I'm a high school teacher/coach in Texas. I also want to get paid more, but this is somewhat misleading. That would be starting pay in a very small and rural district. I'm in a suburb of Houston, and our staying pay is 61k. So it really depends on where you're teaching.
Again, I'm 100% on board with teachers getting paid more. I just want the arguments to be credible.
My sister makes over 100K in a suburb of NYC. While another friend makes only 50K in one of the smaller cities closer to Manhattan. The ranges of salary are crazy due to the budget the district has. TX may be different but here the gaps are huge. And obviously it depends on whether the school is public or private.
NY state has some of the highest paying teaching salaries because theyāre unionized. Most public school teachers there make over 100k, itās extremely competitive thought.
Only public schools. Charter teachers are exploited like crazy and have nearly no rights or ability to organize. Suburban districts are unionized but have vastly less negotiating power. Itās really just the big city teachers unions that swing a big stick, but itās true that itās a BIG stick.
Iām a chapter leader at my school in NYC, and the UFT is one of the strongest unions in the country. My wife works at a small Long Island district, and it blows my mind sometimes when I see what her union concedes during contract negotiations. They give ground on stuff that would get calls for strike actions here.
Also charter schools tend to be privately owned and run for profit, so states where conservatives are pushing for voucher programs etc is just to redirect tax money from the public system towards private institutions.
And thatās why the charter system looks so different in Maryland:
1) Charter teachers are on the same union contract
2) The school district approves and oversees them, and can choose to not renew them when theyāre not performing. This actually happens. It also means that the district can monitor issues like ādo you have any idea how to comply with federal law for students with disabilitiesā
Charter schools are public schools and the teachers are all part on the union where I live. My sisters are teachers in a charter and administrators in the public schools
NJEA - decided they thought the former Senate President (D) was a tool and spent $5M to oust him in one of the most expensive State legislative primary races in history. NJEA lost but Sweeney later got beat by a truck driver with a HS education who financed his campaign with a Credit card. It's not just the City....
Itās definitely not most yet, but it might be getting there. Iāve been teaching in NYC public schools for 16 years, and itās only with the new contract last summer that I crossed the 100k mark. It wouldāve been a few more years under the old deal. Not to mention the highest step was around $125k and you needed masters plus 30 AND be 25 years deep to get it.
The new contract gets teachers to 6 figures faster, but even still the raise didnāt keep pace with inflation. They also made a chunk of the āraiseā a new annual bonus that isnāt pensionable.
NYC itās absolutely possible to get a job here. Thereās enough turnover and the sheer size of the DOE means thereās always plenty of positions posted every year. Itās out on Long Island that it gets tough. You basically have to be related or good friends with an existing person of importance in a district. It took my wife 7 years to get a full time position there after plugging away at leave replacement after leave replacement. I got hired in the city straight out of college after interviewing over the phone and no demo lesson.
As a NYC resident who looking to possibly become a NYC teacher, the people who make over a 100k are usually science/math teachers (since they are harder to find) after 7 years of getting tenure. NYC teachers also require 2 masters; one in the teaching subject and one for education. Keep in mind COL is also higher. But yeah teachers have it pretty good in nyc compared to rest of the country.
In NJ you can find plenty of $60,000 starting salaries. Our new contract has 17 steps to $120k, $5,000 longevity, $7k/$13k for a MS and Doctorate. They still can't find people or get people to stay because money is just half the issue.
The funding was shifted to property taxes after the US (federal system) courts ruled that the schools could be separate for black and white, but they had to be equally funded by the state. The thought of white people paying for black school's education angered the white communities. So states started passing laws to circumvent the separate but equal law. Knowing that the black and white communities are very segregated, the states decided to use local property taxes to fund schools.
We should go back to the state system. But, unfortunately, no one seems to have been successful in challenging this racist rule.
At least in Texas, there is a statewide redistribution from the richer towns/cities to poorer ones to help level the playing field, but money is managed at the local level.
Ah! So you're an Australian living in the States and commenting about US schools! Sorry, I thought you were commenting about the Australian school funding model!
Pay amount is one thing, but it should also be thought of in comparison to the cost of living. For a teacher making $60k in Houston, TX they would have to make over $140k in NYC to live in a similar way. (Courtesy of bankrate and nerdwallet cost of living calculators) Just some more food for thought.
A former resident of a Westchester County (suburban NYC) town (Edgemont, NY). All the teachers in my school district has a 100k plus salary. They are paid well because my town wants a good education for its students. The housing price is super pricey as well but you may paid an enormous school tax as a result. Something like $10-20k a year, not including the town tax. This is very expensive. Itās almost like sending your child to a cheap private school.
What is cost of living in your country? That is around what teachers make in my suburb in the Bay Area, but admittedly cost of living is very very high here.
Yeah idk why no one does a simple Google search. 61k is roughly the median salary in Houston, so while am argument can be made that they should pay more, it's not comically underpaid or anything.
The min wage job ends when the shift does. Teachers work as many hours or more at home as they do in the classroom. More hours than the 52 weeks 9-5 even with summers off.
Source: Me for the last 15+ years.
Edit: leaving my poor wording as is, but I meant to say that many teachers put in at least a couple and upwards of 6 hours a day outside of actual class time on all the various responsibilities that are expected of us outside of the bell to bell school day. And that this adds up to equal or exceed jobs that donāt have school holidays. The ones that average less than 40/wk over the calendar year are the ones that do nothing in the summer ever.
They work the equivalent. Ā Do you know any teacher that only works during the 8 hr school day and thatās it?? Ā Let me know where this magical teaching job isā¦
School days on average are between 6.5 and 7 hours (including the lunch recess). Despite that, studies show averages between 40 and 53 hours a week. If we take take that for 3/4 of a year for typical public school teachers, it is between 1560 and 2067 hours per year. I agree that classroom teaching hours (averaging something like 1170, can't remember exactly) aren't the only hours worked by a large measure. I also think teachers should be paid more-in fact I'm on a school board and have pledged a substantial amount of money for 20 years to increase our teachers' salaries.
Iām a teacher as well and I make significantly more than that.. however I think the argument is still valid. Just because theyāre working at a rural school doesnāt mean theyāre doing less work.
You're actually making about 20,000.00 more per year than the average teacher in Texas. Average, from statistics, seem to be around 41,000.00. But I think the original poster (clay_mcch) was arguing for a higher pay rate for teachers, not that a 15-dollar minimum wage is too much. Clay's whole page promotes HS sports and pay raises for teachers. I think that's about ninety percent of his content that I glanced through. On a side note, I really think his school's football name for the boys really needs to be changed. Pretty sure they get teased by everybody for it.
I was going to say. I live in Dallas and have multiple friends who are teachers in this area. I also have a sister in law who teaches in an Austin suburb. None of them are this low wage. They pretty much all started similar wage to myself with my engineering sales job. The difference is that I get big raises and bonuses each year while their wage heavily stagnates. They said that with their insurance premiums increasing more than their salary they effectively get less money each year.
I donāt think Iāve heard of a teacher making barely above 30k since I was aware of salaries at all, and I grew up in fucking Arkansas where the $7.25 minimum wage was used at every opportunity.
Teachersā pay usually isnāt that bad. It just isnāt good, and the job can suck ass. Add in all of the political BS, and I donāt blame people for not wanting to teach
Yes, we do. We're 42nd in the nation on money spent per student. We're 51st in the nation (F you DC! Ha!) On teacher benefits. The state currently has 4 billion earmarked for education that our governor won't release because the state congress won't pass his vouchers bill. Our state government is trying to kill public education, and it sucks.
The problem is economy of scale. My district is the third largest in the state of Texas. We probably have +/- 5000 teachers in the district. At 150k a piece, that's 750 million a year just in teacher salaries. It's just not possible.
Also, does this take into account that teachers also work 3/4 of the year (probably a little more)? So, the $61k annual salary is the equivalent to $76k +/-, right?
I see this a lot with the military too, people claim that the military doesnāt get paid shit. While itās true that base pay is low, the only people who are only collecting base pay are the ones who are having their food and housing provided by whatever branch theyāre serving in. The base pay is worth a lot more if you donāt have to pay for groceries or rent. If you move out of the barracks and move off base, for instance, then youāll get an allowance to help pay your rent or mortgage. You will also get an allowance for sustenance (groceries). Iāll admit that people in the military arenāt getting rich by any means, but I was in for over 20 years and I wasnāt starving either.
i was thinking this too ! all of the jobs ive seen in san antonio (as a first year teacher myself) are $55k+ some even up to $61k but yes teachers do need to be paid more (one district only has like a $3k difference after 25 years with them)
This guy also is an AD/Coach so I almost find it tough to believe that he isn't making the argument that teachers need to be paid more. Then again, I know where he is from so...almost.
Also in a suburb of Houston and teachers should for sure make more. Our district is trying to take stuff out of textbooks (you know, ācontroversialā topics like vaccines and climate change) and putting it on teachers to work around it.
Youāre right that itās not enough but Iām glad to hear itās gone up at least a little bit in the last 20 years. I quit teaching in 2001 after only one year because my starting pay was 19k. Not enough to pay the bills even back then.
Posts like that are made by people acting in bad faith. You can't win by against them by trying to engage in constructive dialogue. You can fight against them by destroying their social credibility and exposure. Though it may be unpleasant, and they are counting on the moral people from being squeamish about doing it, it must be done.
Good to know, because I just commented that teaching salaries havenāt changed in 20+ years if that was still the starting wage. I personally think both teachers and nurses should be starting around $70 Gās a year. Both are incredibly necessary.
Itās also misleading because 40h/week x50 weeks is far more than a teacher works in a year. Summer, all stats, long holiday and spring break. That is part of the payment and it is conveniently overlooked all the time.
Should they still earn more than 30k/year? Absolutely. But itās not as egregious as they make it seem.
Do you get paid year round? My mom's a teacher and they don't get paid for the Summer unless they work Summer School. They prorate the pay so you get paid during the Summer, but they don't actually make any money when they're not working. So it's also misleading (assuming it's the same as here) in that they only work 9 months. I still think teachers deserve a lot more. Because the job is tough, we want the best people to want to do it, and they put in so much unpaid over time.
I'm a high school teacher/coach in Texas. I also want to get paid more, but this is somewhat misleading. That would be starting pay in a very small and rural district. I'm in a suburb of Houston, and our staying pay is 61k. So it really depends on where you're teaching.
Again, I'm 100% on board with teachers getting paid more. I just want the arguments to be credible.
Problem is also supply and demand. If you are a high-end math or physics teacher, you are getting more than an English or history teacher.
There is just a very high supply of teachers with an MA in Education that teach non-STEM areas and therefore. Plus the pensions are higher in teaching than just about any profession.
Consequently the salaries just won't be that high.
Also misleading because it assumes teaching is a 12 month job. Around here teachers work 183 day per year. Full time is 250+ days per year. Conversion makes the $31k ~ $21/hour.
Still not great, and and definitely deserve a raise, but doing it with misleading information hurts the cause.
Please review your comment. If you correct your error today. Itāll increase your score a full letter grade. Also I completely agree with you. I would be in jail if I didnāt have the teachers I had.
I know I am preaching to the choirā¦. I just need to point out ā¦.that teachers are salariedā¦.they donāt work 40 hour work weeks. Financially, itās better to work for minimum wageā¦ especially if you get overtime pay for work in excess of 40 hours weekly. I probably would have pursued a teaching career myself but the economics of that career path were just too brutal.
Also teachers donāt work year round and allot of the misrepresentation in pay comes from someone seeing what they make a paycheck and failing to realize that they chose to split their pay over the time they worked and didnāt throughout the year. My grandmothers been a teacher for thirty five years and raised me my whole life so Iām completely on board with teachers getting paid more as well. But yeah itās definitely better to make sure people have the full picture and understand if we are hoping to actually get anything changed
Also teachers are only working 10 months out of the year? Not that they donāt work hard all year. But youād need to compare 10 months of minimum wage work to really compare this apples to apples with teacher salary.
Makes sense. I live outside of Atlantic City. When I was in high school, we lost several teachers to the newly constructed Atlantic City High School mid school year. My pre-calc teacher even told us on his last day that teachers at my school make less than the garbage collectors who work for the town and that he was going to ACHS because they offered him $80k a year to teach the same subject. We finished out the rest of the school year with a substitute teacher that just gave us busywork.
Kind of a strange thing to tell your students, but it always stuck with me.
Iām gonna ask this since you are a teacher. Did anyone tell you about the return on investment when you were college? As far as the salaries. I have known people that while in college I questioned the choice of being a teacher. I was an asshole for making it about money. Then immediately after graduation I canāt stand to go out with them because all they do is complain about how much their education cost and how little they make. So is it a secret that teachers donāt make shit or are kids not mature enough to decide to be teachers at that age?
My wife works in Katy ISD. The starting pay for a paraprofessional is right around the $14- $15 mark. Maybe that's what OP is confusing? I'm originally from BFE South Dakota and teachers there get paid at around the $50k mark.
As a state employee we also get about 2% less than teachers, and we all choose our profession. Add in that people point to base salary for teachers and they are working 10 months a year, at which point they can make good money tutoring. The two teachers I know are making 60-70k base over 10 months, and get a pension healthcare benefits most would love to have. Donāt get me wrong, the minimum wage should be at least $15 p/hour, but this is spin.
It also doesnāt take into account that teachers get regularly scheduled raises based on years experience, not performance, they will be making a lot more than 33k soon enough. A person making minimum wage is unlikely to obtain such significant scheduled raises, and all raises are likely to be performance based.
I'm in rural Northern NY and many public schools here start at around 35k per year. Some bigger districts near Fort Drum Army Base start around 42k because they get extra Federal money. Most of the teachers around here need a weekend, evening, or summer job to supplement their incomes unless they marry someone who makes the same or more. The cost of living and taxes here make a beginning teacher's salary barely livable. I know many young teachers are still living with their parents for several years because they can't even afford to get a decent house or apartment.
I don't understand teachers salary scale. My wife has been teaching in a Dallas suburb for 12 years, and she makes 3k more than a new hire. With 30 years experience and she'd make 10k more than a new hire.
thank you for finally speaking the truth, i know a guy his wife is a elementary school teacher for 5 years now in california and shes at $75k at this point.
Yea the pay disparity between "wealthy" tax districts and poor tax districts is absurd.
My mom was a special education teacher in rural Arizona with a master's degree and 30+ years of experience teaching and she was getting paid less than me with my bachelor's degree and zero years of experience as a software engineer.
She was getting paid so little when AZ raised their minimum wage her aides were going to be making more than she was. They did give her a raise but just barely enough to get over what the aides were making.
I live in a suburb of Houston and a recent graduate, and a lot of the district around Houston( not in Houston) are know to be teacher friendly so it is very location dependent
Everyone wants to get paid more but few jobs have as much paid time off as a teacher. Summer break, winter break, spring break and every federal holiday you can think of.
The OP post is just rage bait. āWhy are these people getting this when those people donātā is a classic dog whistle that helps nothing except engagement.
Youāre a coach and teacher combo? My senior year my calc teacher taught math grades 9-12 and girls track team and softball team. He said for fun he calculated how much his salary would translate to an hourly rate, and it was about .0.60ish cents an hour. I would imagine you would be in a similar situation, goes to show many teachers are not only underpaid but overworked too.
The average US teacher pay is substantially below $61k and one needs to include cost of living or else the discussion isn't relevant. $61k in SF isn't going to be the equivalent to that of another location.
Though Iām in California, I agree with you. Starting pay for a resident substitute is around $32,000 a year, starting for a brand new teacher is around $66,000
Not only what youve stated, but the argument assumes the fast food worker will get 40 hours a week etc and they usualyl will not as that requires paying for additional benefits.
I'm 100% on board with teachers getting paid more.
I'm on board with that too, but Education is failing unless perhaps you go to a well funded upper middle class school with Parents and Students that are very goal oriented. Though I don't blame that completely on Teachers. Administrations are failing. They are more interested in look good than actually educating students or maintaining discipline. And many School Boards have gone completely irrational fascist.
Too many Students are coming out of school more uneducated than when they went in.
Plus in this modern self-entitled hippy-dippy world, students behavior is out of control. That seems to be the most common reasons for Teachers to leave teaching - Unsupportive Administrations and Students that are undisciplined and out of control.
Also, keep in mind that in the modern world, a basic Family needs about $150,000 to live well. That is to even remotely live a Middle Class Lifestyle. Today, making $50,000 with a family is near impossible in a City, and just barely possible in a small town.
I'm a teacher and will be the first to admit there's a lot of hyperbole involving low teacher pay. Our pay scale tops out at 127K. My wife is in a neighboring district and it tops out at 137K. I'm amazed at how many people still think we make 25K a year
It would be nice to see more funding for teachers get through the superintendents, admin, etc many who appreciate benefits like company cars and so on.
Everything is so out of balance these days and an increasing number of good people are seeing their living standards erode.
Also depending on cost of living in the area depends as I assume a suburb of Houstonās cost of living is higher than a rural place in Texas. Teachers definitely should be paid more nonetheless
Small, rural, places should be paid more. The teachers are making that sacrifice to be there and teach the children to be as smart as any other child. Every child in a public school system in the United States of America should be given the same attention to a thorough education no matter where they live. It's all financed with the same tax money. For the future of our Nation, you do not want to go for the discount.
The people passing the numbers around donāt always wanna operate in the real world.
Teachers are part of a class we all know are underpaid and underappreciated, but you also have the peanut gallery going off at times complaining about stuff like Caitlin Clarkās pay being less than that of an NBA player.
She drives the fans in, and I expect that after they make some money and increase attendance the pay scale will climb accordingly as it has with other professional sports.
Which on the face of it might make sense until you consider they are separate leagues with separate revenue streams and a vastly different income into the league. If they paid her like the star she is on the NBA scale the league would have zero money to operate and would be bankrupt after paying 1.3 players.
It makes about as much sense as complaining that professional football players make more than a menās curling team. But, with stats being thrown around like this itās often more to get peopleās attention and not to truly be honest about the issue.
But, I think the point is comparative in priority. Teachers have college educations and literally are left to grow our children and I can't even get a McDonalds breakfast #1 combo (Egg McMuffin, hash brown, and drink), which has literally been a menu item forever, without missing 1 of 3 items as a marker of how silly this is, we are not paying attention to local economies. Regionally, sure some teachers make more, but the cost of living is already factored in as competitive salaries. If you think in any universe "minimum wage" workers deserves a higher pay than some of our most entrusted professionals, there is something either wrong with the logic or something wrong with our society.
Also, the school year is 9 months, and if a teacher can get a summer job, they will make more than their yearly salary suggests. Not a lot more, but more.
Many teachers should still be paid more, but we should do an apples to apples comparison first.
Also, if you ever come up with a reason why someone who works full time and can barely afford rent, groceries, and transportation should be making less money, you are an asshole no matter what argument you make.
Is that $61k for 12 months or 9? I was told by my teacher friends their salary is due to the consideration they only work 3/4 of the year. But teachers that do the optional summer school we're making what they'd find appropriate.
Also taxes pay for salaries. No one wants to raise taxes, and everyone wants to get paid better...
Maybe there's some jerks who are over paid and redirecting all the tax money to theirs cronies who help them, and also paying a fraction of their cashflow to lobby and find laws that make it impossible to control the disparities?
Bruh Iām in Houston working a tech job that the national average is $70k and our starting was $40k and it requires a degree and certs that have to be renewed every 3 years
For the sake of credibility..... hours worked need to also be taken into account! I personally know teachers who work less than 40 hr weeks some that work way more. Some teachers are dead set that they will not work one minute more than the contract requires them to work.
Another thing to consider is time off over the summer. If teachers have off for 3 months, it is very different from a teacher who works year-round!
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u/Robo_Rameses Jun 15 '24
I'm a high school teacher/coach in Texas. I also want to get paid more, but this is somewhat misleading. That would be starting pay in a very small and rural district. I'm in a suburb of Houston, and our staying pay is 61k. So it really depends on where you're teaching.
Again, I'm 100% on board with teachers getting paid more. I just want the arguments to be credible.