<p>There’s probably no way to find agreement here, but I’ll try to add a little nuance anyway. If you look at a yearly calendar, yes, teachers work fewer days overall. But many (not all) work 12+ hour days during that 180 day calendar, and it is a calendar they haven’t chosen – unless they only went into teaching to have the summers off. I have done many jobs in my lifetime and none has been more exhausting than K-12 teaching. The intense human interaction can’t be sufficiently quantified. Consider, for example, that the average teacher makes 7000 decisions a day (about bathroom breaks, pencil sharpening, etc.). And now, consider young people who go into teaching to make a difference and find, at the end of the day, that they just couldn’t be the kind, thoughtful, deliberate adult that they wanted to be with each of the 40+ kids in each of their classes. I have been enormously frustrated with my kids’ PS teachers, but I don’t blame them. Could you do it??</p>
<p>Police Officers only work 3 hours per week because only making arrests count, right?</p>
<p>The fact is parents of students in public schools are increasing seeking private tutors to remediate the lousy (25th in the world) education their children are receiving from overpaid unionized workers. More salary or better benefits (if that is even possible) won’t turn it around. Why are the applications to BS up, especially in this economic climate? The answer is obvious to some.</p>
<p>I must live in an alternative universe. We have 15 kids in our classes, not 40 and 7,000 decisions about potty breaks and pencil sharpening? None of my kid’s teachers work 12 hours per day. Maybe 8 hours tops. It has been reported that teachers average fewer work hours per week than other similar jobs, plus they only work 36 weeks per year.</p>
<p>This is not a sarcastic question. Where do public school teachers make $90,000 a year?</p>
<p>They can make WELL over $100k in some New Jersey towns. Our teachers max out at 90k</p>
<p>[NJ</a> Teacher Search](<a href=“http://php.app.com/edstaff/search.php]NJ”>http://php.app.com/edstaff/search.php)</p>
<p>Based on a quick review, these New Jersey salaries (assuming these are “line” teachers) are significantly higher than the my part of the country. Teachers in my east coast urban environment do not make anything like $92,000 a year. Is the cost of living very high in New Jersey??</p>
<p>Islfan: some line teachers in NJ make $132k and I am sure some only make $60k. Many NJ teachers commute from Pennsylvania. I do not have data on cost of living but my original point was that some teachers deserve more money, many should be fired, and these jobs pay better than the private sector jobs on a yearly salary and benefits basis and much, much better on an hourly rate. I posted data to support this position. More money is not the answer. Being able to opt out and take an educational credit to another school would add healthy competition. What we really need is a President Reagan to do to the educational lobby what he did to the air traffic controllers 30 years ago.</p>
<p>12 hour days for 36 weeks a year is equal to 9 hours for 48 weeks. But I don’t buy it.</p>
<p>Let me break down my high school kid’s teacher’s workday. She has 5 , 40-minute periods a day in which she teaches the same class (one lesson plan). If there is a 6th period that she is elects to teach (the admin cannot insist - it’s in the contract) she is paid a bonus equal to a certain percent of her salary. So essentially, if there is more work, she can say “yeah…I don’t want to do that” or “sure, but you have to make it worth it for me.” That’s a little less than 3 1/2 hours of instructional time out of an eight hour day. Then there is an extra 40 minute period M-Th for faculty meetings, helping students, or clubs (but clubs come with a stipend whether they meet twice a year or once a week). The average student load in our school is about 80. So an English teacher would have 3 hours during the day to grade papers, plan the next lesson, etc. The thing is…our English teachers might assign 4 papers a year. I’m sure during those weeks when papers are due, there are some 12 hour days, but 60 hours a week, 36 weeks out of the year? I find that incredibly difficult to believe. </p>
<p>There are 8 hour days times four, and a 7 hour day on Friday. That’s 39 hours at school. Yes, I know that teachers put in a lot of time at home. So do lots of people. I just find it very difficult to believe that teachers spend 8 hours at school and then come home and spend another 4 hours grading papers - every day. Every once in a while? On a Sunday afternoon? Sure, I’ll buy that. If my kids’ teachers are working an extra 21 hours a week at home, I can’t imagine what they’re doing.</p>
<p>The real reason teachers have all that time off in the summer, spring, christmas and winter is so they don’t round all of our children up in the cafeteria and burn it down! I’m kidding of course. I know they wouldn’t actually do anything so horrid. But as with any joke, there is an element of truth to it. They seriously need a break from these kids so I don’t begrudge them all the vacation days. I also won’t say that they have an easy job or that they don’t work hard. But so does everyone else. I guess that’s my point. Everyone works hard. I get a little sick of the martyr complex. I try to remember to ask all my teacher friends how they like their jobs at our 4th of July party. My husband works very very hard…ten months out of the year. All those 40 hour work weeks he compresses into ten months. Of course, he has several part time jobs on top of the teaching gig. But if you averaged all the hours worked in 10 months out over a 12 month period, it comes out to about the same as everyone else.</p>
<p>Prep school teachers…that’s entirely different. They work 24/7 while they are at school. And they probably spend a good amount of the summer planning their courses for the next year.</p>
<p>To clarify…I’m not suggesting that most teachers are underpaid (though some certainly are) and overworked; I agree that everyone works hard. But even if it were true that they only worked 180 days a year, 8 hours a day, teachers are not overpaid. According to this source, Weatherby’s teachers (who are certainly not affluent by the standard of, say, prep schools) amount to 2% of the total teachers in N.J. Maybe not the fairest number to hurl at the profession…</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/05/nj_teachers_pay_freeze_salarie.html[/url]”>N.J. teacher salaries debate continues amid Gov. Christie's school aid cuts - nj.com;
<p>Here’s a picture of our high school teachers. Salaries top out at around $70,000, with a masters degree, but average at $50,000. There’s no getting paid extra to tutor students after school, though teachers do get paid extra to coach sports teams. Teachers must be in school from 7:30 to 3:30. Meetings are after school. Secondary school teachers teach five classes (never more than two of the same–school’s too small) with one prep period, teaching 7th to 12th graders; while I often wish they’d write more on my kids’ work, I’m pretty sure they’re not getting everything done in one 45-minute period. I’ve taught secondary school in two other states with similar stats. </p>
<p>Neato: Really suggesting that prep school teachers have the monopoly on summer prep, with nary a Sunday or weeknight off during the school year?</p>
<p>Our teachers’ hours are more like 8:40-3:20. Parking lot is empty by 3:40. One or two essays to grade per year. Multiple choice tests and the quizes are often graded in class by fellow students. One or maybe two books to read per year. No wonder Johnny can’t read or write. Teachers should be grading and preparing during the day instead of sitting in the lounge chit chatting and knoshing. </p>
<p>The article points to a teacher only making $61,789 per year-she only teachs TWO classes per day. She can’t pay her bills-she lives in Bridgewater, an upper middle class town.</p>
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<p>Pretty good for part time work.</p>
<p>Good teachers are an incredible value to society and my child has been lucky to have had two over the past 8 years.</p>
<p>Weatherby: If it’s true that the average teacher–not the department head or one released part-time for adiministrative duties–only teaches two classes a day, I can see why you’d be bitter. But are you sure this isn’t just a case of politicians pulling out an extreme example and proclaiming it as if it’s the norm? </p>
<p>My kid has also only read two books with his class, though he’s been required to independently read one or two more per term (though don’t get me started on the accelerated reader program). However, he’s been reading short stories, poems, etc. all year long–on average, 2 stories a week. I’d like him to read more books–in fact, I require him to read more–but he IS reading all the time in school.</p>
<p>Ditto on writing. Not many essays, but lots and lots of shorter writing assignments, which we beef up by making sure they all are grammatically perfect and carefully done before he turns them in. Would he still get a good grade if he turned them in carelessly done? Maybe…but educating him is not just the job of his teacher, and I figure I can either work with them and end up with a self-confident, literate kid who generally respects the adults in his life or rant and rave at home about the lack of quality and end up with…well those kids I’m remediating in college against their will.</p>
<p><a href=“404 - Page Not Found”>500 - Server Error;
<p>Highest average salary in Sherborn: $92,058. Next town on the list, when sorted by average salary: Dover, at $88,023, then Concord-Carlisle at $87,269, and Boston at $84,894. </p>
<p>As those figures are averages, you must assume that new teachers will earn significantly less, while senior teachers earn significantly more. </p>
<p>For the visually inclined, WBUR put together an interactive map: [Map:</a> Mass. Teacher Salaries; Per Pupil Expenditures; MCAS Scores | WBUR](<a href=“http://www.wbur.org/2011/05/23/massachusetts-teacher-salaries]Map:”>Map: Mass. Teacher Salaries; Per Pupil Expenditures; MCAS Scores | WBUR News).</p>
<p>Details on teacher working conditions can be found by searching for “(town name) teacher salary schedule.”</p>
<p>Post 50 (2 essays per year)is why colleges prefer private and boarding school students- they know how to write and how to do research. It’s also why every college has instituted freshman writing seminars. Which, if you really analyze it, is astoundingly shameful for a developed nation such as the US.</p>
<p>I have teachers in my family who work their butts off. I’ve also have seen some of my daughter’s teachers literally sit in class reading a magazine while the kids taught themselves. This is not a black and white issue.</p>
<p>Having said that - it’s often not fair to compare salaries. My husband, while going on revisit days with D in Mass and CT , asked passersby what the home prices were running in neighborhoods they were driving through. The frequent response was $2 million. That’s pretty shocking compared to housing prices in our city. So I suppose that $40,000 in the midwest might go a lot farther than $75,000 in CA or New England.</p>
<p>Can’t compare apples to oranges.</p>
<p>And no - I’m not a fan of teacher’s unions when they override the rights of parents and block terminations of bad teachers. But, like I’ve said, I understand why they exist. We also make good teachers the whipping posts for all things bad about education - and expect them to perform to pre-prescribed curriculums, don’t allow them to innovate, and then fill their classrooms with 35 students all with different learning styles and none on the same grade level in terms of performance. An African parent told me that his major frustration is that public educators put children in classrooms based on age. No matter that they came from Sudan and had no schooling at all but are thrown into middle school at 14. Or a Charter school so desperate for state dollars that they accepted a girl who spoke only Chinese and - when the 2nd grade teacher expressed being overwhelmed put the girl in a 3rd grade class. </p>
<p>Teachers don’t work part-time - a lot of work goes on behind the scenes and after hours. Some organize weekend excursions and coach sports or academic teams. Others put in the extra mile to help a kid who is struggling. For those who are coasting - then they should be fired to make way for someone passionate about their jobs.</p>
<p>Public education is messed up in so many ways but putting the onus solely on teachers would be like condemning everyone in the United States simply because Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma building.</p>
<p>Everyone involved has a stake in the game. But good teachers can’t rise to the top because of all the politics that leave them demoralized and unrecognized. And trust me - good teachers are worth more than their weight in gold even at today’s prices. Expenditures for education remind me a lot of healthcare - most of the dollars don’t go to the people who actually “touch” the patient (doctors, nurses, techs). It’s the infrastructure that is bloated, not the salaries.</p>
<p>@ClassicalMama: </p>
<p>This is what I wrote in response to your linked article</p>
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</p>
<p>This is your response</p>
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</p>
<p>Did I say average? It is ok if you misread or misinterpreted what I wrote but to suggest that I might bitter? I value good teachers and think many should be better compensated as I have repeatedly stated in my posts. Most of the teachers in our community have 4-5 classes with 12-18 students in each class. They earn much more than police officers or comparable professionals.</p>
<p>Weatherby: I just don’t see where in the article you’re getting the 2 classes a day thing, so I assumed you were speaking about the teachers in general. Is it because she’s a special ed teacher? Am I being dense and missing something? And I wasn’t trying to be nasty when I said bitter–but apologies if I misread your tone. </p>
<p>The biggest issue seems to be not how much teachers are earning, but how difficult it can be to fire those who are incompetent. There’s not a good teacher out there who doesn’t despise those newspaper-reading teachers as much as you do, and we don’t join unions to protect them or become like them. I like the movement I see in teachers unions to do more mentoring from within–check this blog out for a couple of good examples.</p>
<p>[Pittsburgh</a> Tries a Collaborative Approach to School Reform | Andrea Gabor](<a href=“Togel Hongkong: Data HK, Pengeluaran HK, Keluaran HK Prize Hari Ini 2021”>Togel Hongkong: Data HK, Pengeluaran HK, Keluaran HK Prize Hari Ini 2021)</p>
<p>At any rate, I need to shut up now. I appreciated your thoughtful analysis Exie.</p>
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<p>Key the teacher’s name into the state’s salary database and it shows she teaches two classes per day. Since the article held her up as a poor, struggling, underpaid teacher, I felt compelled to point out that she teaches only two classes and that she lives in an affluent town. For your reference, the CEO of JNJ lived there.</p>
<p>[NJ</a> Teacher Details](<a href=“http://php.app.com/edstaff/details2.php?recordID=61993]NJ”>http://php.app.com/edstaff/details2.php?recordID=61993)</p>
<p>Yes, we have found common ground. The issue of parents like me who have had to pay for tutoring is suffering with the incompetence of some unionized teachers. The few gems deserve all we can give them; unfortunately, they are few and far between. Upon reflection I am indeed bitter towards those who beat kids, incompetent and uncaring idiots, drunks who did not teach me, teachers who brought guns to school, those that photographed us boys in the nude, or the one who sexually molested us. No. I am not kidding. I am sure it is not that bad in this day and age. I am eternally grateful towards those few who tireless taught with passion and gave to us kids. I see fireman, police officers, and others who work longer, harder and risk their lives for us and I tire of unionized teachers constantly whining for more money when money never solves problems.</p>
<p>There is a parent’s rat race for tutors because of market demand; their precious children’s needs are not being met by unions and to compare soldiers and hostile enemies to the school system as one of the referenced articles has done merely reflects the selfishness of the teacher’s unions.</p>
<p>That sounds awful and while it has not been my experience of education, I can understand why it would turn anyone. </p>
<p>I agree that money isn’t the answer here, except insofar as I think it might attract a higher caliber of young adults into the profession. On the other hand, I’ve personally experienced, on the college level, the difference a union makes. Many colleges are moving more and more toward filling their ranks with adjunct faculty. In non-unionized states, those faculty are generally paid about 1/3 the salary (pro-rata) of a full-time faculty member, with no benefits. This means that people who want to teach will often teach 7 or 8 classes a term at 3 different colleges just to make ends meet. I did it myself for a year out of grad school, though I was used to being a poor grad student and limited myself to 5 assignments on three campuses. Needless to say, those teachers are barely surviving and not doing much to improve the caliber of the teaching at their schools–but it’s a financial boon to the schools–and some of those schools now have more adjunct than full-time faculty. In my unionized state, on the other hand, adjuncts, paid on a pro-rata basis what they would make as full-timers, are fully incorporated into campus life, with offices, committee assignments, etc. So having taught part-time in a non-unionized and now a unionized state, I see very clearly why we need unions, at least at the college level.</p>
<p>I think we all need to tone the rhetoric down and try to find common ground if we’re going to get anywhere with educational reform…</p>
<p>Amazing post @classicalmama. And @weatherby, I concur with her that understanding your negative experience certainly helps. The higher ed example is helpful too. Unionized faculty have better morale and working conditions, though the tension between tenured and non-tenured pervades all faculties (though is far worse at non-union shops). I would argue that the de-emphasis on teaching for tenure-track faculty is as bad for students as the tenure system in K-12. </p>
<p>Let’s not forget that unions gave us the weekend.</p>
<p>There was no exaggeration in my post. No rhethoric. Everything I have written was true and factual.</p>
<p>Who are teachers accountable to?</p>
<p>Here is a link to the recent famous case of a teacher bullying a kid with special needs, calling him a ■■■■■■■ and more. The teacher should have been fired immediately instead of merely being reassigned. That extreme example shows what needs reformed; otherwise, we will continue to have some teachers who do not care and who cannot be held accountable due to the stronghold the unions have over politicians, parents, and the children. It is these few bad apples that drive me to hire tutors for math and English. Fortunately, my son has just had some teachers who have refused to teach rather than some of the derelict’s that I had to endure.</p>
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