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Comment by cheerlessbog | Hacker News Reader

Where does she work that pays $30k for an experienced teacher? Teacher pay sucks

She's in Colorado. The teachers' union agreed to a pay cut & freeze during the Bush financial crisis; pay had had only started to rise again a few years ago.

This is somewhat of a digression, but the extremely low rate of teacher pay (for a job that requires a Master's degree) limits the pool of available teachers greatly. The people taking these jobs typically must have some other way of supporting their family; either their spouse has a higher-paying professional job or they are the beneficiary of some other form of generational wealth.

But we tend to lose the teachers who must make ends meet their own selves on a teacher's pay. There is no good economic argument made to become an elementary school teacher.

> There is no good economic argument made to become an elementary school teacher.

AMEN. I would NEVER recommend ANYONE become a teacher based on my wife's experiences. You used to be able to write off expenses as "non-reimbursed employee expenses" but they cut that out so teachers get the token $200 writeoff. We spend almost 10x that annually supporting her in the classroom.

It really is glorified day care in most peoples minds which is a real shame.

Background: https://time.com/5017111/gop-tax-plan-teacher-tax-credit/

My wife hung up her hat after busting her butt for 5 years. Pay was garbage. Expectations too high — mostly from the students and parents. I often jokingly ask if she’d go back if they offered twice her pay. She doesn’t even hesitate - no.

My mother briefly taught middle schoolers as a side job to her cleaning business she was running. One year in, she decided the money and the admin politics and low-key racism was not worth the stress. She is black and was working in a very rural white area. She made a lot more money pushing a mop than teaching.

You can't say "you should clean for the future of these kids, not money" or similar with as much support from society for cleaning as easily as one can for teaching.

I think those writeoffs were removed in the 2018 tax laws so the Republicans can give rich people a tax break yet balance the budget.

My high school band friend became a high school music teacher. He was making hardly enough money for his family to live without stress or worry, he asked about wages they said they couldn't give raises, the only way they could justify a raise is if he had more education - so he took some student loans and got his masters. He was then told nothing could get him a raise, wages are frozen. Around that time he emailed me asking for help getting a corporate training gig where I was working. Of course I put in a word but I also pressed back because I'd always known him to be incredibly passionate about teaching and music. I always imagined him as a bit poorer than me, but a hell of a lot happier (I was going through a bit of a depressed time thinking about the "meaningfulness" of my corporate life). He said it wasn't about meaningfulness, or enjoying the work, or passion, it was that at one point they had to consider whether or not they had the budget for fucking light bulbs one week. He moved on to a nice corporate training job, and does well now. I haven't talked to him recently about if he still misses teaching, but I am acutely aware there's kids out there missing out on an amazing band teacher because we don't pay our teachers a salary that shows the profession any respect. I guess my friend's richer and happy he can take vacations and buy necessities without worry and for that I am glad, but I see the world as little bit poorer.

But he got his summers off! /s

Yea, it sucks all around.

To be fair, it varies in CO depending on the district. More Urban places pay a lot more than the state average. Rural areas will try to make up the pay difference with free housing. Private schools will pay ~80k, but the bar is high to get hired (think PhD requirements) and the hours are longer.

But the point stands, the pay is not good at all for the workload. And that was before covid. Aurora public schools have requisitioned two covid-19 tests per month for it's 4k teachers [0]. That's it. They already had high teacher turnover before this mess. Now, I'm afraid that though the schools may be open, they will not be attended.

[0] https://coloradosun.com/2020/07/14/aurora-public-schools-cor...

My SIL makes, I'm pretty sure okay/decent pay... (for a teacher) HOWEVER, she loves her job, and her kids (Teaches poor kids from the Indian Res.)... so she spends almost HALF! her paycheck on supplies for her kindergartners. It's almost like it's part job part hobby.

I think that's pathetic that we don't give ALL school's enough money so everyone has everything they need.

Edit: my point being, even if a teacher makes good $$, they can spend quite a bit of it on student's so take home really becomes a LOT less.

> for a job that requires a Master's degree

Unless there's some regulation in Colorado that doesn't exist in New York, teaching does not require a master's degree. It does require specific training and certification, but there are undergraduate programs that offer this.

There are also master's programs, they just aren't required.

I don't know about Colorado, but apparently in Ohio it's needed "to earn the highest level of certification".

https://www.teachingdegree.org/states/ohio/#:~:text=Generall....

The average teacher salary in CO is north of $50k [1]. Is she living in a very rural, LCOL area?

[1]: https://denver.cbslocal.com/2018/04/16/interactive-map-teach....

My mother has been a teacher for ~10 years in Colorado and makes $75k in jeffco.

> the extremely low rate of teacher pay (for a job that requires a Master's degree) limits the pool of available teachers greatly.

Teacher pay is not extremely low. The median teacher salary is usually pretty close to the median salary for the state. Plus they get good benefits, a pension, and much more time off than other jobs. It's a solid middle class life.

ok thank you for explaining my family's lived experience to me, the person whose family's lived experience it is. Maybe later you could swing by and tell me if I'm finding the sun hot or not.

Your family's lived experience doesn't change the statistics.

Ah, statistics. A notoriously accurate and complete way of understanding how other people live.

Yes, it is.

Anecdotes tell you very little about the bigger picture.

Is it close to the median salary for a job that requires a bachelors and also has a significant number if workers with Masters degrees?

The fact that people constantly compare teaching salaries to non-professional jobs and minimum wage workers is very telling.

The median educational attainment is "some college". In my state we require teachers to hold a degree and do some postgraduate work, so by definition it isn't a "median" position. That's before we get into it recently becoming a dangerous job

Ehh... those statistics are often skewed. First hit on search for elementary school teacher median salary comparison[1]:

> ...median annual income of $58,230.

> This number would be above the average salary in the U.S., but it's the median of an awfully wide range of salaries. Elementary school teachers in the bottom 10% of income only made around $37,780, while those in the highest 10% could make as much as $95,270.

You then scroll down to the section on per-state numbers and see the wide gaps between states. You also see that this article, like others, suddenly jump to using mean instead of median.

I usually don't play this card, but show the data. You are likely only looking at a specific statistical lens that does not paint a real picture.

[1]: https://www.niche.com/blog/teacher-salaries-in-america/

In all states median teacher salary is higher than median income. Highest gap is 35k in New York and lowest gap is Oklahoma at 5.7k.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/05/16/stat...

My wife has worked in rural TN and NC and my mom was a speech language pathologist for 30+ years in KY.

Pretty much everywhere rural starts under $40k (or under $30k in some cases) and stays under $40k for 5-10 years of experience.

Rural areas are significantly cheaper.

For example tennessee's median home price is $164k, which means $40k is 1/4 the price of a new home.

Meanwhile, California's median home price is $533k and the average teacher's salary is 49k - 84k, making it 1/10 - 1/6 the price of a new home

While there certainty are places that pay starting teachers more, unless you work for the upper crust of K-12 the pay is quite bad compared to basically any other other job that requires a four-year degree plus certification and/or (usually and) a license.

The sad part is that it isn't like there isn't a budget to pay teachers more. We spend more per kid than we ever have, but now any budget increases get absorbed by growth in the administration. Administration in education and healthcare is a cancer.

> We spend more per kid than we ever have.

While true in absolute dollars, it doesn't really seem to be true in inflation adjusted dollars.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZbUD16t4aaM6rCOmFogjxkVhRpJ...

Time scale on that is too short. There is one on this page that goes back to 1970 in 2016 inflation adjusted dollars:

https://edsource.org/2015/states-in-motion-school-finance-na...

Even if it stayed constant per your graph, teachers are competing with growth in administrators for education dollars.

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