Some truths about teachers' salaries

[proud2BlibKansan]

After 30 years, I make a decent salary. But I have never made as much as my peers I have been friends with since college. We all graduated together, they went into the business world, I became a teacher. They found jobs almost immediately after graduating, and I had to sub for two years before getting a job that paid $7,000 a year. My closest friend from college was earning $20,000 a year by then working for a telecommunications company. Another friend had to go on bed rest when she was pregnant and was still paid half her salary while she was off work. When she had her baby, she was able to return to work where day care was provided by her company - for free. My husband's roommate from college was moving up in the banking business and had started on his MBA, paid in full by his employer, by the time I began my first teaching job. They bought houses before my husband and I did. They still drive nicer cars. So while I make more money than many workers without college degrees, I have never made as much as my peers who have college degrees.

Teachers' insurance benefits suck. The only good thing about our benefit package is that we have one. With so many people in this country lacking health insurance, I am extremely grateful to have it. But it is not a cadillac plan. It is also incredibly expensive. Teachers in my district who buy family coverage pay over half of their take home pay every month for health insurance. And the co-pays for office visits, prescriptions and hospitalizations go up every year. When my children were younger and on my plan, my neighbor who worked for a pharmaceutical company had exactly the same plan as we did. She paid $40 a month for her family, I paid $150 a month. She was a high school dropout who had a GED and worked on the assembly line. And she brought home more money than I did, because her health insurance was so much cheaper than mine.

When my kids were in elementary school, they qualified for reduced lunch. That's how low my salary was.

Beginning teachers today often have student loan payments that are higher than any mortgage payment I have ever made. I work with a second year teacher this year who has loan payments that equal half of her monthly take home pay.

School districts rarely help teachers pay for graduate classes. Most of my friends and family members who work in private business and have advanced degrees had their tuition paid by their employer. I worked two part time jobs to save the money to pay for my graduate degree.

For many years one benefit from teaching was if you stayed on the job long enough, you made fairly decent money. And you had job security. I applied for a car loan one time and the bank officer told me they almost always qualify teachers on the spot without an extensive credit check because of their job security. I don't know if that's still true though. In this economic climate, I doubt it. At any rate, with this drive to force the more senior (more expensive) teachers off the job, the security of a teaching position is gone.

Normally I don't complain about what I make. I made a choice and I love my job. I knew going in it wouldn't make me rich. I also have known all along that I am free to quit and find a different job that has a higher salary. That's not as realistic today, but for many years, it was. I am willing to work for the salary I earn and I love the kids enough that I don't worry about the salary. But I am appalled by the new meme that teachers are overpaid. It's way below the belt and it needs to stop.

The sign I posted above really struck a chord with me because teachers really do seem to love Nissans. There are quite a few in the parking lot at my school and I'm willing to bet more than one is a 93.

[flvegan]

1. Why do teecherz need to have 93 Nissan Sentras!!?? 93 cars means their payed to much!

Look at me pretending to be a dumb Freeper.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. It's all the unions' fault

Those union thugs are greedy extortionists.

[Tatiana]

3. I can't lie, I drove my '95 Nissan Sentra for over 200,000 miles.

It was great on gas, too.

Yeah, I haven't worked long enough to be up there on the salary schedule. I don't know that I ever will. It gets harder and harder every year to go back to a job where you are greeted each year with more testing, more test prep, more out of pocket supply expenses, and less time to actually teach the things that will help students achieve later on in college and in life.

I love my kids. I hate when I hear Arne Duncan go on about the wonders of a "value added" system where teachers will be rated/ranked, in part, based on student test scores. Most of my peers who wanted to be teachers made sure to apply for plum, well-paying positions in the suburban districts like Niles, Naperville, and Wilmette -- where innovation is valued and the median household income is at least 6 figures.

[glinda]

4. Husband is a retired teacher. He paid a lot for benefits and after he

retired, paid through the nose. He worked seven days a week and into the night when he was teaching. He was an emotional wreck fending off people who wanted his job for political purposes and if not for the Unions, would possibly have lost his job for no reason other than greed and personal agenda.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Our retirees pay $600 a month for health insurance

[glinda]

9. We paid 1250/mo for two years until he could get on medicare. Now his rates are up again and

they just raised my BCBS again nearly $100/mo.

[madinmaryland]

5. Well, I agree with you on most of your comments. One point, though, I do see some

differences

Maybe it is the school system my wife is in, but the school pays about 90% of the premium for our insurance. My private company was paying only about 80% for the same insurance. I am impressed and supportive of the benefits paid to our teachers AND staff here. What her health insurance costs is about $250 a month for ten months of the year. This is for a family.

:hi:

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Wow. None of the districts around here have that kind of benefit package.

You are very lucky. :hi:

[madinmaryland]

11. I think it is an east coast/mid-atlantic thing.

We do respect teachers here, though there are some teabaggers that bitch, but they are pretty much shut down.

My brother was a teacher in West Ohio and Indiana a few years ago, and he got paid crap. After leaving to go into the lawn service business (on his own), he would subsidize his pay with substitute teaching which was barely above minimum wage. I tried to talk him into moving east, but it didn't work.

Coming from a family of public school teachers and college teachers, I have learned the importance of our educational system, and one thing you don't hear much of here --> tenure.

I have been looking through genealogy in Pennsylvania and the way they "treated" teachers in the 1800's seems to be the way some of the states in the country are going. Fucking scary.

[etherealtruth]

8. Clearly it depends where you live

In my home state of Michigan teacher salaries are very competitive and at the same level or higher than other comparably educated professionals. The complaints here about remuneration tended to rankle me until I looked into the teacher salaries in other regions. The link below lists average state by state salary averages. The salary comfort index for teachers in Michigan is 4 (compared to Hawaii @ 50). Illinois, Georgia, Delaware and Michigan appear to be states that compensate teachers well. Hawaii, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine do not appear to place much importance on the people that educate their children.

http://teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state

The stats in the table at the link are state wide averages .... the teacher salaries in Metro Detroit are often higher.

Its fairly obvious that a strong teachers union in Michigan (coupled with historically strong unions throughout southeast Michigan) has assured Michigan teachers a fairly just pay scale.

The down side of this is that our universities graduate far more prospective teachers than we have jobs for (our state is aging and student enrollment, especially in inner cities like Detroit, have dropped precipitously)

[beac]

10. My good friend had an MA, taught upper-level courses (AP. Honors, etc.) in

a high school in an affluent county. She was a single mom and if she had still been there when her own child was ready for public school, he would have qualified for the free breakfast program based on her income level... i.e. it was VERY LOW.

She was a gifted teacher who gave a lot of herself and spent her own money on supplies when the school couldn't or wouldn't pay for them. Based on the cards and letters she got from students, I know she was the kind of teacher that you remember your whole life.

But the low pay and long hours (do people REALLY believe that a teacher's day ends at 3pm??? It's one of the FEW jobs I can think of with HOMEWORK-- grading other people's homework-- and making/grading tests, and making lesson plans and writing students evaluations and rec letters and on and on) burned her out. And she's only one of several former teachers I know with the same story.

The general lack of appreciation of educators in this country is an utter disgrace.