicine, or seeking public office. Learning and understanding these topics often sets applicants for law/medical school apart from the crowd, because it shows self-discipline and a well-rounded education.

So in summary, Froggy may be a moron, but in this instance he is right. Teachers as a group are overpaid. If they claim to be worth more than they are paid, they should market themselves in the private sector and negotiate their own wages like any other professional. Or use all their spare time effectively. For instance, I've known teachers who understood they had a part-time job, and therefore plowed snow in the winter, mowed lawns in the summer, and delivered papers every morning. Guess what? They always had plenty of money to spare, and didn't complain about being underpaid.

when they talk about EXTRA activities and Extra classes they are getting paid EXTRA for that also.The women teachers are lushes,especialy the principal at my daughters school.i live in southern california and this school is 80% spanish speakers.Guess how much EXTRA pay they get for that.And why in the #$%& can two children in the same city go to two different schools and recieve different quality education?THAT says it all.

Baby sitter? Hm...let's see: that's 500 a week per child (these are baby sitters with a bachelor's, a post bach {the credential}, more often than not a master's, and at least 45 more credits to constantly update their skills) with 100 extra for each hour over. Forget the overage; let's figure out just the 20: 500 x 20 = 10000 a week. Teacher or baby sitter?

YES!!!!! It makes me mad especially since they are not doing a good job! I know of a teacher who is now getting a pension of $65K a year and she contributed very little. She's getting more in retirement than I make working 40 plus hours a week without summers off and nothing left of my 401K.

I'm with Froggy, so sick of hearing about how teachers are underpaid. I have an aunt and uncle (both of them are teachers). They have a 3-story house that sits next to a nature preserve, two cars, plasma tvs, five or six computers AND a mountain house! Yet they're ALWAYS bitching about not getting paid enough. Excuse me, if you don't think you get paid enough, maybe you should've chosen a different proffession. And guess what, most jobs are difficult, stop acting like it's friggin' brain surgery. Shouldn't teaching be about teaching? Not about being wealthy? I would kill to have a job where I didn't have to work weekends and holidays. It'd be nice to have summers off, winter break, spring break, fall break. Damn, teachers got it made.

Well first of all, "Froggy" is clearly an ignorant fool. Teachers shouldn't teach geography? They shouldn't teach history of any sort? No English classes so that kids can learn to write and be articulate? Doesn't that get you a job too? HAHA! This guy clearly has NO education.

I realized that "Froggy" was a moron when I checked the other subjects that he posted comments on:

Froggy answered the question Who was your favorite of " The Three Stooges" on 04/26/10 at 9:55 pm.

Froggy answered the question which celebrity has the best breasts? on 04/26/10 at 9:51 pm.

Froggy answered the question Why do nice guys finish last whether it's getting dates with beautiful girls or anything else in life? on 04/16/10 at 8:29 pm.

There you go ladies and gentlemen! That's what this guy is posting about. So... If anyone agreed with him or even thought that they should agree with him... He's a moron.

Oh... By the way "Froggy" the average salary of a public school teacher in Pennsylvania is NOT $65K - $85K a year. It's $43K - $57K, and that is a FACT. Not some number you pulled out of thin air.