If Teachers Made More Money Would The Education System Be Better?
I was eating at Sky’s Gourmet Tacos on Pico Blvd and I picked up a copy of the LA Watts Times.
Inside there was a poll that said:
“Do you think if teachers were paid more like Doctors, Lawyers and Stock Brokers the education system would be better?”
(paraphrased, I lost the paper)
IIRC, the answers were like this:
85% YES
10% NO
5% ABOUT THE SAME
According to this, the average California teacher makes $59,825.
well, wearing job-appropriate dress might be a start in getting a pay raise
Without any disrespect to teachers, why is this not enough money to teach 21 students properly throughout a year? If you made $80,000 (i’m sure some do) would that help you teach them better? How would it do that exactly?
$60k per year isn’t exactly coolie wages, especially when you consider that they work roughly 8am-3pm every day, have summers off and don’t really have any quotas or goals— just satisfactorily teach young people the same thing you teach them year in and year out.
Also, teaching is a rewarding job that is held in high esteem. Teachers are practically immune to criticism when I know for a fact that I had many, many lazy and ineffective teachers growing up. I had others who were egomaniacs and tyrants and others who were just punching the clock. I had a handful of teachers (out of hundreds perhaps?) who anyone could see really cared about what they were doing and took it very seriously.
Of these outstanding teachers, I don’t think it being a more lucrative career choice would have mattered to them one way or another. In fact, wouldn’t keeping teacher’s salaries relatively modest do better to weed out the clock punchers and opportunists?
Teaching well is difficult. I totally agree, but no amount of money will give someone with a liberal arts degree and a teaching credential the ability to teach well. But teaching is also rewarding. So few of our jobs are rewarding in any real way. So you sell your soul to sell 10,000 widgets and get a nice bonus, that doesn’t really help you in any meaning-0f-life way whereas teachers have those kind of rewards in spades.
And yet, all you hear about is how little teachers are being paid.
To those people:
- $60,000 isn’t too bad
- Your job is rewarding. There is value in that.
- Maybe the pay scales are such to keep out people who are only interested in money, you know, the kind of people who run the Teacher’s Unions.
- You get off early and have summers off
- I think there is a higher level of stress and technical skill needed to be a doctor, lawyer or stock broker than there is in teaching elementary education
- If you care so much about money become a doctor, lawyer or stockbroker. Who told you that you’d get rich being a schoolteacher?
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Tagged with california teachers, doctors, lawyers, stock brokers, teachers, teachers get paid, teachers los angeles, teachers make more money, teachers salary, would education be better
School being pretty fresh in my head I decided to comment on this. I like your points but here is how I see this situation. Firstly, I have considered our different education systems but kids pretty much the same in the western world in their attitudes to learning and teaching especially around the ages of 13-16. I’m going to argue that to put up salaries especially here isn’t going to change a damn thing, so I’m saying no.
Teachers are paid enough, especially due to the fact that the majority don’t care as soon as that bell rings at the end of the day. Many of them are there for the money which keeps fucking great tutors out of jobs. I had 4 good ones in my whole education. In fact I had to teach myself Math and Computer skills. Flaws in the education system are deep, as a child I had a hyper-activity in the joints of my fingers. Teachers playing doctors tried telling my parents I had ADHD. They were totally wrong. I was set in lower groups and just smashed my way out after the first round of testing. Teachers fuck-ups cost me time which is a precious thing. Also children in their majority especially here could give a fuck about learning, teachers have to be qualified as bouncers/counsellers among other things. Teaching is a hard job one to many forget that. Also if your kids are unresponsive most teachers will shit-list them and move to brighter students to look good. All shit listed kids end up eventually moved into one group with the mentally challenged kids and left to rot basically. At that point they’re observed and not taught, so yeah, some are even qualified as babysitters. Students below the 2nd set classes pretty much terrorised teachers. We had a music teacher who flipped his shit and threw a chair at one kid who promptly punched him in the face. Its a miracle I got out of that place alive let alone with good grades. I set my science teacher alight once (Accident, I swear, no really!)
More money I believe would just give most teachers the capacity to give less fucks then before hand. ‘Fuck it, I’m making a cool $80,000 either way, I only have to work to keep my job.’
They’ll do the minimum work required for maximum pay and this will attract more douches into teaching. It will fuck up the system even more. Reduce their wage I say, make the job less appealing to the idiots you’ve described. You’re totally correct about teaching having benefits though. It is a good job, even better if done correctly. One of my teachers taught premiership footballers. Honestly I can see less money being spent on teachers and more on education itself being the way forward. Also teachers being tested, a lot. Psych-evaluations and stress tests include a long period during which they’re observed to root out those just not fit for the job.
I’d love to be an athiest Religious Ed teacher. Bashing god is my job, lol. I can see it now ‘Where is your god now?’ outside as a display. Really teachers also need to be less tolerant of idiots messing around, remove them from their friends but don’t shit list them. That fucked up many a man’s education at secondary level which is quite a important time.
Apologies for the Vulgarity. Thinking about school kinda rustles my jimmies. Whatever the fuck that means.
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I agree that teacher pay isn’t the primary reason for under-performing schools.
Higher on my list of likely suspects are:
1) It is essentially a Government agency, filled with what amounts to Government employees. It has the same policies that give us the friendly folks at the DMV. That is, you will do okay if you keep your head down, follow the rules, don’t make waves, and put in your time. Every teacher I know in the public school system has the opinion that any attempts to innovate or buck the prescribed curriculum are only going to go badly for the teacher.
2) The “customer” is there by mandate. So you have a teacher who is there in a soul crushing bureaucracy trying to cram information into the heads of people who have to show up else Child Protective Services will show up and throw them in a foster home. It’s like eating broccoli. Lots of kids probably don’t like it because they know it can’t be good if someone is forcing it on them.
3) The whole system is geared towards the idea that 100% of the kids are college bound. This is not true or we would soon run out of bus drivers, factory workers, and Best Buy clerks. Following on #2, keeping kids in class that intrinsically know they are not headed to MIT to launch their career as an astronomer just makes it all feel less relevant to those students and makes them a distraction to those with plans to pursue post-secondary education. What we need is an alternative vocational school option that doesn’t have the stigma of dropping out of HS.
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John I think you’ve got it right. If anyone wants to know how a socialist bureau feels like I think a public school is a great example.
I once had a teacher who would cuss out students on a fairly regular basis (your friend included). I told my Mom about this and she said for me to bring a recorder, partly because she didn’t believe me. I brought a recorder and sure as shit he cusses some student out the next day. I take the recorder to my liberal mom and she’s appalled.
She calls the principal and he says “B/w you and I we know that Ed does this sometimes, he’s old and nearing retirement– he’s a little crotchety, but he’s also tenured. I’ll have a talk with him about it”.
I don’t think him cussing me out really harmed me because I was used to that type of language at home but it still didn’t feel very good (I was maybe 9 or 10?).
But overall you would think that cussing at students (not just one bad word that slips out, actual cussing out) would be grounds for at least suspension; it would be for me as a student.
On the other hand it is a hard job and students are smart asses. You saw Kramer get so mad at those black guys in the audience for messing up his routine, i’m sure teachers often feel like that.
It just seems like the foxes are in the hen house when it comes to public schools. All the peer reviews and standards are nonsense. I never quite felt like the teachers were desperately trying to teach anyone anything, the way I might think a lawyer is desperately trying to win a case or a contractor is desperately trying to land a contract so his company doesn’t go under.
Good input though, thanks John.
There’s this teacher at my school who has these giant coconuts and always leans over me to explain things. She has terrible taste in music and books though! She said her and some of her stupid friends went to see the decemberists. I gather that one day her old man sat her down and told her she wasn’t going to be splitting atoms in her future so she should teach teens. About once per week I think about taking her to the decemerists and blowing a load on her melons after. All I got.
Great show as always Fox!
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RC not sure if you watch the news but your scenario is not too far off. Can you afford decemberist tickets? If so I say go for it.
Thanks. All of this is why I think some form of the voucher system perhaps with some subsidies to bootstrap a secular private school system would have been a good answer.
Forcing schools to survive or fail based on providing valued services to their customers (kids/parents) is the best way to create value.
I’m even okay with the idea that education can be a fundamental right and the Government can continue to pay for our primary education, and they can even regulate it to ensure standards if they must. At least it is a step in the right direction.
This also solves the dilemma of textbook selection. Want your kids to learn intelligent design? Send your kids to a school with a religious lilt. Want a gay friendly curriculum? Send them to a school that lines up with your beliefs on that. In this context, if your kids are indoctrinated with any particular agenda, at least the parents picked it. Alternately, if your kid just is more mechanically inclined, send them to the high school that teaches them a trade instead of Shakespeare.
I just don’t think schools fall in the category of things that don’t work without centralized planning.
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Teachers here suck donkey balls. idk how much they get paid, but I know they don’t get paid to go AWOL on our asses or to use up all of their period time bitching about stuff; which are what they always did, exactly.
Regardless of your pay, you sign up for the job to do the job; so do the fucking job! If you think it ain’t enough, make some shitty plea or something to the government; but make sure above all that you’re actually teaching something!
As for the question, my answer is no. People here are bloodsuckers and freeloaders. Teachers don’t do shit for us. Schools never supported our personal ambitions. What they need is to get shot.
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http://www.educationworld.net/salaries_us.html
According to this website, California had the highest average salary in 02-03. The difference between the highest and lowest salaries for teacher by state was about $22,000, so I think your facts may be a little skewed.
Regardless, the point of increasing wages for teachers isn’t that it would give them more incentive, which is what you seem to write about, it’s to attract the people more competent in their subject.
The math and science departments are particularly bad, because the competent graduates can make great money elsewhere with a good set of skills. One would hope that the better the teacher knows the subject, the better he or she teaches. I agree with you, though, that higher salaries don’t necessarily attract good teachers. Just thought it was worth saying.
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I’m a teacher…I never work less than 60 hrs a week, go home in the evenings and grade papers, work many weekends, spring break, and a big chunk of summer…and I love my job. And hell no, I don’t make 60k a year!
Each state has mandated objectives in each course that must be taught – and each teacher is evaluated by student performance and results on state testing. No, it’s not the best system, but at least teachers can’t give student an easy 100 and teach nothing.
I also get hit on and the occasional cussing out by a kid but most respect me.
I also lost my job bc our so-called governor cut $4 billion from our state education budget. D-bag wanted to cut $10 billion.
Please get your facts straight before spouting off about a profession that affects EVERYONE.
And as for you, Crapper, “teachers need to be shot”? For what? Not wiping your ass good enough?
Here, Capper, take another hit off your bong, eat some more food stamp-purchased cheetos, crank up your WoW subscription in your mom’s basement, and continue being the debt to society you are.
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Do you guys purposely misinform people just so they can agree with you??? What the fuck is going on here? You failed to mention that classrooms have about 25+ students and most schools have about 5-7 different periods. Do the fucking math! We’re talking 25-32 students multiplied by 5 periods of different students! Teachers deal with AT LEAST 120 students a day and you’re citing that they only teach 21!!! That’s such bullshit.
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Where the hell are you getting the idea that teachers only work from 8am to 3pm every day???
I am guessing that you do not have any close family members or friends who are teachers. I had a roommate who was an eighth-grade English teacher. She would be working all the freakin time. Lesson plans, notes, grading papers, all sorts of stuff. She would work usually from the time that she got home from school in the afternoon, with breaks for eating dinner and sometimes going to the gym. She would retire to go to sleep between 11 o’clock at night and midnight.
I have several other friends who are teachers and their jobs all demand similar commitment.
And where the hell are you getting the idea that teachers do not have distinct work goals?? Student GPAs as well as standardized national tests are all used to track teachers’ progress in classrooms. The only reason that teachers do not get fired on the spot for turning out failing students is because teachers’ unions exist.
Do some actual goddamn research before you publish this drivel on your blog.
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HA HA
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Hey, late in the game but I stumbled across your website and I’m lovin’ it…Point is, I’m a senior studying to be a gen ed, special ed, and art teacher. I am passionate about it and care a lot about what I’m doing, as well as what it means for my future. Of course, talk of no jobs and low salaries is never ending. And I always felt crazy for disagreeing with that. There are always going to be teaching jobs (if you want one and work hard enough to get one, you’ll get it). And as you said, the salaries are not bad. 50k+ for a 21 year old young woman in NY who only has to take care of her self? Not so bad. I don’t imagine being wealthy as a brain surgeon or what have you.
However, a teachers career centers every day around meeting goals. We don’t go in and “wing it”. An 8-3 day does not exist for a teacher…his/her job is continuous. We do half the work outside the hours we are being paid to work. After school, at night, in the morning….a teacher needs to continue working and planning for the next day in order to meet the required goals (which she or he is held accountable for). Teachers are under high scrutiny. Their professional appearance and demeanor must be carried out into their “out of school” lives. It’s a sacrifice to be a teacher and only the right people know how to handle that and do it correctly. Those are the passionate ones.
Then there is that budget problem…too many kids in the class…not enough toilet paper..no chalk…etc etc. This year my school is merging classes. 30+ kids in a 3rd grade class….I would enjoy seeing you try your hand at that one buddy.
Also, where I live some teachers get upwards of 70-80K. I live in a wealthy area in NY. California is another wealthy state with many wealthy areas. So yes teachers get paid a lot. 60 is not uncommon. However, in a wealthy area, the cost of living is HIGHER as well. I mean, you can look this stuff up online people. Google.
What’s sad is the majority teachers are ready to leave at the end of the day, because their jobs are pretty frustrating and more demanding then they should or need to be. They are mostly women who have families to worry about. They are ready to scoot when the bell rings. There is a smallll amount who whole heartedly devote their lives to the profession….the way an ER surgeon must or something like that.
Lots of thoughts on the topic…. interesting to see what people think.
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my friend is an intermediate school math teacher. at least speaking for my area…
he teaches about 120 students (5 classes of about 24, including SPED students, SPED teachers don’t get paid any different from the regular and gifted classes), not 21 all day.
teachers do have benchmarks they must fulfill and evaluations they must participate in.
teachers do not only work from 8-3. they come in early to receive children because parents have to drop them off before they go to work. they stay later to make sure all the kids are picked up. they often handle extra curricular activities as well. before, after, and in between, they have to come up with their lesson plans, grading, etc. they are not given enough time during the day for these tasks.
teacher salaries are paid only for the time they work, and they aren’t even paid WHEN they earn it, it is spread out throughout the year. they are not paid for the summer off if they take a summer off. they often teach summer school and often have 2nd and 3rd jobs.
at least in my area, teachers are not asking for more money because they want to get rich and not because they believe it will help them teach better. in my area, the salary of a teacher (which is not even $60k as you mention) is not enough to cover the cost of living here which is why they often work other jobs part time. bus drivers get paid more than our teachers.
yes it is rewarding, and that is why people keep teaching despite all of this. however, many of the good teachers leave the public education system for private institutions which offer more pay, again not because they are looking to get rich, but because it is difficult to survive. as a result, the quality of teacher which stays in the public system has declined, and despite the claims of how important education is to our government, they have lowered the standards for becoming a highly qualified teacher.
teachers play a huge role in the development of our children, the future of our nation.
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