<p>50K is a decent salary in many places.</p>
<p>50k is barely getting by. “most places”? where? </p>
<p>People have families and bills to pay too.</p>
<p>^my family makes less and we do perfectly fine. </p>
<p>I’m willing to pay more for good teachers, but I am NOT willing to pay most of the teacher’s I’ve had, more money. They should get paid when they actually know their stuff, and can teach without the teacher edition textbooks, because frankly, repeating what you read out of one of those books to a class full of kids isn’t that challenging. If they improve teacher standards then they should get paid more, but the current standard is too low to deserve a raise.</p>
<p>Isn’t the average salary 40-something?</p>
<p>Nothing is extremely wrong with our country. We just have some kids(minority/poor/most whiny middle class white kids) that drive us down.</p>
<p>When teachers get paid for the success of their students, there is all of a sudden a surge in more students getting As that don’t deserve them. </p>
<p>I know that’s probably not what you were actually saying, though. </p>
<p>Not so sound rude, but can your parents afford college? My mom makes 70k and we can’t. We’re eligible for crazy financial aid, as I assume you are too, but that doesn’t mean schools have to give it to us. </p>
<p>Assuming that teachers get married, 100k is comfortable, but can still be tight for college/a family. </p>
<p>But people should be paid enough to be able to support themselves.</p>
<p>Meh, there are a lot of problems with education in America which are all probably contributing to the country’s general decline. Initiative on the part of students, parents, and teachers is lacking in various cases. I’m not particularly blaming any one of those groups, but I don’t think anyone can be held solely responsible for the state of education right now. Students are demotivated, parents are too busy or don’t care, teachers take advantage of their jobs and get away with putting little effort in.</p>
<p>There are definitely good teachers out there, and they do deserve more for what they do, but as people have mentioned, unions/tenure are somewhat problematic and how well a teacher is performing is rather immeasurable. I have a teacher who, when asked to fix a midterm that the previous year’s class failed, replied, “No, I have tenure.” It was partially intended to be a joke, but it’s also true. That’s my least productive class, but when an administrator sits in, she actually does work. I appreciate my teachers who put an honest effort into their classes, and I resent those who don’t.</p>
<p>As someone (who’s overqualified) planning to go into teaching, I think(/hope) the salary is enough to live somewhat comfortably, although I obviously wouldn’t mind it being higher. At least, that salary is per year and you can still work summers to supplement it.</p>
<p>One of my teachers was actually talking about it and he said that it wasn’t really the salary that was the issue it was the fact that there isn’t much upward mobility. Teachers don’t make much more in their eighth year teaching than their first or second. If teachers want to make more money though why don’t they try coaching? There are a few coaches in my state that are making 80-100 thousand dollars a year.</p>
<p>^^^, no they can’t, but if being able to afford a college education without financial aid for you kids is the standard of “getting by”, then there are a whole lot more poor people in this country.</p>
<p>I know it sounds bad, but being able to pay for a college education is DEFINITELY a luxury.</p>
<p>from a personal perspective, I feel I live pretty well, and most of the teacher’s families I know live better than I do, even though from what I witnessed at school, they do FAR less demanding work then what my mom does every day.</p>
<p>Tipa- I didn’t say without financial aid. I said WITH it. </p>
<p>Yes it is a luxury, but it could/should be enjoyed by more people.</p>
<p>^sorry, I accidentally misread lol</p>
<p>and I agree, it should be enjoyed by more people (I’d love to have the ability of going to one of the schools I actually want to attend without picking up tons student loans, because there’s no way in heck my parents can cover anything), but I don’t think teachers should necessarily have this right over any other person, given the poor performance quality of many of them.</p>
<p>also, personally, I think college is more the students responsibility of financing rather then the parents, so I don’t include that when I consider my family’s standard of living, but that’s just me.</p>
<p>I think financing a college education is the parents last “obligation” (for lack of a better word) to their child. It might be different depending on how people are raised. </p>
<p>My mom said she doesn’t care if I have to take out loans because they will be in my name and I’ll have to pay them back lol. </p>
<p>But without my mom I wouldn’t be able to afford a college education UPFRONT. I can pay back things.</p>
<p>lol, I do think it does have a lot to do with how I was raised. My parents have always been, “if you want to go to college, you better get a good scholarship, cause we aren’t paying crap”. This unfortunately for me means probably staying in state, where because of a certain program I’m in, means tuition is covered no matter what as long as I’m in Oklahoma. Not the best of situations, but I suppose there’s always grad school 
lol</p>
<p>Your parents sound like my mom lol. </p>
<p>That’s what motivates me to do well in school. So I can get into a private that meets 100% need. </p>
<p>In state would be more expensive.</p>
<p>A teacher of mine told me that he used to tutor his students privately. The convo went something like this…</p>
<p>“You can tutor your students privately??”
“I used to be able to. I charged them $40-$50 an hour. I stopped doing it after a while though.”
“:eek: What? Why did you stop!?”
“Because I make more money teaching in school. It wasn’t worth it.”
“You make over $50 an hour…?”
“Yeah. :)”</p>
<p>My moms a teacher in Montana and does not make that much. In fact Montana has the lowest pay for teachers in the country. She also doesn’t work six and a half hours a day. With meetings and conferences every day after school she is lucky to be off by six. With almost eight years of college I think they deserve a little more respect. And the three months of summer comes with many workshops summer school and preparing for the next school. Think twice before you start bad mouthing a teacher.</p>
<p>The market dictates what teachers are paid. Are they incredibly important? Yes. Returns to investments in education are huge. But they get paid what they get paid. Should water cost $100/gallon? I mean, we need it to live moreso than anything else. But there is plenty of water and the marginal utility of another unit of water is low, so the market says it’s cheap(at least in the US).</p>
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<p>Perhaps it’s not that bad teachers–>low pay, but rather that low pay–>bad teachers.</p>
<p>Exactly ^^^</p>
<p>The number of doctors, engineers, and lawyers (and other regularly higher paying jobs) would significantly decrease if they all didn’t have such luring salaries. Money is an incentive to do well. </p>
<p>Gone are the days where people dis these out of passion. I love computer science/engineering, but I wouldn’t pursue a career in it if it didn’t have a good job outlook/high starting and median salary. That’s just how it goes </p>
<p>There’s a thread here called “being a teacher in this economy, worth it?”</p>
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<p>precisely.</p>