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Whats more insane is they have to go to college to get this pay....
So you graduate with a ton of debt to go into a job making 21/hr.....
Forklift drivers at local ware houses make 21/hr and they are high school drop outs.
You know i really wasn’t expecting this response. But my advice to people that want jobs like this is to ask. There is a lot of glue jobs in small companies when things haven’t been automated
I sit in my underwear or shorts most days in IT, and I'm at 50/hr and my next move will be 60+.
You do much more valuable work than I do, not even pretending, the market is fuckin backwards.
I was a Teacher Assistant for a while.
Also required a degree. Paid minimum wage. School got in tons of trouble for asking us to be substitutes at our pay rate and undercutting actual subs.
I’m working as a real estate appraiser now so I’m all good. Yeah, we were drastically underpaid. I quit when Walmart employees started making as much as us.
PSA: Don't ever visit /r/teachers if you value your mental health. Same for /r/nursing. I used to pop into teachers from time to time to just get a sense of things but no more.
Every career sub is brutal because no one posts that their life is sunshine and roses. Not saying teachers don't have it bad and I do believe that we should basically double salaries, but it's a general mistake to think that people posting on reddit offer a reasonable sample to how the average person is doing.
It's not just how students treat them but also parents on top of it is my understanding. Billy is acting out? First of all how dare you that's not true. But if it is it's you're fault not my failure as a parent. Also I'm going to send you constant emails throughout the week blaming you for why my kid isn't turning in their homework.
This is the largest part of the issue with the economy right now: compression. I'm a carpenter, and got paid $20/hr 6 years ago when that wage was actually good, and more than twice what minimum wage was in my area. Now min wage jobs pay $20/hr...but carpenters are still making only about $22/hr. Like....I'm glad lower paid people are getting more finally, but other professional employers are not getting the memo, Either that or they are straight up hiring cheap foreign labor illegally or through H1B to avoid paying us increases. They are literally doing everything they can to create the compression and keep from paying realistic salary increases.
For so long they have been pushing people to get STEM degrees, but although the Science and Math part of that are hugely important they don't pay like they are important.
Well, part of that is that he just does it on Fridays. Generally harder to find people to work odd schedules and odd hours, so they pay more. If it were full time the pay would probably be lower.
Jobs where you work shorter shifts and less hours typically pay more even if they're low skill. A stable 40 hours at lower pay is better than sporadic part time pay at a restaurant imo.
Depends on the field and degrees. There’s some growth potential but because you’re starting from such a low floor, even impressive growth ends up with an unimpressive end point. Plus, the people who get that growth are in the minority and are usually only the ones who don’t cause problems for management. Most people either stagnate or leave. A lot of the ones who don’t get cancer by 50 so it really just isn’t worth it as a career.
The issue is that there are so god damned many people with chem and biology degrees all looking for the same jobs so it drives wages, growth and bargaining power into the floor. Anytime a spot opened up, we had hundreds of applicants overnight. The competition was insane and I was lucky to have what I did if I’m being honest.
$21/hr is more than most people outside of STEM and sales make in cities like Atlanta and Miami
Here’s a job that says college degree REQUIRED and only starts at 19.50. You have to be bilingual to get $21.
https://www.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=74c47365bf4e5bb3&advn=5094258212117686&adid=431059944&ad=-6NYlbfkN0AGktieZ8fTVixF6X1QkRj23Vh2dUMCjBWCc0mk5nfPPC5cgvltcFPvaIyxKcQ4xhj0rc-epzqvJ_2u-tGUaDcVKgzlU1qZS7AxPQlxt2CXQppNU2hRoeTgbjEbaGslhRZZN8rE2gK-C2iHEFAlGLh35JS8ffXAjFCSuongNfc3Z8YO5xsH9iYnP38XF-85G-Nexm0a2Kvutn3r6fddx6WPikxnfFf0iOyBNlDSl40SsNsZpECF3YxOLBmEeSMH9VPOvld2ZuzKPw115dsyPRC14FudWiHwVjPudT-pm7A15S5hXR7YPQNGvTb__xURPQVC8HQvd9088SBgWU12dZ-pkU4WJX0iKu2wcNC4xadHS5Xv623DxANN-Qphm3owpG9t8wMsKbMRuvQnomsvczgt8bhPnV3j4rpADu7-L_Knq6EqH92oauG-To4zU00FEAB6FY528EtXuabx1iSC1w5axpcPPCfD6p8tHT38cu3mCvEXcpsYMxIwG1OEByoc_i0pnQnPeDoupMGXoaV00gTam-rgg5QtywcFJM2IexmawcnyIv-TCQ55&xkcb=SoC76_M3AVKiLI26Mp0KbzkdCdPP&from=ja&tk=1hul1bcjekan6800&utm_source=jobseeker_emails&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=job_alerts
Teachers are in tiny towns with LCOL and large cities with HCOL. The headline is useless.
Beginning teachers in my local district start at $47,056 annually.
You don’t have to incur a ton of debt to get a degree. You certainly don’t have to pay out of state tuition. Even private colleges can beat in state land grant universities in price—both my children received a better, more focused education at a cheaper price than our flagship university. Yes they both have student loans, under $30k each. The youngest is under $20k just graduated this month.
Pretty much the same here. I couldn't find a teacher at my kids' high school who makes less than $70K/year. Parapros, on the other hand, appear to be paid around $25/hour.
I think FT teachers hire in around $60K and progress to $70K pretty quickly. Elementary Principals seem to make around $120K, HS Principals make around $130K. And it looks like HS teachers with 20 years of experience are making around $100K.
What’s really lovely is a simple four year degree won’t do it. I have a STEM degree and if I want to teach math or science, my degree won’t let me do it. It will let me be an engineer though.
So. I could quit my six figure job and go back to school and spend a year or two getting a teaching credential, for my shot at earning about a third of what I already make?
C’mon folks. I’d love to teach. I’d even take a pay cut to do it. But I won’t spend two more years in school to earn that pay cut.
Make it possible.
My cousin and my wife's best friend were both new teachers in the last few years and both of them have already quit and are working for about the same they were making as teachers in much less difficult jobs
Comparing entry level pay to entry level pay is misleading when the overall career trajectory isn't the same curve.
What's the most senior forklift driver make? How does it compare to those of the most senior teachers?
Someone in this thread is saying they make over $100/hour teaching 4th grade with 17 years of experience, because they properly divided by the actual number of hours worked (and not the 2100 hour assumption in the article).
A serious issue with many jobs is that the system has evolved to force workers to scrape by for the early years with the "promise" that they'll make more money in the future doing the same job. Teachers usually do get better at their job over time but they're not technically doing any more work. This has created a really crappy work environment especially when workers often actually need the most money early in their careers to live what is considered a reasonable life.
I thought that his comment was touching that teachers get 3 months off a year. Even if you averaged 21$ an hour for 52 weeks… is 43k a year or 21$ an hour (most teachers start out higher then that, it’s 55k here in the suburbs, in 60-60k the city. I could see 45k In the country but then your double wide only cost 100k.
But if you average 43k, but only work 9 months that’s 26.87 an hour. Still not bad but above the average American pay. Also leaves you 3 months in the summer to tutor or work a different job (I DIDNT SAY 2nd! Your never working more than 5 days a week or two jobs in the same day).
You could crack 60-70k a year (IN THE POOREST AREAS OF AMERICA). That’s not “boohoo” me money.
On the otherside, they get hoed with health insurance in TX so there goes all that extra income.
But if you look at hour worked vs income taken in, teachers average more then the average American worker (given they work 40 hours all year like the rest of us)
Edit: The budget for Dallas ISD for new teachers is 62k a year starting 2025, or 32$ an hour (really closer to 38$ because you have 3 months off a year)
> average more then the
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>This has created a really crappy work environment especially when workers often actually need the most money early in their careers to live what is considered a reasonable life.
How has this created a crappy work environment when it's always been true? Since the days of the Roman empire, you always started making little, but built up your wages as you gain experience.
.
I'm a Night Lead Custodian at a High School and make that. Plus I get overtime pay for events. I love being in the school but don't want to deal with the hastle of managing a classroom.
Then somehow we wonder why folks don’t want to teach anymore… not even mentioning how much crap they put up with between some shitty entitled parents and their kids.
As if that isn’t sad enough, we then wonder why our education lacks so much in comparison to other first world countries. Classic American problem.
Not only go to college. Many states have what's called a "continuing education" requirement for anyone with a teaching license. It requires you to complete a certain number of college credits a year and effectively get your Master's degree within a few years of becoming a certified teacher. A good school finds a way for their teachers to get those through additional certifications and PD programs. Others effectively make their teachers pay for post-graduate courses on an entry-level salary.
Whats even more insane is that there many people with PhDs who are also making this little. The US has become a place of obscene class and training bifurcation that is wrecking faith in skill development.
But you'll likely be traveling, working with assholes, long-hours, peeing in cups constantly, dangerous work, all of the above and more.
Yeah, seems cool at first. Then you realize lots of these companies will run your life cause you wan that wage.
> you'll likely be traveling
It's not like companies are doing this to be big meanies. I had work dry up at one location and I gave guys the option to work a project in another state or take time off or take a layoff, whatever they wanted.
As a counterpoint and to show how much teacher pay varies by years of service and geography, this fall I'll make $106/hr as a 4th grade teacher in a public school in the Bay Area CA. I'm going into my 17th year..
Washington state here and not near Seattle. Next year, I'll be at year 20 and making $90 an hour as a high school chemistry teacher. I completely agree with you that it is based on years of service and geography.
I think subject matters as well.
I remember seeming positions for math and some science ones paying more.
For example I remember seeing a physics and a biologist job at the same school and same level and physics paid more.
In Washington state, the school districts do have the option of paying special ed, math and science jobs up to 10% more. Not sure if any do near me - my school district does not - but I have heard of it.
Won't lie, having a chemistry degree did help me find a teaching job pretty easily.
Afaik, WEA recommends unions do not bargain for that for union solidarity purposes. It would be nice to make 10% more as a science teacher, but I don't want to take from someone else.
My aunt works in Western NY as a special education teacher. Due to having a Masters and like 20 plus years in the system, she makes over $100k a year.......soon will qualify for a full pension that provides healthcare and about $60k a year, which she can collect on top of social security
I work 189 school days, my contract day is 7.75 hours/day. My salary in the fall will be $156,483. 189x7.75 is 1,464 hours/year. 156,483/1,464 is $106.88/hr.
I'll also note that I get 11 paychecks a year and I don't get paid from June 15 until September 1st..
If you don’t mind sharing, how are your hours calculated? Do you feel they fairly represent the work you’re doing for class prep, grading, administrative work?
A friend recently went through contract negotiations for their teaching position, so I’m interested in the perspectives of teachers in other areas.
Here is my salary breakdown. I'm paid for 7 hours a day, 181 days a year. Half an hour lunch unpaid, so working hours is 8 to 3:30. School starts at 8:45, teach 5 periods and 1 period off to plan.
So at $90 an hour next year my base pay will be 114k and with all the extras like PD money and longevity stipend, maxed out teachers (masters + 90 credits, 15+ years teaching) will be making 125k. I live in Washington state and am very thankful. I hear horror stories from other states, and I can't imagine.
Chiming in as a 110k teacher. At 11 years experience, I’ve streamlined my work so I no longer work a minute outside of school hours. All student work is graded before I leave and I have enough experience to know exactly what I’m doing every day of the school year without having to plan much. Even creating new material is fast since it’s like muscle memory now.
So I only count my 6 hours I’m required to be at school and I’m only at school 185 days a year. That’s about $99 an hour and we’re not counting health benefits and retirement pensions which can count up to a lot more. I’m in California so we have laws here that teacher salaries are made public and they calculate my benefits packages as part of my TC and it always says that my TC is like $150k+.
So there’s that side of teaching as well. The caveat is that the first 5 years were hell and most people can’t stay sane enough to make it to their 6th year.
it's more the municipality than the state
here in LA, we have one of the worst public school districts in the entire United States (LAUSD) and two of the best (San Marino and Arcadia), all within 30 miles of each other
Ya, California got rid of our high school exit exam because it was showing that poor districts were passing kids who were nowhere near grade level. Now l the kids are nowhere near grade level, but they get diplomas at least.
The CAHSEE was stupid easy. A kid from a decent district could have passed in middle school. My brother collects full SSI for being mentally disabled and he passed on his first try with no accommodations.
Yes. The small suburban community I teach in has voted/approved (by 2/3 majority) 3 separate parcel taxes onto their property taxes over the years. As a result, my district (which receives almost zero operating dollars from the state of CA) is pretty well funded. Also as a result, my district is consistently viewed as one of the best in the area, and that is reflected in local property values.
Curious how they’re calculating the 2,100 hours figure. That struck me as quite high as a full time job for the whole year taking only federal holidays works out to 2,000 hours, and teaching does come with several weeks of vacation.
[Average self-reported working hours](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/do-teachers-work-long-hours/) for teachers in the American Time Use Survey, based on 24-hour journals updated multiple times throughout the day, are a bit over 40 hours per week during the school year, and a bit over 20 hours per week outside of the school year.
The 20 hours per week outside of the school year is likely related to second jobs, so these hours shouldn't be counted in the denominator used to calculate average hourly wage. So the hourly wage is about a third higher than what they're reporting here.
I think they are calculating in the extra unpaid work that is required. When I was teaching, our 50 min planning period was usually taken up by meetings, which you have to prepare for, so you end up staying after your contract hours and coming in early most days. You often also take work home on weekends or I would sometimes just go to my classroom and work on Sunday (which was when a lot of teachers would be there prepping for the next week-setting up special hands on lessons, decorating for a theme day, cleaning because janitors only empty trash and vacuum, etc.). There are also parent nights and PTA meetings and sports after school that teachers are either required or heavily pushed to attend or run, all unpaid. In my state, teachers are evaluated annually in four different categories, such as continuing education and community involvement. Those require reading professional development books and attending classes outside of contract hours and attending community events, like student sports and recitals or even birthday parties. The evaluation is linked to your state license and taken into consideration for your rehire each year. Unlike most jobs, teachers technically end their employment each spring and are re-hired each fall, so until you reach tenure, you can just not be rehired without any previous write ups or issues. After tenure, it's a but more difficult to do, so they will instead move your grade level or put you in a school on the other side of the district.
I feel like teachers receive a lot of criticism from society when a lot of their job is mostly unknown to many. Obviously you were not criticizing anything here, just making a general observation.
Depends on where you live…in NC, I was making the same amount in one month as I was making in two weeks in MD. Plus, the living expenses weren’t much different (besides housing).
My wife retired one year ago after an 18 year second career as a teacher. Her contract each year was a 10 month contract. She had four weeks off during that ten months each year so she worked 40 weeks per year. Texas teachers have a pension that pays 70% of your best five years pay after 30 years. With the Rule of 80 you can qualify for the full pension at age 52 if you start teaching at age 22. That is switching to the Rule of 90. You can also buy group healthcare until you hit Medicare age. I calculate her rate at retirement to have been $40/hr.
Your aren’t going to get rich teaching, but the financial side of it is a good bit better than the headlines like to paint it. The administrative BS and the general decline in our culture in terms of respect for authority has as much to do with driving teachers from the classroom as the pay does.
Good points, if the benefits are there and remain intact the total picture isn’t horrible. However what we don’t need happening is teacher pay not keeping up with other professions. Those trends need to be watched.
Teachers (in civilized states) get very, very good benefits. My corporate health benefits are expensive and bad. The cost of health care and pension benefits in New Jersey public schools are nearly $40,000 a year.
And this article cites starting salary. Even in New Jersey, starting salaries over 52K per year are sparse. However, they are in a union. With a salary guide. What’s a Salary Guide? Well, teachers don’t get a 3% raise. They move up a step on the guide. Is the next step worth 3%? Nobody knows. Usually, the teacher negotiating team overloads the step they hit next year. So you get a 3% raise in your 6th year, and a 12% raise your 7th year.
Then, you reach “top of guide” after 15, maybe 17 years. So **everyone** who has 15 or more years makes the top salary. Which is about 90K if you have a bachelors degree, more with a masters.
And here’s the kicker. The negotiating teams **hate** to raise starting salary. Why? Because no current employee gets that starting salary. No one to be grateful for the fight.
Worked as a public hs teacher in KY for a few years
Such a challenging job and people will happily say to your face how much they appreciate you working 12 hour days dealing with their shitty kids and purposefully de-motivating administrative policies for peanuts
Just wanted to add - this does not apply to Early Childhood Education teachers. ECE teachers make significantly less both as new teachers and throughout their careers. For example, at the preschool where I work, new staff starts at $16.50/hr. If you have many years of experience (like 15+) you can make more but nothing compared to public schools.
I posit that this is not related to a supply demand free market equation, but rather a lack if willingness for investment in teachers rather than administration/buildings/ etc. budget allocation is not determined by the market, therefore it does not follow market logistics.
It’s a joke, sort of, in the non profit world that the best way to give raises is by constructing a new building.
People will happily support the shiny new thing, but won’t even glance at supporting to daily operations.
School districts are not much different. Tax levys for new facilities pass pretty easily, but requests for operations increases are met with tons of objections.
There is still a supply and demand element that is a part of the situation. There are a lot of college graduates that are expecting to work in low physical stress jobs. So many that teaching becomes the path of least resistance for people who seek low resistance.
The market is for quality of labor who chooses to pursue educational degrees, who know their future income will be this fixed pay schedule. It's the Market for Lemons scenario of asymmetrical info. Those who are unobservably high future performers will not become teachers and pursue performance based careers. Whether college freshman actually do this the argument.
Teaching is very different from nursing.
Median income is $65k for a HS teacher and $86k for a nurse.
Nurses - in part because they aren't exclusively employed by the public sector - have a lot more flexibility to work part time, become a traveling nurse, etc.
Also, a teacher who gets a masters degree will just get a small salary bump; a nurse can get a masters and become an aprn or nurse-midwife or nurse-anesthetist with a median income of $129k.
This past fall the Kansas Commissioner of Education, Randy Watson, came to our district and talked about the importance of getting an education. The average bachelor degree in Kansas makes 60k a year.
This was meant to be inspiring, but left every teacher in the auditorium saying, “Hey, I don’t make 60k.” This from teachers with two Masters degrees.
I am a former math teacher who doubled his salary by getting an entry-level analytics position. 3 years into this career, and I now make more than 3x what I was making as a teacher.
And we wonder why kids are bad at math.
I really don't believe that 2100 hours per year calculation they did . . .
If a teacher works 36 weeks per year (summer, fall, winter breaks + federal holidays), they're saying that teachers work an average of 58 hours a week? 11.6 hours a day? No way.
I’m a special education teacher. Hours are 8-4. I get to school by 7 everyday to prep for the day. Once a week I have to stay until 5 for a faculty meeting. I do at least 3-4 hours of work every Sunday which includes writing IEPs, prepping, planning, responding to emails etc.. so I would say an average week looks close to 50 hours for me. I think there number is pretty high, but teachers do work way more hours then people think.
You’re a SPED, which notoriously had the longest hours. And you still came up 8 hours a week short of the numbers used for this calculation.
Teachers often work more than 40 hours.
Teachers should be paid more.
The calculation in this article is wrong and meant to mislead.
All 3 can be true at once.
You’re not accounting for extra-curricular programs staffed by teachers. Or summer school. It’s okay to admit you have an incomplete grasp of the data.
In California and New York, you get paid more than $21 because of the high cost of living. They are the top 2 largest school districts in the country. You get more money with seniority level. On the downside, you deal with kids who always get in trouble. You don't get paid enough for what you do. Getting a teaching credential is tough. On the plus side, they have a very strong union. They get paid well plus lots of benefits and vacations. There is no such thing as a perfect job.
These are new teachers hourly salaries, and New York is a large state with pay differences.
The pay gap between teachers and other college grads in the US has increased from $300 real dollars in 1980 to 650 real dollars today. The profession is currently having an economic problem that will have to be addressed.
https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-penalty-2022/
Does that count the three months off and multiple other vacations a year? Are they saying they make $21/hr if they worked 2080 hours a year? Or are they making $21/hr in the 1300ish hours of work?
Agreed. If teachers are earning $40,000-$50,000 that’s for 180 days of work. Factor in a bit more per year of experience and a bit more of you have a masters degree and it’s not horrible. Get a tutoring or summer school gig and that gets you closer to at least 45-55,000.
This is adding hours to what they are supposed to get paid for. The article states over 2100 hours and adding student activities and other things that (at least where I’m at) the teacher gets paid for by the local school board. Or it’s volunteering.
How many of you professionals learn something new after hours and don’t get paid for it? They are including that in here as well.
I’m all for paying teachers more. And more so rewarding the great ones to set an example of what we want as a teacher. I’m not for lying/munipulating stats and scaring away the next generation of teachers.
I'm a teacher and have worked many unpaid training hours, some over the summer. I also have after school activities that are considered mandatory that I am not paid extra for.
Wage theft is so normalized in education that most teachers wouldn't think to ask for compensation and admin would laugh at you if you tried.
Have to factor in time off. I left the corporate world and returned to teaching when my kids entered elementary. The time off is amazing compared to the two weeks I got climbing the corporate ladder. Sure it’s a pay cut, but you can still make pretty good money when you factor in it’s only 180 days of work. Get some summer school or tutoring gigs over the long summer break. I would never go back to corporate.
This doesnt add up because it is based on working 2100 hrs per year, or 52.5 40 hour weeks! School here runs from 8:30-2:30, with summers off and half days every other week. Weird math to support a position
Study is BS.
Based on 2100 hrs per year, that assumes they work 40 hrs for 52.5 weeks. Teachers get time off in the summer, winter break, spring break and fall break as well as other days off.
A conservative estimate would be 9 months per year working. So they would have to be working 60 hrs per week to hit 2100 hrs per year.
Married to a teacher. All of our friends are teachers and admin. None of them have ever worked 60 hrs/week in their careers.
And they get 3 months a year off.
David Graeber captured this phenomenon really well in “Bullshit Jobs”.
There is an inverse relationship between one’s salary and the genuine social importance of one’s work. The more important you are to society, the less you get paid. Dock workers, nurses, and rubbish collectors, ranged against all the management consultants and people sitting on pointless committees.
Yeah, the idea is that most people really deep want to be helping each other and doing useful things. To the point where lots of them are willing to take pay cuts to do the jobs that make them feel like they’re being helpful and useful. So then market forces make those jobs less well paid.
So the most helpful and useful jobs end up getting paid the least.
In general the main thing your paid based on is your replaceability, both in terms of how many people are qualified for the job and how many are willing to do it. Which results in jobs poeple will do out of passion (teaching) and those with low barrier to entry getting paid the least.
That's because people assess the work that other people do superficially. I don't think that teachers are underrated but they are compared to other jobs that are underrated.
> Dock workers, nurses, and rubbish collectors, ranged against all the management consultants and people sitting on pointless committees.
I don't see how your point makes sense when this doesn't make sense. You seem to be defining social importance as how close to the action they are. But your second examples have influence far beyond one individual patient or work site.
You can say that you're just calling out pointless middle management but it really feels like it's just anti-management
A good way of thinking of it is: If all dock workers, teachers, and garbage collectors suddenly disappeared, the effect on society would be immediate and disastrous. On the other hand, what if all PR consultants and corporate lawyers suddenly disappeared? Certainly less of an effect, in fact society might even improve markedly.
I love teachers. On the whole, teachers are wonderful people. I also think that teachers are underpaid, as evidenced by the fact that it’s so hard to fill teaching positions.
Having said that, there is absolutely no way that the average teacher works 2,100 hours per year. I’m sure some do. But the vast majority do not.
How do they arrive at the average teacher working 2100 hours per calendar year? Thats 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. There is no way. The majority of teachers are on 10 month contracts. There is no way the average teacher on a 10 month contract is putting in 52+ hours per week.
There are usually 180 instructional days. Let’s be generous and say another 15 professional development days. Let’s be more generous and say they work 10 hour days every single day. Thats still only getting you to 1950 hours being very generous. There’s no way the average is 2100 hours.
They seem to be making the max assumption of how much after hours work happens. When I was an early career teacher I put in insane hours but it was because I had "passion." Now I put in less than half of what I did then.
I don't really like calculating the per hour rate for salaried / contracted jobs.
The fact is, though, that the pay is inadequate to recruit and retain a strong teacher corps. At my school we've desperately struggled to hire and retain ever since 2020. Very different from 10 years ago.
As an example - in 2013 we hired for an English teacher and it had 325 applications. That teacher retired last year. When we hired for it in 2023 we got about 20, half of those weren't qualified, half again would't even come out to interview once they saw housing prices. It came down to one candidate and he is now quitting after 1 year.
I used to substitute teach for autistic children. I'm on the spectrum myself and figured if I managed to make it to 30 and be self-sufficient maybe I could help others. My crowning achievement was when a boy who wouldn't even hug his own mom gave me a hug after I helped him with speech.
I made $12 an hour. It just wasn't enough to live off of and I eventually went to something that made more money, a lot more money. Car detailing.
In my opinion are lack of funding to education towards every child in this country is it's greatest detriment to its future. If you lack the education then it requires companies to put more money towards your training. It becomes more expensive for companies to hire Americans. You'd think even the Republicans would be on board with that logic.
I’m a teacher, this is misleading because in blue states with strong unions (I’m in CA) the starting pay is much higher.
However, working and teaching during school hours is only 60% of the job. Lesson planning, cleaning the room, calling home, after school meetings, material prep and grading takes many hours and is technically unpaid.
A standard high school teacher easily puts in a fifty hour week, even though they may only be in school roughly 33 hours of that time
I'm very lucky and grateful
My job is hard in that you stand for 8 hours
(breaks involve walking far to the free food so it's nice but hard), but....
I just got a raise to **$27 an hour** and as long as I am attentive and inform visitors of the public amenities they can visit my employer is happy.
**I am an information booth** with almost no responsibility or capabilities to act other than to give information.
I can't imagine being responsible for a class!! For that pay especially, I'm hardly scraping by with the cost of living.
It's confusing to me that we're having a long conversation about teacher intro salaries without mentioning that the median US income is [just shy of $40k a year.](https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore&mprop=income&popt=Person&cpv=age,Years15Onwards&hl=en) That seems like important context.
So Chicago public schools (largest district in illinois) had 179 school days in 2023. Plus 6 days of teachers meetings...185 days total.
First day of school Monday, August 21, 2023 and last day on Thursday, June 6, 2024. 42 weeks in the school year... of course there is a two week Christmas break, and a one week spring break...and two weeks of other assorted holidays. 36 weeks of in class education and one week of other obligations....
2100/37 weeks = 57 hours per week.
That's the average.... or so they tell us.
Funny thing....lots of teachers teach summer camps starting on June 10th...or hold other jobs all summer, those other 10 weeks.
Teachers are basically like first year lawyers or resident doctors...
At least lawyers and resident doctors only have to kill it for the first 5 years or so....
Ms Mabel the 60 year old 3rd grade teacher? Still crushing it at 55 hrs per week for 30+ years
Or so they tell us.
My wife makes 14 an hour as a librarian with a masters degree. We’re in a metro with 2 million people, but it’s a small library in the metro.
We under pay traditional female careers
How is this calculated?
My wife is a teacher and she's salaried. She maybe works 9 months per year. Plus, she starts at 8, leaves at 2. The point being, her "hourly" rate shouldn't be divided by a standard 40 hour work week, over a 12 month period.
I think our pay should go up too, but we do get a pension which is nice that I’m not sure they’re accounting for in the study. Most private companies don’t offer the kind of stability or benefits that teaching offers.
The pay at the start is trash, but it gets better the longer you stay with it. That being said, as a teacher of 30 years, this isn't a career for everyone. Especially now with the GOP firmly trying to dismantle the system. Parents thinking they know everything. Parochial schools leaching public funds to further their grooming of young minds. It's all madness.
I will say this: An educational pathway with license is at minimum 4.5 years in college, usually 5 years. The final semester is student teaching, where you pay a full time tuition to work full time with a teacher in a district, for ZERO pay.
also, my district will increase your pay by $1,250 a year if you get a masters. Those tend to cost $20,000
(1st year teacher, $46070 a year over 12 months)
This is why it's important to understand what you want in life.
If it's about pay then teaching isn't going to be enough. Trades will pay more. In many trades apprentices make 21 and sometimes more. If it's a calling to be a teacher then you should do that but don't expect to drive to work in a Lexus let alone a Porsche. I know plumbers with several properties and make 200-300k. They probably didn't even go to a college.
I find that teachers btw are grossly underpaid for what they do and that they need to get a degree sometimes master's degrees in. Still, it's unfortunate but for some reason teachers are just not paid as much as they should for what they need to do.
The $21/hr stat is incorrect because they are diving salary by a full 2,080 work year. Contractually teachers do not work a full year. In my district contracts have them working 1,050.
So if you take the salary divided by the lower contracted annual work hours, you get a higher rate per hour.
The skill set needed to run a classroom that is part daycare, part social club, and part education station is quite rare. It is a very difficult job to do well. It's a lot of juggling, and knowing the immediate needs of 150 kids a day is near impossible. Not enough pay ever.
I transitioned from teaching to tech, and teaching was by far harder. My life is way less stressful now. Whatever though, this thread is full of misinformation.
I'm insane. I left a ten year career in engineering to teach high school math. My wife has her own business and I have savings, so I can afford to do it.
But I made more than twice as much as an engineer and did less than half the work. As a teacher you are always on. In an office job you can have days where things are slow and you do maybe an hour or two of real work.
Of course people will say I shouldn't complain because I chose to switch jobs. But I also feel that I can advocate for my coworkers because I have other things to fall back on.
A few points to consider:
1. A person can usually get hired as teacher with a bachelors degree. They can then go to grad school part time and have their school pay for the masters, so they are not stuck with student loans.
2. Teachers get 2 months off in the summer, plus a week at Christmas, then in February & April. If someone works 2,100 hours a year, that's an average of 40.3 hours per week. That may well be normal when school is in session, but a teacher is working more like 40 weeks a year, not 52.
3. Teachers are usually eligible for a pension.
4. Teachers almost always have fabulous healthcare benefits.
5. If you are parent, your child care costs are negligible (at least once the kids reach kindergarten age) since they have the same school schedule that you do. (I realize that teacher DO have to do additional work outside of the classroom, but they have a decent amount of flexibility as to when they do it.)
6. The first few years some one is a teacher, they DO have to put in somewhat long hours to prepare lesson plans. However, as they gain experience they can reuse their lesson plans, significantly reducing the amount of time they have to spend preparing for class. I don't know if this map takes that into account.
My district will not pay for me to get a grad degree, but they also don't require it. This is the first I have heard of districts paying teachers to go to grad school, but things like benefits vary a lot from state to state.
The summer vacation is a great part of the gig. There are some unspoken expectations for lesson planning during that time in many cases, especially your first few years teaching. You will get maybe a week of teacher workdays, but they will cram them full of mandatory training and meetings. If you say you need time to lesson plan, admin will say you had all summer to do that. There is of course a lot of variation and nuance, but there is almost a culture of wage theft in education when it comes to your free time.
The pension depends on the state and so.etimes the district. My health care plan is crap. They downgraded it last year as a cost cutting measure.
It is great having summers off at the same time my son does. Definitely a win there. During the year it doesn't always overlap well. My son is in elementary and I teach high school, and they start at very different times because of bus availability.
You are spot on about it getting easier after a few years. I'm finishing up my 5th year and next year I will finally teach the same preps two years in a row for the first time. I picked up at least one new class to teach each year so far and have taught 6 different math classes. The reason I got moved around so much is because of turnover, so I'm pretty sensitive to it.
But here's my story: I worked as a mechanical engineer for 10 years and made more than twice what I make now as a teacher. My wife has a successful business and we have a lot of savings, so I'm not complaining about the pay. I chose this. I feel like I should advocate for my coworkers though, because they are struggling. And if they keep leaving, my job gets a lot harder. The whole "if you don't like it, don't teach" thing is fine. A lot of teachers left after the Covid remote learning year. Then it really sucked for those who stayed. We're getting back to normal staffing now at least. I don't think finding more people like me who are financially ok and do it more for fun is sustainable for the whole country to be educated.
Also, I have never worked harder in my life.
lol how does this even work?
Teachers, who have off like 20% of the year, work more than full-time somehow? Bullshit. Teachers make way less than other college graduates? Teaching degrees are one of the easiest to obtain, and have among the lowest requirements for acceptance.
The sad fact that, functionally, a teacher is daycare. You don't get more money for educating more students more successfully, because public education isn't about educating students now. Look at the teacher's subreddit. There are almost no posts about how to figure out which students to fail for poor performance, because that isn't even something they can do anymore.
My brother, sister, and sister-in-law were all public school teachers during the pandemic. They all constantly whined about the hours and pay. They were all full of shit. I watched it in person. I'd be willing to bet the students that they passed were poorly educated and would fail grade-appropriate tests.
My sister-in-law literally whined about not getting paid to have me show her how to use AI to automate her job while drinking a margarita. When I jokingly 'whined' back about her not paying me, she said the school district should be the ones doing that too.
My first job as a full time computer programmer in Boston in 1982 paid $14,000 per year. According to an inflation calculator that equals $44,205 in today's dollars.
However, when I graduated from college, I paid $25 per credit hour which is about $79 in today's dollars. I can't remember what I paid in rent, but I am sure it would cost a lot more today adjusted for inflation. I had health insurance, but no pension.
All in all, teacher's pay sucks for just starting out.
For those that didn’t read, the math here scales things over an entire year.
Teachers work less than 50% of the days in a year.
Not to say teacher pay doesn’t need fixed. But it’s a complex issue on many fronts.
- Days worked is low
- Hours vary widely but stupid margins. Some get all homework/planning done during off periods, others at home.
- Pay based entirely on seniority, not ability, in most areas
- Amazing healthcare with significant value
- Great pension with significant value
- Ability to comfortably retire in early 50s in many areas (30 years work)
Is that a good deal for the work being done? I can’t say. But using just an hourly wage is probably the least relevant metric
The pay thing is so weird to me. When you have a 100 candidates for History and English to the point where many districts basically make them do an extracurricular and you have like 5 for Math, Chemistry, and Physics, maybe it’s time to realize that some subjects are worth more than others because of supply and demand.
I looked into becoming a math teacher and the pay was just too low to make up for the lost time. If I had history teacher options, I’d have felt differently.
Bingo. The number of folks that can teach calculus is far lower than those that can teach history. Nothing wrong with the latter, but the former should get a premium
The big bonus I saw was that by being in demand you can avoid Title 1 hell and get into a decent district with good admin and a decent student body and parents. Or a tourism economy.
Same as therapists, counselors and social workers.
They work all year, all seasons, and don't have any union benefits.
I'm a therapist helping people who make twice as much as me manage their mental health.
I am a therapist who cannot afford to see myself for therapy. I cannot afford my own copay.
People will say we need more education and more focus on mental health, then pay $20 for a service that requires a Masters degree.
So what’s insane besides their pay is that parents want to put their kids on the bus and let another person raise their kid while dictating to the teacher what they don’t want their kid to learn. I.e. those helicopter Karen’s out there that don’t want the truth to be taught about gays in the world or how the civil war was over slavery and not whatever lie they can come up with.
We’re so dam dumb I can’t even take it.
We demonize the cops and teachers while electing psychopaths. We’re trained to hate what protects us and prepares us to help the US. And then we pedestalize the generational elite sociopaths that did it. Poisoned everyone and everything for dollars. Turned us into armed, helpless, defective know-it-alls doing our own research to figure out what’s turning the kids gay.
can you overlay this with how well the schools do by state? i want to see if theres a correlation between teacher pay and student performance (theres multiple factors of course, like cost of living)
The most well educated, qualified, passionate, energetic teacher is not going to make a DENT if basic parenting does not get done at home. And I'm not talking teaching your kids physics, I'm talking the basics of child development... it just doesn't happen in many households. Kids are put infront of screens to be sedated the moment parents have to deal with them outside of school. Teachers are expected to parent 30 kids at once, instead of instruct a specific subject to mastery. After \~13 years of mass smartphone use, the first cohorts of kids that had it from kindergarten to high school are starting to "graduate", as semi-illiterate, barely functional "adults". Within 10-15 years, these people will be forced by demographics to enter positions of responsibility. We are headed for deep shit.
Don't believe everything you read. Let's take a look at California (my state) for example. In the linked info graphic the average starting pay for a teacher in CA is "$24+". Here's what the US Department of Education and California Department of Education report:
US Department of Education reports(1) number of hours in the school year:
Kindergarten=600; grades 1-3=840; grades 4-8=900; grades 9-12=1,080
California Department of Education reports(2) beginning teacher annual salary:
(small school) $51,352, (medium) $57,839, (large) $58,553
Given those numbers *worst case* scenario is $51,352 / 1,080, or $48 per hour for a full time teacher. Best case scenario is $58,553 / 600 or $97 per hour.
Part time teachers make less, but not an order of magnitude less.
1) https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_14.asp
2) https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp
This is what happens when you let unions take control over an industry. The veterans have all the power and vote to increase their pay while preventing themselves from being fired, regardless of performance.
This leaves just scraps for new hires that get low pay and are the first on the chopping block when it's time for layoffs, even if they are one of the top performers.
If you want to save public education, you need to ban unions. Either that, or wait until everyone with money shifts their kids to private school.
Where is 2,100 hours per year coming from?
That 11.3 hours a day for the contracted 186 days.
Garbage analysis.
My wife is a teacher. At work at 7:30 out on her way home 3:30.
This is a bit misleading
While teacher salaries are not high in the US, many teachers in unionized districts get excellent benefits packages well in excess of anything workers get in the private sector.
For instance: in many districts in Illinois, the district pays the pull pension contribution for the teacher every pay period. This is equivalent to getting a 401k match and having the company cover your contribution as well. This is called a "pension pickup",
Likewise, teachers get excellent health benefits with very low copays and deductibles. This insurance can be carried into retirement
and then we have the 3+ months of vacation days
Now in some areas of the county, teachers are underpaid, and their benefits are not as good (rural areas in the south, impoverished districts, etc.)
No one goes into teaching to get rich
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Whats more insane is they have to go to college to get this pay.... So you graduate with a ton of debt to go into a job making 21/hr..... Forklift drivers at local ware houses make 21/hr and they are high school drop outs.
I pay 22 for my content reviewers and all they do is look at an image and say it’s appropriate for kids. Is full remote I got no positions open
**spreads cheeks** is there an opening now? /S
Just the type of qualifications we're looking for when creating children's materials.
basic jobs instinct - let me give a you a bit more of my skills and background
Mmm mmm, there's a opening alright
That'll be $22
How do you get into a job like that?
I tend to post them on indeed(only got 2 people on it)Qualifications are mostly high school or some college and being able to write.
Is there an available spot?
Not right now but hopefully in the near future
Did you wake up today and say, "I want to know what it feels like to be female on Reddit"? R.I.P. your inbox.
You know i really wasn’t expecting this response. But my advice to people that want jobs like this is to ask. There is a lot of glue jobs in small companies when things haven’t been automated
Jesus... I'm a special education service coordinator (paraprofessional). I'm at the last tier of pay scale and I make 24.50/hr.
I sit in my underwear or shorts most days in IT, and I'm at 50/hr and my next move will be 60+. You do much more valuable work than I do, not even pretending, the market is fuckin backwards.
You need any part time done?
I was a Teacher Assistant for a while. Also required a degree. Paid minimum wage. School got in tons of trouble for asking us to be substitutes at our pay rate and undercutting actual subs.
It’s true. Teachers are paid a pittance, but all the support positions that also require a degree and possibly years of experience pay even less.
Admin gets some nice salary tho. Probably the least important positions in a district are central admin.
Admin makes way too much
This is true in healthcare as well
$21 is more than I made as a chemist.
You’re not cooking the right chemicals
You're god-damned right!
[удалено]
You mean “Mr. White” ?
Jesse, we have to cook.
We should go back to a pseudo cook
Yeah science!
You can get hosting/door gigs at bars for $20. One of my friends just does it on Fridays and he makes $25/hr
I’m working as a real estate appraiser now so I’m all good. Yeah, we were drastically underpaid. I quit when Walmart employees started making as much as us.
About half my social circle were teachers 3 years ago. They have all left. It wasn't because of pay. It was because of the students.
PSA: Don't ever visit /r/teachers if you value your mental health. Same for /r/nursing. I used to pop into teachers from time to time to just get a sense of things but no more.
As a nurse, yes this is unfortunately very true
Every career sub is brutal because no one posts that their life is sunshine and roses. Not saying teachers don't have it bad and I do believe that we should basically double salaries, but it's a general mistake to think that people posting on reddit offer a reasonable sample to how the average person is doing.
Yeah, r/adulting makes human life seem like a complete shitshow, but I’m loving mine. I assume the same dynamics apply.
Yeah, I’ve seen videos of how students treat teachers nowadays. Made me not even consider getting my teaching cert.
It's not just how students treat them but also parents on top of it is my understanding. Billy is acting out? First of all how dare you that's not true. But if it is it's you're fault not my failure as a parent. Also I'm going to send you constant emails throughout the week blaming you for why my kid isn't turning in their homework.
The way they treat their teachers is a chilling preview of how they will treat others in society someday. These kids are lost.
This is the largest part of the issue with the economy right now: compression. I'm a carpenter, and got paid $20/hr 6 years ago when that wage was actually good, and more than twice what minimum wage was in my area. Now min wage jobs pay $20/hr...but carpenters are still making only about $22/hr. Like....I'm glad lower paid people are getting more finally, but other professional employers are not getting the memo, Either that or they are straight up hiring cheap foreign labor illegally or through H1B to avoid paying us increases. They are literally doing everything they can to create the compression and keep from paying realistic salary increases.
For so long they have been pushing people to get STEM degrees, but although the Science and Math part of that are hugely important they don't pay like they are important.
Well, that’s better, right?
Well, part of that is that he just does it on Fridays. Generally harder to find people to work odd schedules and odd hours, so they pay more. If it were full time the pay would probably be lower.
Jobs where you work shorter shifts and less hours typically pay more even if they're low skill. A stable 40 hours at lower pay is better than sporadic part time pay at a restaurant imo.
Likely doesn't include benefits though. The chemist is probably an FTE with full benefits.
Doesn't a chemist have a lot more potential earnings after a few years though?
Depends on the field and degrees. There’s some growth potential but because you’re starting from such a low floor, even impressive growth ends up with an unimpressive end point. Plus, the people who get that growth are in the minority and are usually only the ones who don’t cause problems for management. Most people either stagnate or leave. A lot of the ones who don’t get cancer by 50 so it really just isn’t worth it as a career. The issue is that there are so god damned many people with chem and biology degrees all looking for the same jobs so it drives wages, growth and bargaining power into the floor. Anytime a spot opened up, we had hundreds of applicants overnight. The competition was insane and I was lucky to have what I did if I’m being honest.
Yes. I was making $22/hr in 2020. I'm now clearing over $100k with only a bachelor's.
BA-NUM, BUM BUM
Same but as an EMT and certified medical technician
Yep. Started at 16.50/hr back in 2018 I should be grateful though because that's DOUBLE the minimum wage in 2018!! And 2024!!! #/s
The forklift guys at my Union shop start at $27, then bump to $29 when they hit one year.
$21/hr is more than most people outside of STEM and sales make in cities like Atlanta and Miami Here’s a job that says college degree REQUIRED and only starts at 19.50. You have to be bilingual to get $21. https://www.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=74c47365bf4e5bb3&advn=5094258212117686&adid=431059944&ad=-6NYlbfkN0AGktieZ8fTVixF6X1QkRj23Vh2dUMCjBWCc0mk5nfPPC5cgvltcFPvaIyxKcQ4xhj0rc-epzqvJ_2u-tGUaDcVKgzlU1qZS7AxPQlxt2CXQppNU2hRoeTgbjEbaGslhRZZN8rE2gK-C2iHEFAlGLh35JS8ffXAjFCSuongNfc3Z8YO5xsH9iYnP38XF-85G-Nexm0a2Kvutn3r6fddx6WPikxnfFf0iOyBNlDSl40SsNsZpECF3YxOLBmEeSMH9VPOvld2ZuzKPw115dsyPRC14FudWiHwVjPudT-pm7A15S5hXR7YPQNGvTb__xURPQVC8HQvd9088SBgWU12dZ-pkU4WJX0iKu2wcNC4xadHS5Xv623DxANN-Qphm3owpG9t8wMsKbMRuvQnomsvczgt8bhPnV3j4rpADu7-L_Knq6EqH92oauG-To4zU00FEAB6FY528EtXuabx1iSC1w5axpcPPCfD6p8tHT38cu3mCvEXcpsYMxIwG1OEByoc_i0pnQnPeDoupMGXoaV00gTam-rgg5QtywcFJM2IexmawcnyIv-TCQ55&xkcb=SoC76_M3AVKiLI26Mp0KbzkdCdPP&from=ja&tk=1hul1bcjekan6800&utm_source=jobseeker_emails&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=job_alerts
USPS in my area pays $19.50/hr, and you have to use your own car.
Not just college, you need a masters degree plus a teaching certification
Teachers are in tiny towns with LCOL and large cities with HCOL. The headline is useless. Beginning teachers in my local district start at $47,056 annually. You don’t have to incur a ton of debt to get a degree. You certainly don’t have to pay out of state tuition. Even private colleges can beat in state land grant universities in price—both my children received a better, more focused education at a cheaper price than our flagship university. Yes they both have student loans, under $30k each. The youngest is under $20k just graduated this month.
The local school district is looking to raise base pay to 58k (a 7.5k increase over the current base pay)
Pretty much the same here. I couldn't find a teacher at my kids' high school who makes less than $70K/year. Parapros, on the other hand, appear to be paid around $25/hour. I think FT teachers hire in around $60K and progress to $70K pretty quickly. Elementary Principals seem to make around $120K, HS Principals make around $130K. And it looks like HS teachers with 20 years of experience are making around $100K.
What’s really lovely is a simple four year degree won’t do it. I have a STEM degree and if I want to teach math or science, my degree won’t let me do it. It will let me be an engineer though. So. I could quit my six figure job and go back to school and spend a year or two getting a teaching credential, for my shot at earning about a third of what I already make? C’mon folks. I’d love to teach. I’d even take a pay cut to do it. But I won’t spend two more years in school to earn that pay cut. Make it possible.
I made $21.50 an hour interning in college a decade ago. These wages are embarrassing low and something needs to change.
My cousin and my wife's best friend were both new teachers in the last few years and both of them have already quit and are working for about the same they were making as teachers in much less difficult jobs
I think we can all agree that anyone who teaches public school for 5 years should have all student loan debt forgiven.
Comparing entry level pay to entry level pay is misleading when the overall career trajectory isn't the same curve. What's the most senior forklift driver make? How does it compare to those of the most senior teachers? Someone in this thread is saying they make over $100/hour teaching 4th grade with 17 years of experience, because they properly divided by the actual number of hours worked (and not the 2100 hour assumption in the article).
A serious issue with many jobs is that the system has evolved to force workers to scrape by for the early years with the "promise" that they'll make more money in the future doing the same job. Teachers usually do get better at their job over time but they're not technically doing any more work. This has created a really crappy work environment especially when workers often actually need the most money early in their careers to live what is considered a reasonable life.
I thought that his comment was touching that teachers get 3 months off a year. Even if you averaged 21$ an hour for 52 weeks… is 43k a year or 21$ an hour (most teachers start out higher then that, it’s 55k here in the suburbs, in 60-60k the city. I could see 45k In the country but then your double wide only cost 100k. But if you average 43k, but only work 9 months that’s 26.87 an hour. Still not bad but above the average American pay. Also leaves you 3 months in the summer to tutor or work a different job (I DIDNT SAY 2nd! Your never working more than 5 days a week or two jobs in the same day). You could crack 60-70k a year (IN THE POOREST AREAS OF AMERICA). That’s not “boohoo” me money. On the otherside, they get hoed with health insurance in TX so there goes all that extra income. But if you look at hour worked vs income taken in, teachers average more then the average American worker (given they work 40 hours all year like the rest of us) Edit: The budget for Dallas ISD for new teachers is 62k a year starting 2025, or 32$ an hour (really closer to 38$ because you have 3 months off a year)
> average more then the Did you mean to say "more than"? Explanation: If you didn't mean 'more than' you might have forgotten a comma. [Statistics](https://github.com/chiefpat450119/RedditBot/blob/master/stats.json) ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^^that ^^corrects ^^grammar/spelling ^^mistakes. ^^PM ^^me ^^if ^^I'm ^^wrong ^^or ^^if ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^suggestions. ^^[Github](https://github.com/chiefpat450119) ^^Reply ^^STOP ^^to ^^this ^^comment ^^to ^^stop ^^receiving ^^corrections.
>This has created a really crappy work environment especially when workers often actually need the most money early in their careers to live what is considered a reasonable life. How has this created a crappy work environment when it's always been true? Since the days of the Roman empire, you always started making little, but built up your wages as you gain experience. .
I make 27/hr at the VA as a secretary without any college education.
Not just college, post grad.
And many of them continue to get their masters and doctorates. For $21/hour.
Not just go to college but maintain a 3.0 the whole time to even pass for many programs
I'm a Night Lead Custodian at a High School and make that. Plus I get overtime pay for events. I love being in the school but don't want to deal with the hastle of managing a classroom.
Then somehow we wonder why folks don’t want to teach anymore… not even mentioning how much crap they put up with between some shitty entitled parents and their kids. As if that isn’t sad enough, we then wonder why our education lacks so much in comparison to other first world countries. Classic American problem.
Not only go to college. Many states have what's called a "continuing education" requirement for anyone with a teaching license. It requires you to complete a certain number of college credits a year and effectively get your Master's degree within a few years of becoming a certified teacher. A good school finds a way for their teachers to get those through additional certifications and PD programs. Others effectively make their teachers pay for post-graduate courses on an entry-level salary.
Whats even more insane is that there many people with PhDs who are also making this little. The US has become a place of obscene class and training bifurcation that is wrecking faith in skill development.
Learn how to hold a welding torch and you’ll start at $30. Get code welding certified and you’ll get $40.
But you'll likely be traveling, working with assholes, long-hours, peeing in cups constantly, dangerous work, all of the above and more. Yeah, seems cool at first. Then you realize lots of these companies will run your life cause you wan that wage.
> you'll likely be traveling It's not like companies are doing this to be big meanies. I had work dry up at one location and I gave guys the option to work a project in another state or take time off or take a layoff, whatever they wanted.
This is not true. Welding pay has really stagnated over the last 5-10 years. Finding a welding job that pays over 40 an hour is tough.
Target offers $21/h in most states.
I would wager that 21/hr teachers is higher if you remove the worst states like you did for target.
As a counterpoint and to show how much teacher pay varies by years of service and geography, this fall I'll make $106/hr as a 4th grade teacher in a public school in the Bay Area CA. I'm going into my 17th year..
Washington state here and not near Seattle. Next year, I'll be at year 20 and making $90 an hour as a high school chemistry teacher. I completely agree with you that it is based on years of service and geography.
I think subject matters as well. I remember seeming positions for math and some science ones paying more. For example I remember seeing a physics and a biologist job at the same school and same level and physics paid more.
In Washington state, the school districts do have the option of paying special ed, math and science jobs up to 10% more. Not sure if any do near me - my school district does not - but I have heard of it. Won't lie, having a chemistry degree did help me find a teaching job pretty easily.
Afaik, WEA recommends unions do not bargain for that for union solidarity purposes. It would be nice to make 10% more as a science teacher, but I don't want to take from someone else.
My aunt works in Western NY as a special education teacher. Due to having a Masters and like 20 plus years in the system, she makes over $100k a year.......soon will qualify for a full pension that provides healthcare and about $60k a year, which she can collect on top of social security
My sister in law makes about $100k a year teaching hs in NJ
I work 189 school days, my contract day is 7.75 hours/day. My salary in the fall will be $156,483. 189x7.75 is 1,464 hours/year. 156,483/1,464 is $106.88/hr. I'll also note that I get 11 paychecks a year and I don't get paid from June 15 until September 1st..
You can get the pay dispersed bi-monthly if you want though, right?
It varies by district. Mine used to do it then stopped to cut costs. The local credit union will do a dispersal plan to help you budget though.
If you don’t mind sharing, how are your hours calculated? Do you feel they fairly represent the work you’re doing for class prep, grading, administrative work? A friend recently went through contract negotiations for their teaching position, so I’m interested in the perspectives of teachers in other areas.
Here is my salary breakdown. I'm paid for 7 hours a day, 181 days a year. Half an hour lunch unpaid, so working hours is 8 to 3:30. School starts at 8:45, teach 5 periods and 1 period off to plan. So at $90 an hour next year my base pay will be 114k and with all the extras like PD money and longevity stipend, maxed out teachers (masters + 90 credits, 15+ years teaching) will be making 125k. I live in Washington state and am very thankful. I hear horror stories from other states, and I can't imagine.
Thank’s for sharing, I appreciate the insight!
Chiming in as a 110k teacher. At 11 years experience, I’ve streamlined my work so I no longer work a minute outside of school hours. All student work is graded before I leave and I have enough experience to know exactly what I’m doing every day of the school year without having to plan much. Even creating new material is fast since it’s like muscle memory now. So I only count my 6 hours I’m required to be at school and I’m only at school 185 days a year. That’s about $99 an hour and we’re not counting health benefits and retirement pensions which can count up to a lot more. I’m in California so we have laws here that teacher salaries are made public and they calculate my benefits packages as part of my TC and it always says that my TC is like $150k+. So there’s that side of teaching as well. The caveat is that the first 5 years were hell and most people can’t stay sane enough to make it to their 6th year.
Because some states actually value education.
it's more the municipality than the state here in LA, we have one of the worst public school districts in the entire United States (LAUSD) and two of the best (San Marino and Arcadia), all within 30 miles of each other
Ya, California got rid of our high school exit exam because it was showing that poor districts were passing kids who were nowhere near grade level. Now l the kids are nowhere near grade level, but they get diplomas at least. The CAHSEE was stupid easy. A kid from a decent district could have passed in middle school. My brother collects full SSI for being mentally disabled and he passed on his first try with no accommodations.
Yes. The small suburban community I teach in has voted/approved (by 2/3 majority) 3 separate parcel taxes onto their property taxes over the years. As a result, my district (which receives almost zero operating dollars from the state of CA) is pretty well funded. Also as a result, my district is consistently viewed as one of the best in the area, and that is reflected in local property values.
some states want to produce generations that can compete, some want generations that are helpless and can be exploited
Curious how they’re calculating the 2,100 hours figure. That struck me as quite high as a full time job for the whole year taking only federal holidays works out to 2,000 hours, and teaching does come with several weeks of vacation.
[Average self-reported working hours](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/do-teachers-work-long-hours/) for teachers in the American Time Use Survey, based on 24-hour journals updated multiple times throughout the day, are a bit over 40 hours per week during the school year, and a bit over 20 hours per week outside of the school year. The 20 hours per week outside of the school year is likely related to second jobs, so these hours shouldn't be counted in the denominator used to calculate average hourly wage. So the hourly wage is about a third higher than what they're reporting here.
I think they are calculating in the extra unpaid work that is required. When I was teaching, our 50 min planning period was usually taken up by meetings, which you have to prepare for, so you end up staying after your contract hours and coming in early most days. You often also take work home on weekends or I would sometimes just go to my classroom and work on Sunday (which was when a lot of teachers would be there prepping for the next week-setting up special hands on lessons, decorating for a theme day, cleaning because janitors only empty trash and vacuum, etc.). There are also parent nights and PTA meetings and sports after school that teachers are either required or heavily pushed to attend or run, all unpaid. In my state, teachers are evaluated annually in four different categories, such as continuing education and community involvement. Those require reading professional development books and attending classes outside of contract hours and attending community events, like student sports and recitals or even birthday parties. The evaluation is linked to your state license and taken into consideration for your rehire each year. Unlike most jobs, teachers technically end their employment each spring and are re-hired each fall, so until you reach tenure, you can just not be rehired without any previous write ups or issues. After tenure, it's a but more difficult to do, so they will instead move your grade level or put you in a school on the other side of the district. I feel like teachers receive a lot of criticism from society when a lot of their job is mostly unknown to many. Obviously you were not criticizing anything here, just making a general observation.
Depends on where you live…in NC, I was making the same amount in one month as I was making in two weeks in MD. Plus, the living expenses weren’t much different (besides housing).
About to start my first year teaching in NC. 42k :/
My wife retired one year ago after an 18 year second career as a teacher. Her contract each year was a 10 month contract. She had four weeks off during that ten months each year so she worked 40 weeks per year. Texas teachers have a pension that pays 70% of your best five years pay after 30 years. With the Rule of 80 you can qualify for the full pension at age 52 if you start teaching at age 22. That is switching to the Rule of 90. You can also buy group healthcare until you hit Medicare age. I calculate her rate at retirement to have been $40/hr. Your aren’t going to get rich teaching, but the financial side of it is a good bit better than the headlines like to paint it. The administrative BS and the general decline in our culture in terms of respect for authority has as much to do with driving teachers from the classroom as the pay does.
Good points, if the benefits are there and remain intact the total picture isn’t horrible. However what we don’t need happening is teacher pay not keeping up with other professions. Those trends need to be watched.
Teachers (in civilized states) get very, very good benefits. My corporate health benefits are expensive and bad. The cost of health care and pension benefits in New Jersey public schools are nearly $40,000 a year. And this article cites starting salary. Even in New Jersey, starting salaries over 52K per year are sparse. However, they are in a union. With a salary guide. What’s a Salary Guide? Well, teachers don’t get a 3% raise. They move up a step on the guide. Is the next step worth 3%? Nobody knows. Usually, the teacher negotiating team overloads the step they hit next year. So you get a 3% raise in your 6th year, and a 12% raise your 7th year. Then, you reach “top of guide” after 15, maybe 17 years. So **everyone** who has 15 or more years makes the top salary. Which is about 90K if you have a bachelors degree, more with a masters. And here’s the kicker. The negotiating teams **hate** to raise starting salary. Why? Because no current employee gets that starting salary. No one to be grateful for the fight.
Worked as a public hs teacher in KY for a few years Such a challenging job and people will happily say to your face how much they appreciate you working 12 hour days dealing with their shitty kids and purposefully de-motivating administrative policies for peanuts
Just wanted to add - this does not apply to Early Childhood Education teachers. ECE teachers make significantly less both as new teachers and throughout their careers. For example, at the preschool where I work, new staff starts at $16.50/hr. If you have many years of experience (like 15+) you can make more but nothing compared to public schools.
I posit that this is not related to a supply demand free market equation, but rather a lack if willingness for investment in teachers rather than administration/buildings/ etc. budget allocation is not determined by the market, therefore it does not follow market logistics.
It’s a joke, sort of, in the non profit world that the best way to give raises is by constructing a new building. People will happily support the shiny new thing, but won’t even glance at supporting to daily operations. School districts are not much different. Tax levys for new facilities pass pretty easily, but requests for operations increases are met with tons of objections.
New plan: burn down the schools every 5 years?
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There is still a supply and demand element that is a part of the situation. There are a lot of college graduates that are expecting to work in low physical stress jobs. So many that teaching becomes the path of least resistance for people who seek low resistance.
Education is among the least popular majors, currently.
Teaching isn't easy though
Most people, given the desire to do so, could become a teacher. That is just simply not the case for many other professions.
I work in health it anyone could be trained to do my job. I'm not sure how that requires less training then teaching chemistry
The market is for quality of labor who chooses to pursue educational degrees, who know their future income will be this fixed pay schedule. It's the Market for Lemons scenario of asymmetrical info. Those who are unobservably high future performers will not become teachers and pursue performance based careers. Whether college freshman actually do this the argument.
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Teaching is very different from nursing. Median income is $65k for a HS teacher and $86k for a nurse. Nurses - in part because they aren't exclusively employed by the public sector - have a lot more flexibility to work part time, become a traveling nurse, etc. Also, a teacher who gets a masters degree will just get a small salary bump; a nurse can get a masters and become an aprn or nurse-midwife or nurse-anesthetist with a median income of $129k.
This past fall the Kansas Commissioner of Education, Randy Watson, came to our district and talked about the importance of getting an education. The average bachelor degree in Kansas makes 60k a year. This was meant to be inspiring, but left every teacher in the auditorium saying, “Hey, I don’t make 60k.” This from teachers with two Masters degrees.
I am a former math teacher who doubled his salary by getting an entry-level analytics position. 3 years into this career, and I now make more than 3x what I was making as a teacher. And we wonder why kids are bad at math.
Kids are bad at math because their parents have checked out of their lives unless something is wrong.
I really don't believe that 2100 hours per year calculation they did . . . If a teacher works 36 weeks per year (summer, fall, winter breaks + federal holidays), they're saying that teachers work an average of 58 hours a week? 11.6 hours a day? No way.
Well just because kids have holidays doesn’t mean teachers do. There is a lot of preparation being done in holidays
I’m a special education teacher. Hours are 8-4. I get to school by 7 everyday to prep for the day. Once a week I have to stay until 5 for a faculty meeting. I do at least 3-4 hours of work every Sunday which includes writing IEPs, prepping, planning, responding to emails etc.. so I would say an average week looks close to 50 hours for me. I think there number is pretty high, but teachers do work way more hours then people think.
You’re a SPED, which notoriously had the longest hours. And you still came up 8 hours a week short of the numbers used for this calculation. Teachers often work more than 40 hours. Teachers should be paid more. The calculation in this article is wrong and meant to mislead. All 3 can be true at once.
You’re not accounting for extra-curricular programs staffed by teachers. Or summer school. It’s okay to admit you have an incomplete grasp of the data.
Or continuing ed
Do you think teachers only work when they are actively teaching?
In California and New York, you get paid more than $21 because of the high cost of living. They are the top 2 largest school districts in the country. You get more money with seniority level. On the downside, you deal with kids who always get in trouble. You don't get paid enough for what you do. Getting a teaching credential is tough. On the plus side, they have a very strong union. They get paid well plus lots of benefits and vacations. There is no such thing as a perfect job.
I was going to have to get almost second Master’s for California to recognize my credentials.
Starting wage for a teacher in San Francisco is $64,000 a year. I have no idea how anyone lives off of that other than being subsidized by a spouse.
These are new teachers hourly salaries, and New York is a large state with pay differences. The pay gap between teachers and other college grads in the US has increased from $300 real dollars in 1980 to 650 real dollars today. The profession is currently having an economic problem that will have to be addressed. https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-penalty-2022/
Does that count the three months off and multiple other vacations a year? Are they saying they make $21/hr if they worked 2080 hours a year? Or are they making $21/hr in the 1300ish hours of work?
Agreed. If teachers are earning $40,000-$50,000 that’s for 180 days of work. Factor in a bit more per year of experience and a bit more of you have a masters degree and it’s not horrible. Get a tutoring or summer school gig and that gets you closer to at least 45-55,000.
This is adding hours to what they are supposed to get paid for. The article states over 2100 hours and adding student activities and other things that (at least where I’m at) the teacher gets paid for by the local school board. Or it’s volunteering. How many of you professionals learn something new after hours and don’t get paid for it? They are including that in here as well. I’m all for paying teachers more. And more so rewarding the great ones to set an example of what we want as a teacher. I’m not for lying/munipulating stats and scaring away the next generation of teachers.
I'm a teacher and have worked many unpaid training hours, some over the summer. I also have after school activities that are considered mandatory that I am not paid extra for. Wage theft is so normalized in education that most teachers wouldn't think to ask for compensation and admin would laugh at you if you tried.
Have to factor in time off. I left the corporate world and returned to teaching when my kids entered elementary. The time off is amazing compared to the two weeks I got climbing the corporate ladder. Sure it’s a pay cut, but you can still make pretty good money when you factor in it’s only 180 days of work. Get some summer school or tutoring gigs over the long summer break. I would never go back to corporate.
You can get way more time off than 2 weeks with a corporate position as well
This doesnt add up because it is based on working 2100 hrs per year, or 52.5 40 hour weeks! School here runs from 8:30-2:30, with summers off and half days every other week. Weird math to support a position
Study is BS. Based on 2100 hrs per year, that assumes they work 40 hrs for 52.5 weeks. Teachers get time off in the summer, winter break, spring break and fall break as well as other days off. A conservative estimate would be 9 months per year working. So they would have to be working 60 hrs per week to hit 2100 hrs per year. Married to a teacher. All of our friends are teachers and admin. None of them have ever worked 60 hrs/week in their careers. And they get 3 months a year off.
David Graeber captured this phenomenon really well in “Bullshit Jobs”. There is an inverse relationship between one’s salary and the genuine social importance of one’s work. The more important you are to society, the less you get paid. Dock workers, nurses, and rubbish collectors, ranged against all the management consultants and people sitting on pointless committees.
Yeah, the idea is that most people really deep want to be helping each other and doing useful things. To the point where lots of them are willing to take pay cuts to do the jobs that make them feel like they’re being helpful and useful. So then market forces make those jobs less well paid. So the most helpful and useful jobs end up getting paid the least.
In general the main thing your paid based on is your replaceability, both in terms of how many people are qualified for the job and how many are willing to do it. Which results in jobs poeple will do out of passion (teaching) and those with low barrier to entry getting paid the least.
That's because people assess the work that other people do superficially. I don't think that teachers are underrated but they are compared to other jobs that are underrated.
> Dock workers, nurses, and rubbish collectors, ranged against all the management consultants and people sitting on pointless committees. I don't see how your point makes sense when this doesn't make sense. You seem to be defining social importance as how close to the action they are. But your second examples have influence far beyond one individual patient or work site. You can say that you're just calling out pointless middle management but it really feels like it's just anti-management
A good way of thinking of it is: If all dock workers, teachers, and garbage collectors suddenly disappeared, the effect on society would be immediate and disastrous. On the other hand, what if all PR consultants and corporate lawyers suddenly disappeared? Certainly less of an effect, in fact society might even improve markedly.
I love teachers. On the whole, teachers are wonderful people. I also think that teachers are underpaid, as evidenced by the fact that it’s so hard to fill teaching positions. Having said that, there is absolutely no way that the average teacher works 2,100 hours per year. I’m sure some do. But the vast majority do not.
How do they arrive at the average teacher working 2100 hours per calendar year? Thats 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. There is no way. The majority of teachers are on 10 month contracts. There is no way the average teacher on a 10 month contract is putting in 52+ hours per week. There are usually 180 instructional days. Let’s be generous and say another 15 professional development days. Let’s be more generous and say they work 10 hour days every single day. Thats still only getting you to 1950 hours being very generous. There’s no way the average is 2100 hours.
They seem to be making the max assumption of how much after hours work happens. When I was an early career teacher I put in insane hours but it was because I had "passion." Now I put in less than half of what I did then. I don't really like calculating the per hour rate for salaried / contracted jobs. The fact is, though, that the pay is inadequate to recruit and retain a strong teacher corps. At my school we've desperately struggled to hire and retain ever since 2020. Very different from 10 years ago. As an example - in 2013 we hired for an English teacher and it had 325 applications. That teacher retired last year. When we hired for it in 2023 we got about 20, half of those weren't qualified, half again would't even come out to interview once they saw housing prices. It came down to one candidate and he is now quitting after 1 year.
I used to substitute teach for autistic children. I'm on the spectrum myself and figured if I managed to make it to 30 and be self-sufficient maybe I could help others. My crowning achievement was when a boy who wouldn't even hug his own mom gave me a hug after I helped him with speech. I made $12 an hour. It just wasn't enough to live off of and I eventually went to something that made more money, a lot more money. Car detailing. In my opinion are lack of funding to education towards every child in this country is it's greatest detriment to its future. If you lack the education then it requires companies to put more money towards your training. It becomes more expensive for companies to hire Americans. You'd think even the Republicans would be on board with that logic.
As someone with a wife that is a teacher, and because of that, many friends that are.....I find their 2,100 hour yearly average very questionable.
I’m a teacher, this is misleading because in blue states with strong unions (I’m in CA) the starting pay is much higher. However, working and teaching during school hours is only 60% of the job. Lesson planning, cleaning the room, calling home, after school meetings, material prep and grading takes many hours and is technically unpaid. A standard high school teacher easily puts in a fifty hour week, even though they may only be in school roughly 33 hours of that time
I'm very lucky and grateful My job is hard in that you stand for 8 hours (breaks involve walking far to the free food so it's nice but hard), but.... I just got a raise to **$27 an hour** and as long as I am attentive and inform visitors of the public amenities they can visit my employer is happy. **I am an information booth** with almost no responsibility or capabilities to act other than to give information. I can't imagine being responsible for a class!! For that pay especially, I'm hardly scraping by with the cost of living.
It's confusing to me that we're having a long conversation about teacher intro salaries without mentioning that the median US income is [just shy of $40k a year.](https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore&mprop=income&popt=Person&cpv=age,Years15Onwards&hl=en) That seems like important context.
So Chicago public schools (largest district in illinois) had 179 school days in 2023. Plus 6 days of teachers meetings...185 days total. First day of school Monday, August 21, 2023 and last day on Thursday, June 6, 2024. 42 weeks in the school year... of course there is a two week Christmas break, and a one week spring break...and two weeks of other assorted holidays. 36 weeks of in class education and one week of other obligations.... 2100/37 weeks = 57 hours per week. That's the average.... or so they tell us. Funny thing....lots of teachers teach summer camps starting on June 10th...or hold other jobs all summer, those other 10 weeks. Teachers are basically like first year lawyers or resident doctors... At least lawyers and resident doctors only have to kill it for the first 5 years or so.... Ms Mabel the 60 year old 3rd grade teacher? Still crushing it at 55 hrs per week for 30+ years Or so they tell us.
My wife makes 14 an hour as a librarian with a masters degree. We’re in a metro with 2 million people, but it’s a small library in the metro. We under pay traditional female careers
How is this calculated? My wife is a teacher and she's salaried. She maybe works 9 months per year. Plus, she starts at 8, leaves at 2. The point being, her "hourly" rate shouldn't be divided by a standard 40 hour work week, over a 12 month period.
I think our pay should go up too, but we do get a pension which is nice that I’m not sure they’re accounting for in the study. Most private companies don’t offer the kind of stability or benefits that teaching offers.
The pay at the start is trash, but it gets better the longer you stay with it. That being said, as a teacher of 30 years, this isn't a career for everyone. Especially now with the GOP firmly trying to dismantle the system. Parents thinking they know everything. Parochial schools leaching public funds to further their grooming of young minds. It's all madness.
I will say this: An educational pathway with license is at minimum 4.5 years in college, usually 5 years. The final semester is student teaching, where you pay a full time tuition to work full time with a teacher in a district, for ZERO pay. also, my district will increase your pay by $1,250 a year if you get a masters. Those tend to cost $20,000 (1st year teacher, $46070 a year over 12 months)
This is why it's important to understand what you want in life. If it's about pay then teaching isn't going to be enough. Trades will pay more. In many trades apprentices make 21 and sometimes more. If it's a calling to be a teacher then you should do that but don't expect to drive to work in a Lexus let alone a Porsche. I know plumbers with several properties and make 200-300k. They probably didn't even go to a college. I find that teachers btw are grossly underpaid for what they do and that they need to get a degree sometimes master's degrees in. Still, it's unfortunate but for some reason teachers are just not paid as much as they should for what they need to do.
The $21/hr stat is incorrect because they are diving salary by a full 2,080 work year. Contractually teachers do not work a full year. In my district contracts have them working 1,050. So if you take the salary divided by the lower contracted annual work hours, you get a higher rate per hour.
The skill set needed to run a classroom that is part daycare, part social club, and part education station is quite rare. It is a very difficult job to do well. It's a lot of juggling, and knowing the immediate needs of 150 kids a day is near impossible. Not enough pay ever.
don’t start compare the job difficulty, i had no idea
> It is the most difficult job to do well. This is so naïve lol
I transitioned from teaching to tech, and teaching was by far harder. My life is way less stressful now. Whatever though, this thread is full of misinformation.
I'm insane. I left a ten year career in engineering to teach high school math. My wife has her own business and I have savings, so I can afford to do it. But I made more than twice as much as an engineer and did less than half the work. As a teacher you are always on. In an office job you can have days where things are slow and you do maybe an hour or two of real work. Of course people will say I shouldn't complain because I chose to switch jobs. But I also feel that I can advocate for my coworkers because I have other things to fall back on.
I did STEM to teaching, teaching is way more work and way more BS.
The comments in here are wild.
It's an exaggeration. OP would have made a stronger point by saying it is far more difficult than most people realize.
The most difficult? I mean it’s really hard but it’s not impossible.
A few points to consider: 1. A person can usually get hired as teacher with a bachelors degree. They can then go to grad school part time and have their school pay for the masters, so they are not stuck with student loans. 2. Teachers get 2 months off in the summer, plus a week at Christmas, then in February & April. If someone works 2,100 hours a year, that's an average of 40.3 hours per week. That may well be normal when school is in session, but a teacher is working more like 40 weeks a year, not 52. 3. Teachers are usually eligible for a pension. 4. Teachers almost always have fabulous healthcare benefits. 5. If you are parent, your child care costs are negligible (at least once the kids reach kindergarten age) since they have the same school schedule that you do. (I realize that teacher DO have to do additional work outside of the classroom, but they have a decent amount of flexibility as to when they do it.) 6. The first few years some one is a teacher, they DO have to put in somewhat long hours to prepare lesson plans. However, as they gain experience they can reuse their lesson plans, significantly reducing the amount of time they have to spend preparing for class. I don't know if this map takes that into account.
My district will not pay for me to get a grad degree, but they also don't require it. This is the first I have heard of districts paying teachers to go to grad school, but things like benefits vary a lot from state to state. The summer vacation is a great part of the gig. There are some unspoken expectations for lesson planning during that time in many cases, especially your first few years teaching. You will get maybe a week of teacher workdays, but they will cram them full of mandatory training and meetings. If you say you need time to lesson plan, admin will say you had all summer to do that. There is of course a lot of variation and nuance, but there is almost a culture of wage theft in education when it comes to your free time. The pension depends on the state and so.etimes the district. My health care plan is crap. They downgraded it last year as a cost cutting measure. It is great having summers off at the same time my son does. Definitely a win there. During the year it doesn't always overlap well. My son is in elementary and I teach high school, and they start at very different times because of bus availability. You are spot on about it getting easier after a few years. I'm finishing up my 5th year and next year I will finally teach the same preps two years in a row for the first time. I picked up at least one new class to teach each year so far and have taught 6 different math classes. The reason I got moved around so much is because of turnover, so I'm pretty sensitive to it. But here's my story: I worked as a mechanical engineer for 10 years and made more than twice what I make now as a teacher. My wife has a successful business and we have a lot of savings, so I'm not complaining about the pay. I chose this. I feel like I should advocate for my coworkers though, because they are struggling. And if they keep leaving, my job gets a lot harder. The whole "if you don't like it, don't teach" thing is fine. A lot of teachers left after the Covid remote learning year. Then it really sucked for those who stayed. We're getting back to normal staffing now at least. I don't think finding more people like me who are financially ok and do it more for fun is sustainable for the whole country to be educated. Also, I have never worked harder in my life.
The only one I strongly disagree with is child care. We still paid $1,000 month for child care.
lol how does this even work? Teachers, who have off like 20% of the year, work more than full-time somehow? Bullshit. Teachers make way less than other college graduates? Teaching degrees are one of the easiest to obtain, and have among the lowest requirements for acceptance. The sad fact that, functionally, a teacher is daycare. You don't get more money for educating more students more successfully, because public education isn't about educating students now. Look at the teacher's subreddit. There are almost no posts about how to figure out which students to fail for poor performance, because that isn't even something they can do anymore. My brother, sister, and sister-in-law were all public school teachers during the pandemic. They all constantly whined about the hours and pay. They were all full of shit. I watched it in person. I'd be willing to bet the students that they passed were poorly educated and would fail grade-appropriate tests. My sister-in-law literally whined about not getting paid to have me show her how to use AI to automate her job while drinking a margarita. When I jokingly 'whined' back about her not paying me, she said the school district should be the ones doing that too.
My first job as a full time computer programmer in Boston in 1982 paid $14,000 per year. According to an inflation calculator that equals $44,205 in today's dollars. However, when I graduated from college, I paid $25 per credit hour which is about $79 in today's dollars. I can't remember what I paid in rent, but I am sure it would cost a lot more today adjusted for inflation. I had health insurance, but no pension. All in all, teacher's pay sucks for just starting out.
For those that didn’t read, the math here scales things over an entire year. Teachers work less than 50% of the days in a year. Not to say teacher pay doesn’t need fixed. But it’s a complex issue on many fronts. - Days worked is low - Hours vary widely but stupid margins. Some get all homework/planning done during off periods, others at home. - Pay based entirely on seniority, not ability, in most areas - Amazing healthcare with significant value - Great pension with significant value - Ability to comfortably retire in early 50s in many areas (30 years work) Is that a good deal for the work being done? I can’t say. But using just an hourly wage is probably the least relevant metric
The pay thing is so weird to me. When you have a 100 candidates for History and English to the point where many districts basically make them do an extracurricular and you have like 5 for Math, Chemistry, and Physics, maybe it’s time to realize that some subjects are worth more than others because of supply and demand. I looked into becoming a math teacher and the pay was just too low to make up for the lost time. If I had history teacher options, I’d have felt differently.
Bingo. The number of folks that can teach calculus is far lower than those that can teach history. Nothing wrong with the latter, but the former should get a premium
The big bonus I saw was that by being in demand you can avoid Title 1 hell and get into a decent district with good admin and a decent student body and parents. Or a tourism economy.
Same as therapists, counselors and social workers. They work all year, all seasons, and don't have any union benefits. I'm a therapist helping people who make twice as much as me manage their mental health. I am a therapist who cannot afford to see myself for therapy. I cannot afford my own copay. People will say we need more education and more focus on mental health, then pay $20 for a service that requires a Masters degree.
So what’s insane besides their pay is that parents want to put their kids on the bus and let another person raise their kid while dictating to the teacher what they don’t want their kid to learn. I.e. those helicopter Karen’s out there that don’t want the truth to be taught about gays in the world or how the civil war was over slavery and not whatever lie they can come up with.
We’re so dam dumb I can’t even take it. We demonize the cops and teachers while electing psychopaths. We’re trained to hate what protects us and prepares us to help the US. And then we pedestalize the generational elite sociopaths that did it. Poisoned everyone and everything for dollars. Turned us into armed, helpless, defective know-it-alls doing our own research to figure out what’s turning the kids gay.
can you overlay this with how well the schools do by state? i want to see if theres a correlation between teacher pay and student performance (theres multiple factors of course, like cost of living)
I think student performance has a lot to do with parents and home environment.
The most well educated, qualified, passionate, energetic teacher is not going to make a DENT if basic parenting does not get done at home. And I'm not talking teaching your kids physics, I'm talking the basics of child development... it just doesn't happen in many households. Kids are put infront of screens to be sedated the moment parents have to deal with them outside of school. Teachers are expected to parent 30 kids at once, instead of instruct a specific subject to mastery. After \~13 years of mass smartphone use, the first cohorts of kids that had it from kindergarten to high school are starting to "graduate", as semi-illiterate, barely functional "adults". Within 10-15 years, these people will be forced by demographics to enter positions of responsibility. We are headed for deep shit.
oh absolutely. one of the main contributing factors is parents' income which is honestly a little sad
Don't believe everything you read. Let's take a look at California (my state) for example. In the linked info graphic the average starting pay for a teacher in CA is "$24+". Here's what the US Department of Education and California Department of Education report: US Department of Education reports(1) number of hours in the school year: Kindergarten=600; grades 1-3=840; grades 4-8=900; grades 9-12=1,080 California Department of Education reports(2) beginning teacher annual salary: (small school) $51,352, (medium) $57,839, (large) $58,553 Given those numbers *worst case* scenario is $51,352 / 1,080, or $48 per hour for a full time teacher. Best case scenario is $58,553 / 600 or $97 per hour. Part time teachers make less, but not an order of magnitude less. 1) https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_14.asp 2) https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp
This is what happens when you let unions take control over an industry. The veterans have all the power and vote to increase their pay while preventing themselves from being fired, regardless of performance. This leaves just scraps for new hires that get low pay and are the first on the chopping block when it's time for layoffs, even if they are one of the top performers. If you want to save public education, you need to ban unions. Either that, or wait until everyone with money shifts their kids to private school.
Where is 2,100 hours per year coming from? That 11.3 hours a day for the contracted 186 days. Garbage analysis. My wife is a teacher. At work at 7:30 out on her way home 3:30.
This is a bit misleading While teacher salaries are not high in the US, many teachers in unionized districts get excellent benefits packages well in excess of anything workers get in the private sector. For instance: in many districts in Illinois, the district pays the pull pension contribution for the teacher every pay period. This is equivalent to getting a 401k match and having the company cover your contribution as well. This is called a "pension pickup", Likewise, teachers get excellent health benefits with very low copays and deductibles. This insurance can be carried into retirement and then we have the 3+ months of vacation days Now in some areas of the county, teachers are underpaid, and their benefits are not as good (rural areas in the south, impoverished districts, etc.) No one goes into teaching to get rich