‘Exhausted and underpaid’: teachers across the US are leaving their jobs
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I expect this is true across low paid jobs. Organizations keep instituting more measures and burdens on workers and pretend they don't have a consequence.
I personally watched a school board meeting in our county devolve into a circus. I couldn't believe that suburban middle-class parents would openly talk about crazy conspiracy theories.
If I were a teacher and had to deal with parents complaining about mask mandates, vaccines, and on top of that had to deal with the extra work of in person and remote learning, I too would quit.
Then the parents get wind of some of the things being taught in schools, take exception to it, and now they are conspiracy theorists or worst terrorists for wanting to have a say in their child's education.
School programs ARE flawed, whether it's science (even math course are!) or non-science. This is a trade-off, accuracy losses against information speed and time spent in problem resolution.
I've heard two years ago that the US is becoming a bit too grade-centric and that problem resolution is not a valued skills anymore pre-college, due to decisions in the ministry under Bush-Clinton-Bush administrations, but my point is valid for most of europe
I wish that were the case, I fully support School Choice, and a Voucher system that will put the money in the hands of parents to make the choice best for their child instead of only having school choice be an option for the wealthy
Unlike many here I am not opposed to capitalism
For example by giving undeservedly high grades that upper-middle class seemingly happily accept to get their kids into high-status high education. These grades then conveniently becomes part of their marketing.
An even more sinister example is their willingness to actively segregate their schools to have "easy", as in cheap, students that don't require as much resources (like actual teachers) as people - on average - from less privileged backgrounds.
The context in which i met them was great, and their parent had to be involved to put them there, so i guess i received the "best" examples of homschooled kids in my area, but they did not have any major issue (often missing some in STEM knowledge, but all of them with a logical/creative mind that make learning hisghschool math a breeze, and anyway, our association was there for this exact issue)
Seems perfectly normal, and common across fields of expertise, not “ironic” in any way.
It is not "Conspiracy Theory" when you have actual evidence, video evidence no less, and official statements from national organizations, and paper records all supporting the claims.
Remember that is what started all of this, at the start of COVID both parents and students where home at the same time, and many parents started to observe their childs lessons in real time since they were conducted via remote learning.
This is what got the ball rolling as parents where shocked and alarmed at what they were hearing with their own ears coming from some of these "teachers"
(Note that this is true regardless of what you think of the correctness of either position.)
Maybe it's always been true to some extent, but "standardized processes" have made it much worse because nobody in an org can even think for themselves anymore, they just have to take crap for some committee decision.
One of the best examples is Uber (the most consumer and employee hostile company outside of Canadian telcos) where, regardless of the problem, your only recourse is to give th driver (or restaurant) a bad rating, or withhold tip, when almost all problems actually originate with corporate uber.
It's the same thing here - you can't blame the teachers, but its certainly not fair that there is no other recourse for stupid policies (for the individual's definition or stupid)
And then the media wonders why people don't trust them.
As with anything in the bizarre municipal-county-state-federal labyrinth that constitutes the US public school system, things vary dramatically from place to place. One issue with many districts' pay tables is that they have too few steps, which is not good for "older members." As someone who was a public school teacher for six years, I also think many teachers would challenge your opinion that "teacher pay overall is just fine."
I'd like to see data on places where, as you imply, unions decide who gets the "worst classrooms" - when I was teaching in Chicago Public Schools, I heard that was once the case in a bygone era. Is this actually happening in 2021?
First off First year teacher can be paid pretty low depending on what grade it is, and if they are even working full time. Many first year teachers are not full time
In my city where the median Household is somewhere around 55K, there are several high school teachers making 80K+
I would urge you to look up the actual salaries for teachers with more than 3 years experience, most teacher salaries are part of the public records, there are databases out there that will show individual salaries.
If we are going to debate if teachers are underpaid we need to start with an actual fact base.
Finally the fact the position requires a degree has no bearing on the rate of pay.
Housing and Healthcare the 2 expenses that single handedly make America unaffordable. Food, travel and everyday activities are affordable enough. 4 year Student loans can be kept under $50k, if you work part-time to offset living costs and go to state schools.
$32k is criminally low, but the $60k number doesn't sound that bad to start. The US is large, and land is practically free. If the US just gets its act together, and starts building dense housing, they can offset a huge part of this divide. Ofc, they won't do that, but it is important to make the distinction between salaries being too low, and houses being too expensive for no good reason.
I remember a piece in the San Jose Mercury News (I've referenced this before, but haven't been able to locate it. I expect it was never put online) from back in 2000 about full-time public school teachers living in San Jose homeless shelters because they couldn't afford to rent or buy in the city where they worked.
I expect that in expensive areas, teachers still need to commute hours to work if they want to teach there.
That's appalling to me. Given that teachers, second only to parents, have enormous impact on the development of our children.
I'm not saying teachers are fairly compensated, just that you'd probably have to determine compensation county by county
The problem may be middle-men and not private vs public.
[0]https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/5e4ecc25-en/index.html?i...
We spend lots of money on education for students in wealthy districts.
We spend way less on education for students in poor districts.
The biggest differences are generally between rural and urban districts.
Huh. I would characterize this more like "suburban vs. everything else, with some urban exceptions".
City schools have extreme bifurcations depending on their inputs; Boston Latins and Lane Techs exist but are notable precisely because they're exceptions to the general rule that city school systems aren't great.
Suburban schools are generally OK. Never nearly as good as the local population seems to think, but whatever.
Rural schools are uniformly horrible (but at least not as bad as the bad side of the bifurcated urban schools).
At least, that's my understanding.
> There are more than 13,000 school districts in the nation; Baltimore ranks at about 2,400 in per-pupil spending in the overall group. ...
> Baltimore’s spending is comparable to other Maryland districts but falls short of adequacy when factoring in the composition of the district’s student population ...
> o Baltimore has the highest concentrations of students in poverty and the highest percentage of students with disabilities in the state.
> o By the state’s own analysis, City Schools should have received $290 million more each year under the current formula.
> o A state-commissioned report indicates the district needs $358 million more to ensure adequacy for the city’s students.
On average, disabled students cost more to educate than non-disabled. Without knowing the distribution of students types in Baltimore City vs. private schools, a simple head-to-head comparison is meaningless.
Finally, you didn't give a simple head-to-head comparison.
You compared costs for the public school (funding / number of students) with tuition (funding by students).
Private schools may also receive funding through other means, eg, state-funded scholarships, or subsidized use of public resources like land and buildings.
(Plus, I don't see how the answer is not "yes". If we pay enough for a 1:5 teacher:student ratio then we'll almost certainly get better educational outcomes, yes? Which means I don't understand your question.)
I'm only pointing out what I believe are large methodological weaknesses in your earlier comment.
When comparing PISA scores, Asian Americans performed on par or better than Asian countries, white Americans did similarly well comparing against European countries/Canada/Australia, and so on. In other words, looking at PISA scores is misleading when comparing countries with high ethnic fractionalization against those with low fractionalization (like Iceland and Shenzhen China).
High school teacher: $62,870[0]
Middle school teacher: $60,810[1]
Elementary school teacher: $60,660[2]
Person with bachelors degree: $72,830[3]
Person with bachelors degree if they took summers off unpaid: $58,264[4]
[0]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/high-...
[1]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/middl...
[2]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/kinde...
[3]https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2018/article/bachelors-deg...
[4]Summer vacation is 2.5 months. $72,830 * .80 = $58,264
Edit: cleaned up confusing language around averages
For example, https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/investing/annuity-calcu... tells me that a $30K/year annuity good for 30 years will require more than $500K of principal at a 4% growth rate. This is a coarse approximation.
Turns out getting a teacher cred is a little bit more than "just" getting a undergrad, and has ongoing licensing requirements.
On one hand, kudos to the OP for using median rather than average, but still a single number to represent all teach jobs in a country with 300M people seems a bit weak. There's a lot of stories out there, and it's just not being captured here.
"Data data everywhere, but not an ounce of wisdom within sight" -- old proverb
For example barbers in Ohio need 8 CE credits per year. (No connection, just chose a middle of the road state at random)
https://cos.ohio.gov/CONTINUING-EDUCATION/BARBER/CONTINUING-...
ryanobjc's objection is that the reference should be "Person with bachelors degree in a job which requires a state license and CE requirements."
FWIW, your reference appears to be 8 CE credits every two years = 4 credits per year for barbers.
https://learn.org/articles/ohio_certification_licensure_for_... says educators need 18 units every 4 or 5 years, which is also about 4 credits per year.
Getting to the main topic, 4 credits/year is about 40 hours/year. When do educators do that? Is it paid time or unpaid time?
BTW, many teachers have a Master's degree, so I think using a bachelor's degree as the baseline isn't correct.
Plenty of occupations as a class or specific jobs have education, certification and licensing requirements. Teaching is not an outlier in that regard. The barber is just one example of a mundane ongoing requirement.
When do educators fulfill their CE credits? My guess is whenever they want as long as it happens on time. They can be grown ups like the rest of the world, conduct their business and move on.
What percentage of teachers have a Master's degree? If it isn't a job requirement, why would it matter? If there are excess numbers of people holding Masters degrees and they work in occupations not requiring a Masters degree, that is a problem between them and their granting institution's accreditation body.
The smart accreditation bodies restrict supply in order to optimize the workforce size and skillset to demand. The nonselective ones that produce skills in excess of demand are essentially diploma mills or vanity projects. At best they make entry into non-Masters degree fields harder for those without the resources to obtain a Masters. At worst they wind up being a giant economic drag through student debt that won't ever match income expectations.
Completely agreed. So we should expect their salaries to be higher on average than jobs with the same education requirement but without certification and licensing requirements, right?
> If it isn't a job requirement
Some districts pay more for teachers with a Master's degree. Eg, https://www.teachingdegree.org/states/florida/ says "Florida teacher salary can increase to $59,050 for educators with a master's degree and 20+ years of experience."
The smart accreditation bodies optimize workforce competency by incentivizing increased relevant training.
> My guess is whenever they want as long as it happens on time.
Sure. But I'm making a rather different point.
As you likely recall, willcipriano compared a teacher's summer break as being equivalent to "bachelors degree if they took summers off unpaid."
If the teacher does a week of continuing education during the summer, then that comparison (and calculation) is invalid, because the teacher is not "off".
Summers are still “off” even if CE is performed then if CE is considered a requirement of the profession not tied to a particular employment agreement. Funding for CE or anything else doesn’t come from magic. It comes from the value generated by a service provider.
An employer “providing” CE funding and/or time is really just skimming money that could be provider paycheck into CE. There may be pragmatic advantages to this such as volume pricing or tax rules.
My guess is that CE is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. Should one expect occupations with higher licensing and CE requirements to have higher salaries than those without? Would the difference in pay be undetectable because it’s within the natural range of variability?
In terms of producer-consumer relations licensing acts as a signal of base quality for products that are difficult for consumers to evaluate. This may not mean that consumers will pay more for it if there is no option of a lower cost unlicensed product compared to a higher cost licensed one. In the absence of alternatives then it would be impossible to know what an unlicensed valuation would be.
Suppose I am a teacher, and have two months where I don't teach students, but during those two months I take continuing education courses, and make lesson plans for the rest of the year, is that "off" in the same way that someone who takes two months from work to tour Europe is "off"?
If so, we have an irreconcilable disagreement on basic definitions.
My issue isn't 'An employer “providing” CE funding'.
My issue is that willcipriano didn't include that unpaid time in the comparison between a teacher and a hypothetical 'Person with bachelors degree'.
That is, I argue the calculation should not be based on calendar days, but on hours worked in order to have the career - both paid and unpaid.
> My guess is that CE is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.
CE is a rounding error. Supporting extra-curricular activities is a rounding error. Grading in the evening is a rounding error. Doing lesson plans on the weekends is a rounding error.
But put them all together and it's no longer a rounding error.
I don't think it is reconcilable. I'll offer: In this context "off" refers to time not spent in paid employment. Is that a fair definition?
My assertion: Spending time outside of paid employment to be able to retain paid employment or to gain improved compensation is not uncommon. My reference to a rounding error was not well written. The rounding error has to do with the difference between the effect of licensing on compensation and the natural variation in compensation between occupations. If license effect on compensation is small, then the comparison of teaching to other occupations requiring a bachelors degree without respect to licensing is valid.
Some of the difference in variability has to do with the standard compensation models different occupations chose in the early stage of the profession's development. As an example, nursing is principally compensated hourly rather than by salary. Outside of productivity improvements, when additional duties are required then there are choices of: less valuable duties are delegated to lower skilled workers, or less valuable duties are depreciated, or the amount of time budgeted increases.
For teachers on a salary any time spent on duties outside classroom hours is effectively a pay cut. Presumably this is a mechanism for less efficient teachers to realize their predicament and self-select out of the occupation.
No, it is not. The comparisons were "Person with bachelors degree" and "Person with bachelors degree if they took summers off unpaid".
In the context of teacher salaries, the phrase "summer off" always refers to having vacation time, not doing unpaid work. Eg, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/time_off#English has "I've got some time off next week, so maybe we could meet up then?" with synonyms of "holiday" and "vacation".
Or, consider someone doing the single-person start-up thing, self-employed, not taking any income until things (hopefully) get off the ground ... then finding out that business model isn't successful, so finds a job. Is that person meaningfully "off" while working 15 hour days for a year?
> Presumably this is a mechanism for less efficient teachers to realize their predicament and self-select out of the occupation.
If you recall, the title is "‘Exhausted and underpaid’: teachers across the US are leaving their jobs" -- that's self-selecting out of the occupation.
But that doesn't mean that those who are left are more efficient. What if the people who are left are those who don't care about doing more than the bare minimum their job is worth, knowing it's hard to get fired because there aren't enough teachers available to replace them?
You get what you pay for.
> In this context "off" refers to time not spent in paid employment.
I don't see an appreciable difference between the two statements. Is your assertion that seasonal unemployment should be treated as a paid vacation?
Maybe it would be more accurate to describe teaching as a seasonal occupation rather than having "summers off." There are some similarities to seasonal labor underemployment in that the periods in which a seasonal firm doesn't operate are "A period of time where one is not required to work." Seasonal labor would fit that definition and also goes beyond in that work in that field is largely not available. I write "largely" since teacher acquaintances are able to find some work when schools are closed by teaching summer school, grading AP exams and various other work that requires a professional teacher but occurs outside the school year.
The critical part of separating "seasonal employment" from "paid vacation" is the employee's volition in setting the time period and duration of the time away from work. In many non-seasonal occupations a vacation may be scheduled by the employee and it is generally important for not all employees to be not working at the same time.
In the case of teaching, there are summer and other work closure periods which more closely resemble seasonal employment or maybe some manufacturing jobs that have periodic furloughs because the individual worker cannot choose when those periods occur.
> What if the people who are left are those who don't care about doing more than the bare minimum their job is worth
Performing to the required standard and not getting burned out seems like a positive vision for a workforce. It is especially important for one with little in the way promotional hierarchy to incentivize going above the standard in order to achieve higher renumeration.
I don't know what you mean by "should be treated as a paid vacation".
The comparison is for yearly income made by someone who is a teacher (which requires a bachelor degree), vs. yearly income for the median someone who has a bachelor degree pro-rated to ~10 months on the assumption that that person has no work obligations for 2 months. Call that "paid vacation" or call it "seasonal unemployment" - it doesn't affect my argument.
I do not believe there is any real meaning in comparing those two incomes in order to establish if the teacher is over- or under-paid.
> teacher acquaintances are able to find some work when schools are closed by
Yes, one of the other issues I have with the comparison (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28826659 ) is that I couldn't tell if the $62,870/year for a HS teacher included that additional income, which would make the presumptive time-off-for-summer comparison even less relevant.
> Performing to the required standard
A.K.A. work-to-rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule even lists teachers as an example.
Ha! Here's a guide for teachers on what to do/not do in a work-to-rule action! https://taaaconline.org/pdf/wtr-kit/WORK%20TO%20RULE.pdf
I have no problems viewing this as a valid labor action against a bad work environment. I object to willcipriano's analysis arguing that teachers are being paid roughly market rates for their jobs.
Yes, agreed. And if our earnings are equal then I am effectively being compensated better for my time. On the other hand, if I earn .875 to your one, then we are being compensated equally. Likewise, if person A works 10/12ths the time of person B and earns 10/12ths the wage, then they are also compensated equally.
As I understand your claim, for teachers uniquely the other 2/12ths are spent performing non-compensated activities that are necessary to remain a member of the profession in good standing or to satisfy requirements of a particular workplace such as extra-curricular activities or off-clock administrative work. As a result, it is wrong to discount the average salary of a teacher by 2/12ths.
I don't agree with this analysis and I have addressed both topics.
For professional licensing, many occupations have continuing education coursework and examinations and even many workplaces outside of a particular profession require the same. Teaching does not seem unique to me in this respect. Do you consider the professional licensing of teachers to be radically different than the many other occupations with requirements for a bachelors degree and licensing?
Teachers may also engage in labor outside their regular duties that may or may not be completely voluntary and compensated. For the purpose of this discussion I will focus on involuntary and uncompensated labor. To the extent and degree that this exists outside of catchup work due to unproductive workers (such as grading papers after hours, preparing curricula over the summer, etc), I have not seen quantified or compared to other workplaces. Thus it would be difficult to compare to other occupations with requirements for a bachelors degree and licensing. Do you have quantification for this claim of involuntary uncompensated labor?
No, that is not my claim.
My claim is that the summary numbers at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28823492 , which purport to demonstrate that teachers are being paid at roughly market rates, is invalid. [1]
I don't claim anything unique or radically different about teachers.
[1] To wit: the analysis shows equal earnings, but 1) doesn't show equal time, 2) doesn't show that the earnings are only from teaching over 10 months, and 3) doesn't factor in the teachers with a MS degree or higher.
> Do you have quantification for this claim of involuntary uncompensated labor?
I do not know what "involuntary uncompensated" means. I do not know how to categorize when off-school-grounds work is "catchup work due to unproductive workers" or due to some other factor. I do not see how those terms are meaningful.
At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28825539 I linked to https://www.scholastic.com/primarysources/pdfs/Gates2012_ful... which says "teachers work an average of 10 hours and 40 minutes a day, three hours and 20 minutes beyond the average required work day in public schools nationwide".
Different sources give different times, and I am not able to tell how to interpret all of the sources. Eg, if a teacher works in an office job over summer, is that income counted in the total annual income to the median teacher? And are the time estimates similarly adjusted?
On the other hand, the comment with summary numbers cited Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers combined with an objective overall measure of productive working months of the year.
If the majority of teachers are so inefficient that they spend 44% additional hours to accomplish their daily mission then there is a much larger problem than compensation. That this occurs in a well-unionized occupation is bizarre. It's as if the unions were aligned against the workers for some reason.
At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28826659 I linked to a BLS report titled "Teachers’ work patterns: when, where, and how much do U.S. teachers work?", at https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf . (Note: this is also a 'self-reported survey'.)
Do note this BLS report uses "health care professionals, business and financial operations professionals, architects and engineers, community and social services professionals, managers, and others" as the baseline, and not "people with a bachelor's degree", so it is not a 1:1 equivalence with willcipriano's baseline.
In particular note figure 8 where "Teachers were more likely than other professionals to be multiple job holders" and the caption pointing out how teachers who work over the summer in a field other than teaching are included in the "other professional" category.
Thus, I have a hard time figuring out if a teacher who has an extra job grading an AP exam is counted as "teaching work" or "other professional." I also can't tell if continuing education is categorized as "work" or is one of the other activity categories not shown. (BTW, https://www.weareteachers.com/teacher-overtime/ estimates 100 hours on professional development, not the 40 I mentioned for continuing education.)
This is what I meant by "Different sources give different times, and I am not able to tell how to interpret all of the sources." and why I wrote "I have no belief that a simple analysis using the numbers [willcipriano] presented gives a reliable understanding."
Regarding your statement: "summary numbers [which] cited Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers combined with an objective overall measure of productive working months of the year"
As I pointed out, that same BLS source reports the summer holidays are 2 months, not the 2.5 willcipriano stated, and the BLS source comments that teachers "may also work evenings and weekends to prepare lessons and grade papers." This of course changes the analysis and increases the uncertainty, by an unknown factor.
Regaring "an objective overall measure". That sole measure is "awarded a bachelor degree". We already had the discussion that the median bachelor degree holder doesn't have the accreditation and continuing education requirement teachers have. Furthermore, the BLS "Teachers’ work patterns" document uses "professionals" as the comparison category, not bachelor degree. Why is willcipriano's baseline objectively better than the BLS's?
> If the majority of teachers are so inefficient
You have not established that they are inefficient. I do not even know what this means. How do you measure it?
An airline pilot is paid for flight hours. All other times, eg, flight precheck, staff meetings, etc. are unpaid.
Are pilots inefficient?
> average required work day for teachers is 7.5 hours
Why did you omit the qualifier that "required work day" was only "time during which they are required to be on school grounds"?
Have you established that teachers are expected to have all of their grading and lesson planning done while on school grounds? The BLS doesn't think so - why do you?
https://www.businessinsider.com/teachers-time-spent-after-sc... "spoke to six teachers and asked them how much time they spent on their jobs outside of the classroom. Answers varied, but on average most said that they take home two to three hours of work a day. Additionally, nearly all of the teachers we spoke to said they come into school early, and stay around an hour late."
> well-unionized occupation
Teacher unions are not that strong. Eg, the WV teachers had a wildcat strike in 2018 because the union wasn't effective. Unions in the US are not that strong - Taft-Hartley took away a lot of union power.
Take Chart 2. That is teachers "who were employed during the week prior to their interview and who did some work during that period".
In Chart 1 we see at least 50% of teachers did at least some work in summer. Eg, if they did 1 hour of work in that week then the average in Chart 2 would be lower than the hours spent on a typical school day, which is what I believe the Gates report concerns. What I want is "hours worked in a year", which that BLS report doesn't give.
Looking around more, I found https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED575193.pdf ("Results From the 2015–16 National Teacher and Principal Survey"). In it I see "On average, regular full-time teachers in public schools spent 53 hours per week on all school-related activities, including 27 hours that they were paid to deliver instruction to students during a typical full week. Public school teachers were required to work an average of 38 hours per week to receive their base pay (table 5)"
Curiously: "53 hours per week" if interpreted as 53 hours per 5 day work week = 10 hours and 36 minutes per work day, which is very close to the Gates report of 10 hours and 40 minutes. I .... think I'll trust the Dept. of Education when they use a 7 day week instead of a 5 day work week.
If this is correct:
53 hours/school week * 9.5 job-related months
(9.5 = two months for summer + 2 weeks Christmas)
= 53 * (9.5/12) * 52
= 2182 hours / year
Thus:
HS teacher pay per hour worked = $62,870 / 2182 hours = $28.81/hour
median bachelor degree = $72,830 / 2000 hours = $36.41/hour
You haven't explained how "inefficiency" has any relevance, much less how you measure it. You haven't explained why the "objective overall measure" is a relevant measure. You added tangential topics like union power.
This is a case of "just presenting the data" with a comically obvious agenda (per what's missing).
Many do pay for various school supplies out of pocket, and I agree they should be reimbursed or have access to greater deductions.
They definitely have summers off though, so it is very odd to claim that they don't. It's plainly described in the employment contract in a traditional summers off (non-year round) schedule
Therefore, median pay for teachers cannot be equivalent to someone with a bachelors degree and unpaid summers off.
Furthermore, the baseline should not be calendar days but hours worked. As willcipriano's own reference #1 points out, teachers "may also work evenings and weekends to prepare lessons and grade papers."
If teachers spend their afternoons doing extracurricular activities, and evenings and weekends for grading lesson planning, giving a 55 hour week[1], while the average for someone with a bachelors degree is 40 hours[2], then the HS teacher makes ~15% less per hour than the hypothetical median bachelors degree holder. [3]
[1] https://www.scholastic.com/primarysources/pdfs/Gates2012_ful... (from 9 years ago) says teachers spend 10 hours, 40 minutes at work.
[2] https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-the-average-hours-... says "Those with a bachelor’s degree or higher worked 8.0 hours per day, while those with a high school diploma worked the most on an average day: 8.2 hours."
[3] HS teacher, $62870 / (39 weeks * 55 hours/week) = $30.40/hour. Median bachelor's degree holder: $72830 / (50 weeks * 40 hours/week) = $36.42/hour. (36.42 - 30.42) / 36.42 = 16.5%.
And working after hours / weekends is highly dependent on intrinsic motivation of the individual teacher. Many lower quality teachers successfully avoid much or all of that unpaid work, especially in situations where they have strong job protections (tenure)
>Many lower quality teachers successfully avoid much or all of that unpaid work, especially in situations where they have strong job protections (tenure)
We'll need citation for this too.
And defined benefit plans are quite desireable and becoming rarer, and have tended to be more stable in the case of market downturns.
On the citation question, I don't have more to provide than experience from relatives who are teachers. It's quite well known that many bad teachers are quite entrenched, and those that realize their level of employment protection thread a good needle in terms of avoiding unpaid labor. It just requires caring about the job and results less, and many situations can push teachers towards feeling this way such as burnout (which can come from earnestly trying too hard and suffering from too many unpaid hours grading, etc.), the fact that there is basically no monetary incentive for good performance (everyone's on the same pay ladder generally based on level of education + years teaching), dysfunctional administration (at the school and/or district level), lack of good colleagues, etc.
This conversation began with concrete numbers, and if you want the initial presumption to stand you're going to have to end with them, too.
"Intrinsic motivation" means that individual teachers are being underpaid for their work, compared to market values.
Tenure doesn't really exist like your sketch. Teachers for grade N+1 really don't want unprepared students from grade N.
Even if it did, why should so-called "motivated" teachers do unpaid extracurricular work, and work from home in the evenings and weekends. Certainly if they used their motivation to get a part-time job they could make more money.
$72,830 * 10/12 = $60,691.
I couldn't tell from the data at [0] if that wage included all income for a high school teacher (eg, the teacher works during the summer for a non-school job, and that income is included in the wage), or only the teaching-related income.
The "Teachers’ work patterns: when, where, and how much do U.S. teachers work" from the BLS, at https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf , 45% of teachers work in July, and more likely than similar professionals to have multiple jobs.
Assuming 50% education-related work during summer (instead of 0% work) means the comparable is:
$72,830 * 11/12 = $66,760
Many people have studied this question, resulting in publications with conclusions which are all over the place, especially when looking at think-tank publications and other non-peer-reviewed literature. I have no belief that a simple analysis using the numbers you presented gives a reliable understanding.
The American way of handling schools is just completely bonkers from over here, across the pond.
https://calsalaries.com/job/teacher-salary
Average $97K.
I searched for an elementary school teacher, 1st Grade, in San Jose area to see a salary of $142.5K in 2019. Another teacher, 2nd Grade, had a salary of $141.6K in 2019.
To be honest, these don't seem too low to me.
Edit: Look at some of the salaries on the main page, $230K-$420K - I wonder who these teachers are in Elementary and High schools with such high salaries..
Edit2: Please note I'm not a teacher, nor do I have any family members who are teachers. I'm merely pointing to the data since I too was curious about it. I have no way of verifying that the data presented by that website is accurate.
https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/72973/6...
From a source that, unlike yours, isn't completely opaque and unreliable, $92,500 for the highest paid segment (Secondary) of K-12 non-special ed teachers, $101,500 for secondary special ed, the absolutely highest of any K-12 category.
In order to afford student loan payments and rent, I worked three jobs. Still missed meals and was late in payments regularly.
The cities your mentioning are very high COL areas, and relatively affluent. Competition for those teaching positions is going to be very intense, and mostly go to senior teachers with at least 5-10 years experience. It's not representative of the nation.
Not so much the second though -- yes, these high salaries are in HCOL areas, but I'm not aware of crazy amount of competition to be a teacher even with those salaries. I'm now in Chicago, where teachers fresh out of college fetch about $60k in my district, and there's always plenty of openings.
It took me over a year after graduation to get a job, and I had applied to over 130 postings. I ended up finally getting a job in an inner city school.
The situation could very well have been very different in Chicago, though, depending on a lot of factors.
I assume the values for the San Jose teachers are also total compensation, not salary.
For more reliable data, go to the BLS, which is systematic. In CA:
Elementary teachers (except special ed), mean $85,100.
Kindergarten teachers (exc. special ed) $76,450.
Middle school teachers (exc. special ed and career/technical) $81,490.
Secondary school teachers (exc. special ed and career/technical) $86,900.
(And special ed and career/technical are lower in each category.)
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_ca.htm
> Edit: Look at some of the salaries on the main page, $230K-$420K - I wonder who these teachers are in Elementary and High schools with such high salaries..
Probably bad data handling; since its deanonymized, its probably based on public employer data sets, which are often released in unstructured form and potentially listing different pay for the same employee separately; to try to deal with this, sometimes people merge records by name. Sometimes this is right. Sometimes this merges duplicated data or data for distinct but same first and last named individuals (being a CA public employee and having had family members who were, I’ve seen media (one step removed from the public release) data sets where my or other family members’ data was wrong or duplicated, and derived data sets where those errors were compounded.
You also happen to have cherry picked the state with the best teacher pay in the nation, as mediocre as that is for such a high cost of living state. If you repeat your analysis in, for example, South Dakota, you'll find that the median teacher there is paid about $48k. That's not that far from the statutorily required minimum wage in San Jose.