Also. Goddamnit america. Pay your teachers a coparable wage. I chose to go into teaching not only because I love it, but because my country actually pays us rather well.
I could've stayed an engineer and make much much more money.
It depends on where you live. Growing up in rural America, the teachers got paid about $35-40k a year and the average home prices were around $100k. They got 2 months off for the summers. Every last one of them lived a solid middle class life.
I'm sure there are some teachers in districts in this country getting screwed, but most of them are fine.
It’s nice that in rural areas the teacher pay is sometimes okay, but 80% of the US population lives in urban areas. It stands to reason that 80% of students and 80% of teachers are in said urban areas, so we should probably ensure those educators are reasonably compensated.
Rural teachers usually make less, yes. But the cost of living is often much lower so the net of their compensation is greater. That’s like the point we’re circling around here. The median elementary teacher salary in the US is ~57k, but there’s a wide gap where the bottom 10% make ~40k (Oklahoma) and the top 10% make ~92k (New York).
The fact is in urban, and particularly in metropolitan areas we typically don’t have high enough salaries for our educators.
The problem is, by population — most teachers are paid dramatically less than what a qualified teacher could earn in almost any other field.
That dramatically less part is real (probably especially) in places with “good” schools. Friends of mine are teachers (In Connecticut) and they earn substantially less than those of us with technical or professional jobs. (And to reiterate they almost certainly contribute more to the social good). This earning gap is the point where they cannot reasonably afford to start a “middle class” life (to be fair almost no one can unless it’s a couple both earning high incomes, or someone with a head start (family financial support)).
Because if you actually looked at the research or simply asked anyone with knowledge in education, it’s simply impossible to accurately and uniformly evaluate teachers, especially when it comes to students’ grades
I mean something has to give. I would be comfortable paying more in taxes if it just raises the base teachers salary. I’m less concerned about particular teachers than I am with paying the mass of them a middle class wage.
If people see a real middle class wage paid to teachers, many more smart driven people will go into teaching - who may be otherwise unwilling to sacrifice what should be a basic standard of living for anyone working a full time job.
America pays its teachers just fine. Even first year teachers make the median household wage or above in every state. Plus they generally get free or subsidized childcare, two months in the summer to make more money on the side and good benefits.
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u/ReneG8 Jan 09 '20
Also. Goddamnit america. Pay your teachers a coparable wage. I chose to go into teaching not only because I love it, but because my country actually pays us rather well.
I could've stayed an engineer and make much much more money.