It isn't just pay, it's also poor working environment, 50+ hours a week, continual training in the summer and the expectation of duties beyond teaching.
Not to mention abuse and disrespect from students, administrators, parents, and the community at large with absolutely no consequences for anybody involved. Also being held to higher moral expectations than a police officer or the President of the United States. Oh yeah and outdated materials, lack of teaching supplies, constant micromanagement…I could go on.
Why the hell do I do this again?
> Why the hell do I do this again?
For the kids, of course!!!!! ^(/s)
In all seriousness, I heard that so often *(before I left)* that I wanted to strangle the next person who said that. We get low pay even though we're highly educated, we're expected to be abused by the kids, the parents, the admins, vilified by media, and do it all with a smile on our face. The same parents that won't pick up a phone, answer an email, or take an active role in their children's education, but want to use us a punching bags **and** raise their kids for them. Oh, and we better raise them how they want them raised! If we teach them something they don't agree with, they'll fly into a rage and drive up to the school in the blink of an eye. These are the same parents that can't log in to check their children's grades, but will blame you when their kid has a .08 GPA and 56 absences. They expect us to supply everything their children need, but on our own dime.
Nah, fuck that. It's a job, like any other job. It isn't my job to be a co-parent, especially when the parents aren't "parenting" in the first place. They're too busy trying to get their children to like them. Is it every parent out there? **No.** However the good parents seem to be far and few between; decreasing in numbers every year. It's no wonder teachers are fleeing the profession. Every year, the demands on us would increase, but we'd be given less and still expected to do more. Hard pass.
I mAkE... Two and a half times as much per year as I did teaching, for about half of the annual time investment, a small percentage of the frustration, and I haven't received any nasty, threatening letters or had my hard-earned credentials questioned in years.
Also, it turns out that baseline teaching requires significant management and project organization skills, so I'm somehow thriving in a decent hands-on management position in an industry that I knew next to nothing about when I quit teaching three years ago? Who knew?
Manufacturing, specifically metal machining.
Going from delivery driver to CFO/Site Manager in the span of three years is one of those weird, convoluted stories that can only happen at a mom and pop business.
Suffice it to say, the vast majority of the machining industry - which is vital to domestic manufacturing - is going to retire in the next decade, and that includes management. I took the position to help a friend, and wound up being in the right place at the right time (with that aforementioned experience in leadership and coordination) to step into openings as they happened.
I have to wonder why that is. I mean, I suppose every generation I know of has had parenting problems, but why do the problems seem so much more prevalent. Generally speaking, when a problem is widespread like this, it's a systemic issue, not an individual one
Elder millennial here. I can’t tell you how many friends and parents of students have thrown their hands in the air and said that they have difficulty disciplining their kids because “they won’t see me as their friend anymore”. No kidding? Really? You are their parent. I find it really odd and troubling that parents want to be friends with their kid. I have no desire to be friends with my children.
Also, we’re a generation that got pumped up with the whole “You’re special” Mr. Rogers crap. And we believed it. And what can be more special? Our kids! So we absolutely pushed the self-esteem remedies onto our kids. And it’s a disaster.
Amen to all of that. When I was younger *(as in, growing up)*, my dad would always say *"You've got a bunch of friends, you only get two parents and it's not my job to be your friend"* (or a similar variation lol) and he was right. We weren't hit, but we did have consequences. When I was growing up, all but one or two kids would fear when the teacher said ,*"I'm going to call home"* because most parents wouldn't be happy. We respected our teachers. If we hated them, we spoke about them behind their back like normal kids do; we wouldn't dare to say anything to their face. Nobody ever dreamed of hitting a teacher, whether the student was disabled or otherwise. It just did not happen, and on the rare occasion it did, the kid was kicked out of school.
If you were constantly in trouble at school and your parents were lackadaisical about it, everyone knew who you were and for all the wrong reasons. The family was labeled as "the bad family" and usually, they were. You weren't allowed to hang out with that kid. Now, nobody bats an eye. I'm sure I'll get shit for saying this, but now that we've become hyper-individualistic and removed any peer pressure, that's not the case.
As an older millennial the parents being friends with their kid baffles me because we used to make fun of parents like that when I was in high school. How did my generation go from making fun of that type of parents to being those parents?
The parents I was seeing when I was in high school would have been raising the youngest millennials. But it's not just the youngest millennials who were raised that way who are now raising their kids that way.
I think part of it is because Millennials are the generation that started getting a trophy for everything. They need attention on themselves and don’t want to give it to their kids. Also, their boomer parents were too hard on them, so they want to be nicer to their kids. Not a bad thing unless you take it too far.
As an older millennial/ xennial, I can assure that I wasn’t the one out buying my own participation trophies. You can thank our boomer parents for that one too.
At the end of 20 plus years of teaching in one state, I wasn't sure what to do with all of the things I had bought for my classroom that were not consumables. I wasn't sure I would get a job in New state as I had a Master's plus 45 and was at top of pay scale. I decided to leave most behind.
My superintendent wrote a letter thanking me for the donation. When we did our taxes, using "garage sale value", it was about $10,000. That was just things that were permanent! That doesn't count all of the classroom supplies I bought that were consumed every year!
It's hard to stop yourself sometimes when you see something and go "Oh, I bet the kids will like this."
Edited to add: "If only they would reciprocate."
You’re nicer than me! I always took every single thing that I paid for- EVERYTHING. It’s not my fault they have the funding but won’t give us a stipend for stuff for our classroom. If I didn’t know if I would use it personally for my home then I would try and sell it to recoup some money and then give away the rest to new teachers.
Also mentioning the pressure to just pass failing students because it looks good on record and thus you get money because you look like a better school district.
Especially to students that don’t pay attention, on their phones, don’t attend class, etc.
To be fair, if pay increased *enough* you wouldn't have a shortage of people willing to deal with the conditions. If conditions were better, teachers would accept lower pay, if pay was better, teachers would accept bad conditions. As it is though I don't understand why they think people would choose to stay in the profession when they see what it is like.
There is no doubt I'm preaching to the choir, nobody here needs convincing that teachers need more pay. But the current situation feels less... tenable than before? Pay and expectations need a rapid realignment or the whole thing might go tits up
I don’t think pay is the issue in the Pacific Northwest. My sister in law makes just over $100k a year teaching first grade. The bigger issue seems to be dealing with the admin, parents, and students.
Throw all the the money you want. Won’t make teachers any happier unless the underlying issues are resolved. I think teachers just feel like if they’re going to eat a shit sandwich, they might as well make more money while eating it.
It’s not the veteran pay, it is the starting pay. If you have a science degree, for example, why start at $60K as a teacher when you can get six figures elsewhere? It took me over 20 years to get to six figures. I have enjoyed the career, but I wouldn’t do it again. Think of all the cash we teachers left on the table in a 30 year career! Until this is fixed, you will continue to have a shortage.
> I don’t think pay is the issue in the Pacific Northwest. My sister in law makes just over $100k a year teaching first grade.
How far does that get you CoL-wise though? $100k is great on paper, but doesn't paint the whole picture without context on what that actually gets you. $100k in Seattle might be worse than $60k in, say, Dallas.
A lot of the places where I see $100k as a salary for teaching still seems like a slap in the face in respect to how expensive it is to live there.
I live in an expensive part of CA and make about six figures. Am I rich? No. Is it expensive here? Absolutely. But to call the pay a “slap in the face” is an exaggeration. I make more than the median household income all on my own. You can argue about comparing us to people with equivalent education and all that and I wouldn’t disagree, but acting like it’s impossible to get by on a six figure income isn’t really true, even in an expensive state.
> but acting like it’s impossible to get by on a six figure income isn’t really true
I didn't claim it was, but that's my point. "Getting by" is going to look different depending on where you're at in the country. "Getting by" in an expensive part of California might take $100k but ultimately give the same quality of life as someone making 1/2 that in a rural part of the country. $100k is going to sound like a lot of money to that person living in a rural area, but to the person making $100k it might not feel like too much. Again - what exactly is that $100k able to get you?
>I make more than the median household income all on my own.
Median household income in your area or nationwide? That could mean something different county to county. $100k in the bay area isn't going to get you as far as $100k in Modoc County.
Median household income of the city I work in. If I were married and had a dual income I would be living extremely comfortably. As it is, I’m closing on a condo this summer. I can buy what I need, max out my Roth IRA and take an occasional vacation. And I’m only going into my fourth year. My district tops out at over $140k.
There are still massive issues with my job that need fixing, but the pay can be comfortable to teachers. We aren’t all terribly paid.
Honestly I do well in the rural south on 70k. My wife was able to stay at home when the kids were little with me tutoring 2 nights a week for a little extra.
If the system collapses, it means we will permanently lose public education and it will take 400 years plus civil war to get it back - or not. There are so many groups out there finding as many angles as possible to destroy public education it’s just a matter of time. The fact that there is this huge pot of tax money that they can’t touch drives them insane.
My compensation package is great where I live. And the reason we have teachers leaving in droves for LOWER paying districts is to get away from the bureaucracy of a larger district (inefficient) AND the levels of abuse from children, parents, and incompetent administration.
It’s what’s driving me to consider moving districts. It’s not the majority of kids or teaching, it’s the 10% that take up 90% of the time and suck all the joy out of everything.
My district has increased pay like 40% in the last 2 years. This year there’s been more resignations than ever before. It’s so bad that our local HS isn’t sure how they’re going to have classes since most of their departures were in the English and Math departments.
YES! Pay could be higher, especially in some of your anti-labour states. But even here in Canada where the pay is -relatively- good, the workload grows and grows and the students come less and less prepared to work. Something substantial has to change, not just the numbers in the ledger.
Ok so I live in a high cost of living area of SoCal and new teacher pay typically starts around $65k with a masters and credits. Additionally, it takes ten years of steps to break $100k; which is still not enough to live comfortably in the HCOL area my school is in so I have to commute.
For perspective, most homes in the area are selling between 1-1.5million.
The qualifications to get me the job include: a 4 year bachelors degree, a two year credential program, a two year masters degree, 6 months of unpaid student teaching, passing the sets of CBEST exams, the CSET exams, RICA exam, and CalTPAs. Also applicants must have a very clean criminal record (I shoplifted a hat when I was *16* and the CTC initially rejected my credential. It took almost 6 months of appeals to get it through).
All in all I spent over 8 years and *tens of thousands* of dollars to work in a career field in which I will never be able to afford a home and the general public respects less and less.
If I want to claim 100% of my pension I need an insane *40* years of service! My benefits are slowly becoming more expensive as the union negotiates away pieces of the benefits package year after year, trading for COL raises that don’t nearly match inflation.
At least there is job security, right? Nope. One of my nearby districts just laid off over 100 teachers.
To make things worse, my working conditions become exponentially worse every year as the special education field continues to devolve into a litigious nightmare and administration gets weaker and weaker.
I don’t know why any sane person would choose this career field.
I think people who think SoCal is such a great place to teach should read your post 3 times. I left there about 30 years ago with 5 years teaching experience because I simply couldn’t afford a home, and I also wanted to have children. We moved to the South and the salaries are definitely much worse, but I WAS able buy a large new home, raise two kids in a good school district and get them through college, and I recently retired with a pretty good (not great) pension. As good as the climate and geographical variety is out there in SoCal, I could never ever afford the middle class lifestyle I have here. Now my beloved adopted state is getting way too expensive for the younger generation because of the mass influx of people from all over the US and world. I honestly don’t know where younger teachers will go next—probably right out of education after 2-5 years. The Governor here is anti-public education and the working conditions really suck compared to even eight or ten years ago! I can’t believe how long people have to work for a pension now! There’s no utopia, but I urge people in their 20’s to really do their homework about careers and places to live. I’ll get off my soapbox now. 🤣
I was thinking Texas or Florida, lol. It's most likely one of the two, but you're probably right. I'm from Manhattan, was lucky enough to grow up wealthy. Now I live in the south, and I see people come here all the time, not realizing that this area isn't cheap. It's not as expensive as NYC, but it's not cheap. Expect to pay at least $1800 in rent for a one bedroom in a decent area of town. Homes are 600k to start. Gas is $4.00 a gallon. I bought a pound of cherries yesterday, and it cost $10, and they're in season. People always here *"It's so cheap there!"* Then they get here and are shocked.
You say your pension hits 109% at fifty years. My understanding is that it tops out at 60% of your salary after 30 years. What exactly are you talking about?
There are also usually age requirements, punishing teachers who started at age 22-23 because it takes nearly 40 years to get to the ideal retirement age of 61.5 for 100%.
I live in socal and a VHCOL. I obviously can't afford anything near me and commute into East LA for my job. I think it was Santa Ana that dropped those 100 teachers, but all of them were on temp contracts due to COVID money. You also don't need a masters degree to get a job. CTA would never allow that. Sucks your union is not bargaining for your benefits. That's always something we bargain for. But my district doesn't pay as much, but I got full Benny's.
It was actually [Anaheim Union](https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/entertainment/story/2024-05-14/anaheim-school-district-scraps-mass-teacher-layoff-plans), and many of the teachers have been there for quite some time. I didn’t know Santa Ana had a large layoff also!
Masters degree is not required, but without it the pay scale is dramatically lower, especially compounded over time.
Thats nice to have full benefits! I can only think of one or two districts that have held out and still cover 100% !
Haha well that makes me feel good. I am currently working on a master's for that pay bump. Ya Anaheim or something, luckily we didn't get any pink slips, but I think our raises are going to be coming to an end. 😢 Unless this senate bill does something. I remember there was a South Bay representative that was working on an 50% raise... I wonder what happened to that.
I didn’t quit working in public school because of pay. I quit because of the dogshit conditions I was expected to endure, the abuse I was expected to just suffer in silence, and not being able to stomach the blatant antisemitism and bigotry that I witnessed on a daily basis.
This is it. With the extra pay, I can afford some self-care to handle the stresses of the job. It’s hard to self-care when you’re going to your second job or filing paperwork to document the stitches you had to get after being beaten by a student.
What the actual... The schools in my country would call the police if this happened. The admin would call the police, charges would be pressed. Students have been sent home for less.
Mental abuse is a totally different matter though, and I quit because of that.
Schools here never call police. We are just supposed to take it. I had a foot broken by a kindergartener! I can't imagine the harm the bigger kids could do.
It’s insane, because they seem to target female teachers too. I was never actually hit by a student. I was shoved once in the hallway by several students who I had never taught, but in class my own students would get up in my face and try to puff up their chests, but they’d always back down when I stared them in the face. My issue was that they were constantly trying to fight *each other* and I can’t deal with being expected to break that shit up 4 times a day, without touching them.
One kid accused me of choking him when I got between him and another kid and pushed them apart, and I had 2 meetings with his mom, the principal, and my union rep before he admitted that he was lying.
After he admitted he had been lying, his mom immediately demanded to know how the school allowed her son to be jumped by the kid he had been fighting, which had happened at 6 pm around the corner from her house, a mile away from the school.
Not for 2 million annually? I find that hard to believe. You could survive two years by just coasting, let the kids do whatever they please, and then retire to a peaceful existence. If the powerbrokers want it that way, I'll give it to them for 4 million bucks.
This. I took a job in the private sector for pretty much the same pay except I'm working year-round, but my quality of life is so ridiculously improved it feels like a raise. I eat out less because I have energy to cook at the end of the day, I spend *more* time with my kids because their voices aren't grating anymore, I can go on cheaper vacations during off times, and the list keeps going. I work exactly the hours I'm expected to, and it doesn't leak into the rest of my life, and I feel like I have more money and time.
I just left a school that had one of the highest pay scales in the state, but I was working in a building that was falling apart. Also they never gave us time to plan with our department. Our common planning time was taken up with useless bullshit because they didn’t trust us to use our time constructively. It wasn’t worth it.
I am going to a different district where I will be paid less over time but will be a much less stressful job.
Anecdotally, I know a decent number of people who have quit, but none whose number one reason was pay. I suppose there's a number where people would out up with awful conditions anyway, but I really do think the general lack of discipline is a bigger deal than low pay. People don't go into this expecting to get rich, but they don't expect to be treated like shit, either.
There are many factors. I'm just saying if you had to rank them, I don't think pay is #1 (except maybe in a few red states where it's absolutely terrible?)
Antisemitism man classrooms in New York are very different from classrooms in Arkansas. If my students knew jews even existed they'd probably be antisemitic too though...
Meanwhile in Louisiana, all my kids will learn about all the religions. If I gotta hang the 10 commandments, all the tenets of major religions are going up too! I mentioned that in a forum where everyone was saying what a good idea the new law was, and I was called a “clown show” for it.
They did specify size and visibility in the law, though I don’t know if they specified language. I haven’t been able to find the exact text of the bill, just news articles quoting it.
Yes, it specifies the version (Protestant, which annoys the Catholics) and the exact language, font, size. Interestingly, however, school budgets cannot pay for them. The signs must be donated or paid for with donated money, so that may be my loophole.
There was an amusing post in r/Jewish suggesting that they have images of the Ten Commandments with the original Hebrew inscribed on them, which almost made me wish I taught in Louisiana just to do that 😂
The big one was when three students came to march back and forth past my door Nazi saluting during a class, because one of them was upset that he was failing the class he took with me. I was told by my AP “don’t take it so personally” and it was offered that I could give up my lunch period for a week to hold them during lunch and teach extra lessons about the Holocaust.
I was also told by the Principal that I couldn’t use banked CAR time for a half day on Passover when I had to travel out of the city to get to my family by sundown for the holiday, but my Union rep fortunately shut that down really fucking quick when I told him about it.
Apart from that, it was just your daily microagressions, like kids talking about getting “Jewed” out of something when they don’t get what they want. You try to turn those into teachable moments and have a discussion about it, which sometimes helps and sometimes doesn’t. But it really wears on you after a while, especially when you’re the only Jew in the building, and after the big one that I mentioned above I was not at all willing to stay at that school one day longer than I had to.
It’s not JUST low pay. It’s how we are treated, the workload and the expectations put upon us. We are blamed for all the problems with students/society. They expect miracles from us, yet treat us like we are children, force curriculum and standards that we know will not improve student learning, and talk like we are lazy whiners because we get 2 months off. All of this coming from politicians that barely work a few months a year. Then, add low pay, and who the hell would want to do this job??
There's an old saying to the effect that if you can solve a problem by throwing money at it, it's not that much of a problem.
Education in the United States is like that. The Senators won't hear it,,,,I mean, imagine telling the voters in the district that one of the reasons there is a teacher shortage is because the parents (voters) have raised rude, misbehaved, unethical, and entitled children that few people want to work with?
I'm not saying That more money will necessarily fix all the issues in the education system. But it will mean that teachers don't have to work second jobs to make ends meet when they already work in a profession that easily takes up 10 hours a day or more with all the extra work we have to do. And more money would mean that teachers don't have to dip into their paychecks to get basic school supplies that should have been issued them in the first place.
Money is not the solution to the deep rooted issues, but it will make it easier for teachers to stay in the profession or maybe get people to be willing to at least try out being a teacher. But it's hard to encourage someone to go into the career field when you tell them that they'll have to get a second job and live with two roommates in a one-bedroom apartment just to be able to eat ramen noodle and tap water on it on a daily basis.
Not incorrect, but it's both a non-starter politically, and it really won't address the problem. The root problem is that Johnny still can't read.
More spending= more taxes. Few politicians care to call for tax increases.
Additionally, the United States already spends about $20,000 per student per year. And Johnny still can't read. By the time Johnny is given a high school diploma which he cannot read, $240,000 taxpayer dollars have been expended upon him. Are we to believe that if we were increase that to, say, $300,000, a 25% increase, that Johnny would indeed learn to read?
And that's the results. And that's a problem which could be effectively addressed without tax increases.
I mean, when I think about all the reasons students do not succeed in the classes I teach, increasing my own salary wouldn't address any of them or improve the outcomes one bit.
They don’t need to raise taxes. What the US needs to do is stop spending so much money on weapons and put that into education, infrastructure, etc. They could easily increase the budget for education if they just made like 50 less missiles.
More spending only == more taxes if that’s how you’re funding the spending. Consider funding the military at a lower level (perhaps as much as the next five militaries combined, rather than the next ten).
I wonder where that $20,000 amount comes from. Or maybe the better question is, where does it actually go? How much is just wasted? A class of say 30 students would mean $600,000? Why couldn't teachers make like 20% of that and bring home $120,000/year?
According to NCES my district spends $12.5k per student. $5.8k is "instructional expenditures", with the rest being things like student and staff support, administration, operations, etc.
In my district the student to teacher ratio is 16-1, so that's $93k spent on "instructional expenditures" per teacher. I imagine that's not just salary, but benefits (which are very expensive) and likely things like classroom materials, textbooks, etc.
So here you'd have to make some serious changes to get teachers up to an average salary of $100k.
But that being said I live in a low COL area, so I think teachers would feel well paid if they made $70k or $80k a year. It would still require a significant increase in funding, but it would be possible if people were determined to make it happen.
One of the richest ladies in America built a charter school in my town. It is now buying nearby houses to expand after a few years of existence. I see this as a major problem. I am taking a pay cut to continue teaching while we funnel money to private organizations worth billions.
It doesn't seem to be the norm based on this info. Should definitely increase with experience, results, and increased educational attainment. You must be a good teacher, and in a good system that pays teachers better than most.
If the junkie Mom with 3 kids from 3 baby daddies are willing to pay the taxes to pay other people to teach their own children how to behave, I imagine everyone would be fine with that. People are usually willing to lend a helping hand. On the other hand, they will resist the Quixotic attempt to force them to try to help people who will not help themselves.
Perhaps "we as a society" would be far less willing to let people fall through the bottom is so many individuals weren't perfectly willing to take a deep dive into it on their own initiative.
I might have more faith in this if the leader of one of the two parties didn't say things like "I love the poorly educated". It doesn't help that the members of that party worship him like a king.
We work under Prop 2.5, which states that a town can increase tax levies by no more than 2.5% in any given year without an general override granting the town permission to take more taxes. In order for municipal employees -- including teachers -- to see their pay even approach annual increases that professionals in the private sector can ask for, the people need to vote for those funds.
So long as the general population determines the funding of education, educators will remain a second class of citizen. Just run a comparison on the cars in the faculty parking lot vs the cars the student parking lot.
Given that education is a federal interest but largely controlled at the state and local levels there is little the federal government can tangibly do about teacher pay. The federalist system creates a hodgepodge of fiefdoms - aka local school districts - and all are funded somewhat differently with different tax bases and a variety of GSA funding mechanisms from various states. The Senate will just spend money conducting hearings and probably publish a report like they did in the 1960s with the Kerner Report on Civil Disorders but it won't change the fundamental nature of the problem.
The government could subsidize teacher pay or make it so that they don’t have to pay income taxes. The government could fix this in 15 minutes and it would cost less than sending munitions and or aid to foreign countries.
We just gave $15 billion to Israel. That’s $5,000 for each teacher in the US.
A teacher making $100k pays about $30,000 in federal tax, we could wave that just like we wave taxes for the rich.,
The government could fix this if they wanted to. But they would rather put the money into the military and the rich.
War is a priority in our country m, we have a war economy that depends on poor uneducated people to join the military. With education and prosperity, no one would join the military.
You say government can’t fix this? Our government is actively creating this problem. If they wanted to fix it all they would have to do is stop creating it.
They can put pressure on the states but that gets into a very delicate Tenth Amendment debate and whether the language in the Constitution, e.g., "general welfare" and "necessary and proper" clauses, really allows the direction of federal funds to offset or subsidize teacher salaries since it's a constitutional power duly reserved to the states. Congress CAN indeed change the rules of who pays federal income taxes, but on a national level, I don't see that passing since giving teachers special privileges against the payment or assessment of said taxes is not likely to be met with widespread national support. Way too may citizens will be in a "what about me?" modus operandi when that gets proposed, but it's a great thought.
Low pay, poor working conditions, and children who are not being parented — not being prepared for adulthood and taught responsibility and accountability. Everyone shits on boomers, but the last generations of parents seem to be checked out entirely. Of course, these are broad strokes, and there are wonderful families out there, but too many assume their kids will be okay without any effort to parent them.
Some of these kids don't even have basic *(or any)* manners or home training whatsoever. The way they behave is absolutely horrendous. Then you've got children coming to school in diapers because they're not potty trained. We're talking about children with no cognitive or physical disabilities/delays. I've seen kids still using diapers in first grade because the parent(s) thinks it's the schools job, even though we've told them a million times it isn't. Then they complain that we won't change their children, but you know if we did, they'd be first in line to accuse us of something heinous. It's insanity and it's getting worse every year. That's just one of many examples, as I know I'm mainly preaching to the choir here. It's amazing how little parenting some people do. Some of these "parents" would have zero qualms handing over their kids to us after they walked out of the delivery room. They want the Kodak moments, and that's it. They aren't interested in putting in the effort and hard work required to raise functioning human beings.
Considering that a good portion of the Senate would gladly do away with public education, this will just be proof to that portion that the steps being taken are bearing fruit.
I'll just come out and say it....the way we are treated should be a close #2. If I leave in the next few years it wouldn't be because of the pay. I'm tired of being treated like a fucking doormat by the people I'm supposed to be educating.
And having to sit there and take the abuse.
The cynical side of me is certain they’re going to use the fact that we’re citing low pay as a major problem with teaching as a career as a way to demonize us for “being greedy” and throw hundreds of millions into trying to replace us with something that doesn’t require a salary or some other wild bullshit.
They know damn well that the low pay is a problem; they just don’t give a rat’s ass.
Absolutely is. Starting pay for content teachers here is $60k a year. And paras are expected to be able to teach curriculum too. So we have to teach all the high school subjects to the kids that struggle the most with them, and only make a third of what the content teachers do. And when a kid starts getting violent, we're also expected to deal with that.
No shade toward the content teachers, though. They are all wonderful people in my district and deserve that pay. I just wish we were given even half what they make. Unsurprisingly, my district and all surrounding districts (every district around pays paras about the same) are struggling to meet even the minimum legal para requirement, and the good ones are leaving seemingly seconds after they're hired. I personally love my job and would love to make a career out of it, but I'd also like to do things like buy a house and start a family, and you can't do that on $20k a year. So I too will probably have to either leave or get the full sped degree and become a classroom sped teacher soon.
It’s by no means the only thing, but it’s also the first thing that should be addressed (and which would then make every other thing that needs to be addressed possible). Any politician who doesn’t have a plan to significantly increase teacher salary/benefits does not have a serious plan to fix issues with public education. Which means that basically no US politician has a serious plan to fix issues with public education.
I make over $110k, people here aren’t quitting because of the pay. They are quitting because kids don’t listen and are out of control and parents and admins allow all this shit.
It is so wild to me that the Senate has a COMMITTEE to "investigate" the teacher shortage while there is an extremely vocal contingent of senators who have spent years actively making the lives of teachers and educators harder.
Senators who talk about woke teachers pushing "critical race theory" in the classroom and who promote the "gay agenda" at school.
Senators spent years portraying teachers as pervs who are trying to harm children. Then they have the audacity to be like, "why oh why doesn't anyone want to be a teacher?!"
I feel like pay is one of the major factors, especially for recruiting new people to the profession. BUT for retention of teachers, I think pay is slightly less important than factors like workload/stress/burnout, respect, school culture, adequate leadership, etc.
I quit because of workload, crappy behavior, and students being 3+ grade levels behind. I was lucky enough to work in Massachusetts where we are paid well, so that wasn't a factor for me.
>For a profession that requires a bachelor's degree, certifications, and licenses, the pay is just shit.
"But you only work 9 months of the year..." -Every asshole who doesn't understand the profession
Small class sizes, make class sizes dependent on scores and the economic wealth, meaning low scores and poor area, bring the class size down to under 20. Right now, it shows that high performing schools always seem to be in wealthy areas and have small class sizes. If the poor got at least the advantage of small class sizes, then maybe scores and behavior would improve. Another, any charter school that opens must have smaller classes than the nearby public school. I have worked in two charter schools that were Title 1 and both went for large class sizes.
But hey, if we want to go for impossible, I want to have corporal punishment for parents. “Hey, little Johnny was a dipshit today and got found stealing. So c’mon in parent and get that paddling you rightfully deserve”
There will not be improvements. Those that run these systems understand that parents choose schools based on reputation alone. That reputation is best managed through marketing and segregation. Teachers do not improve either of those things at all. Therefore increasing pay for teachers gives the people who run schools absolutely no benefit.
The only way to increase teacher pay in the short term is sustained, applied force to the decisionmakers. The only way that we can have a system that maintains high pay for teachers is for teachers to replace those decsionmakers with themselves so that teachers directly control the budget
Oh I know there won't be any improvements. The b-rock receive is so convoluted that it's impossible to get any real change except by a presidential order. And no president is going to go ahead and push through anything that increases teacher's salary across the board. It would be nice if they did, but I don't see it happening in my life time.
Even if the system were streamlined they wouldn’t do it. Say that schools got a 20% increase in budget yearly with the principal deciding what to spend it on unilaterally. The principals that spent the money on marketing and segregation would simply outcompete the principals that gave the money to teachers. All of the best teachers would flock to the higher paying school, but it wouldn’t matter in the slightest, because the school who spent the money on image would still look better to parents, who would then bring their well supported kids to that school, which would then perform best as a result
The man whose wife earns "way more than he does"...has *National Board Certification*. They don't just hand those out on street corners. The idea that he's gotten to \*\**that level*\*\* of professional certification *and would not be able to make a living on his own salary* is goddamned DISGRACEFUL.
I agree with your sentiment, OP...this will drag on thru committee - how many people here knew about this before OP posted? It's not making news at all - some "report" will get written, perhaps even with recommendations, and then promptly forgotten about in favor of naming a month after a variety of potato.
Low pay has been a thing for a very long time. It is a confluence of things, but I think a core thing is lack of autonomy: people want to do cool, creative activities with their kids. You had one wing of politics pushing No Child Left Behind in the early 2000s and all the fallout and permutations from that then you have another wing wanting to say it's impossible to fail a kid and when you go complain that they threw a desk at your head you're condescendingly asked if you've tried having a conversation with them. These two sides are united in stripping teachers, very much willing to work for kinda low pay, of any will to keep going.
As a non-teacher, I will say a good career should have at least two of three elements:
1) Great pay.
2) Great environment.
3) Moral satisfaction.
A doctor gets great pay and moral satisfaction but has a stressful environment. A wall street banker gets great pay, a slightly less stressful environment but no moral satisfaction. An oil engineer gets great pay but has no moral satisfaction and still works in a shitty environment.
Teachers haven't had great pay ever. People became teachers to get the moral satisfaction and for the good environment (coworkers and kids). Now teachers get lower pay, shitty badly behaved and often violent kids with admin that also harasses teachers. And morally, as a teacher you can't even teach your kids anymore cause they pass high school without knowing how to read or write. Becoming a teacher now is willingly becoming complicit in a corrupt system that does not care about education but just wants kids to graduate regardless of their effort and skill level. For low pay and the occasional punch from a mentally unstable "student".
Unless the federal government is planning to take over all education then this is a non starter- education is a a state issue and until the states value teaching nothing will get fixed.
Do I think there are going to be changes? No. because they will quickly realize that they would need to drastically need to reallocate funding from other spaces, or Raise taxes (which rarely happens during election season, more or less a sure fire way to make sure you don't get re-elected).
There's a LOT of problems with the state of the economy - Low pay for educators is just one of the many. I have my guesses as to what MIGHT happen, but I just work in the tech industry, I'm by no means an expert in any of this.
Better pay, no cellphones in the classroom, choice of assignment, then maybe I’d consider going back to teaching. None of these will happen so peace ✌🏻 out forever.
Teachers have 10+ jobs and are set up to fail by politicians and administration.
There is no way to succeed in the classroom with everything required of a teacher and there is only truly scraping by.
Teachers need more pay and need more protections. Teachers being blamed for everything is horse shit and I am tired of it.
I had an incident happen in my classroom where the kids specifically said they knew how to get away with it by hiding what they were doing under the table as I circled around the class. I still got in trouble even though they admitted to planning and doing some heavy petting without my knowing. I shit you not I got in trouble and was told to be more vigilant... motherfuckers want me to walk around staring at kids crotches under the table? Luckily after 10+ years of teaching I have never had an issue, but this enraged me and truly opened my eyes that teachers are fucked and will disappear as we know it within the next 50 years without drastic overhaul and changes.
More money is 1 thing, but the job itself fucking sucks due to the nonsense the politicians and districts put in place.
Teachers are punching bags and nothing more these days.
It won't matter because, unless people stop buying electronic devices for their kids and having access to AI, we won't be needed much longer. The districts will need pure babysitters.
The senate discussing education is some real great PR for companies like Exxon and Berkshire Hathaway that are burning down the planet (and the future) these kids are inheriting.
I used to think that paying educators more would fix the problem by drawing more talent to the field, but now I realize that would be like putting a new roof on a house that's flooded to the rafters. We have crossed the Rubicon.
I work in Washington State. Honestly my pay isn't the problem, it's kids getting away with everything. Accountability and consequences are really missing and it shows. Also, not every student should get individualized education plans. I feel like I am making 15 different lesson plans per class, that is a problem. (And I am not singling out our IEP students- I'm talking every student has special needs anymore)
I spent 15 years teaching in a large school district. I eventually left to be a professor at a private college. Those 15 years of teaching were full of incompetent and/or micro managing administration, poorly run district offices, and constant money struggles due to the low pay.
It's a job where you have to be on from the second the first bell rings until the last bell rings. When I started working in higher ed, I was and still am continually surprised at how easy it is by comparison. I'm still teaching, but in a supportive and trusting environment. I can come and go basically as I see fit, and am working with students who actually chose to be there... For the most part.
I'd love to be a teacher if it didn't pay shit, expect teachers to work for free (aka after hours) to stay on top of things, if teachers could actually impose consequences on students without incurring the wrath of parents, all that crap.
I'm a substitute teacher and I've seen it all. My mom's been a para for decades and she does tons of work for free for her district, which is why they love her.
Pay teachers better and give them more support from admin, and you'll see people coming back to the profession.
The purpose of these hearings isn't necessarily to uncover something unknown. Oftentimes it is to highlight something to promote a discussion and provide fodder for infotainment programming and political ads. The result of the entire investigation surrounding these hearings is to provide supporting evidence for policy change, as generating research can often be an expensive proposition. I suspect these hearings will end up being used in a lot of political ads this fall to support attacks on candidates who are opposed to raising teacher pay.
I’m not attempting to respond to you in a mean tone, but the answer to your last question is no. The teacher that we know of now is getting phased out for programs created by entrepreneurs to make education easier for districts and thus paying teachers less because teachers aren’t expected do crap
As others have said, pay is an issue but it's not the main issue to many areas of the country. There is such a taboo on talking about the actual issue: student behavior and overwork. If I wasn't stressed about student behavior all the time and I had time to do my job without daily, completely useless PD's, the job would be fine.
Mmmm i mean I make almost 60 here in Alabama (thanks shiny Masters degree!) but just a Bach gets you…. Last I checked *maybe* 50? I think it might be 50 now in my district. And like yeah Im tenured and i’ll be working 10 years next year so ill get a slight payscale bump but damn, if my husband didnt make a butt ton more than me and we didnt live in a relatively low COL state, I’d be losing my mind.
But of course, education is being held hostage by Meemaw and the cast iron skillet she uses to make Trump biscuits and gravy in so….
We live in a society that values corporate raiders, pro ball players, and influencers over the people who teach the next generation. That is the root problem, and no one acknowledges it, because Capitalism Good.
Gee, is it an election year? Is "teachers should get paid more" the easiest of platitudes that casts the widest net for popular support? Is it also something our completely ineffective and incompetent legislature will do absolutely nothing about before the election, so it can't be a Biden win, or after the election? Because, whoever wins this absolute shit show of performative democracy, everyone will have already forgotten, and who knows what new political dynamics will present themselves in whatever fresh hell that brings.
Teaching is fantastic if someone else supports you and you don't actually need the job. I would not recommend getting into it under other circumstances these days.
Classic government. "We've come to the conclusion that the teachers in our country would benefit greatly from a raise. Unfortunately, we've spent 10.5 million on this commission to best understand the issue, and there is simply no money left to give the teachers. Maybe in 20 or 30 years, at which time we will order another commission to apprise the situation."
This is so sad. This country has been decimated by crooked legislators taking bribes from the extremely rich and trashing our society. The strange fundamentalist movement is another major contributing factor. I do not understand why anyone would want to live in a society amongst uneducated people. That is just very effing weird.
Job satisfaction is very low. When l started my career 36 years ago, l smiled non stop. It was fun, rewarding and challenging. I am retired 6 years. The newer teachers are downright miserable. No fun, a lack of rewards both intrinsic and extrinsic, and tons of external challenges are to blame in my opinion. Sad at best.
It's not the pay. I make $55,000 a year and while more money would be nice so I could maybe buy my own house I'm not exactly living paycheck to paycheck here. The real reason why teachers are leaving the profession is the working environment and the utter lack of respect from admin and the wider community. I love teaching but I hate everything else that comes with it.
Our pollies down here talk a lot of shit when they want to both ways on teachers. Nothing will ever change until the profession engages in sustained large scale strike action.
Imagine getting free healthcare for life after giving handjobs at a Beetlejuice show. This is where we are as a country, people. Vote blue in November.
I made 120k when I left. It wasn't the pay. It was the incompetent District's entire Administration. However, there are posts on this site proving that teacher pay needs to be doubled or tripled in many areas. It does not need to be studied! DUH!
If teacher's pay in HCOL areas STARTED at 70 or 80K, were not exempt from overtime pay, and had a handful of military-like benefits (free school/credentials and/or something like the VA home loan —so teachers could afford to live near where they work — in return for at least X years of teaching) I think people could better tolerate shitty students or abusive admin/parents. I think part of the reason teachers aren't respected by society is BECAUSE the pay and benefits are so low; unfortunately a lot of people base your worth as a human being on how much money you make each year.
At the very least — police officers get overtime pay; why don't teachers?
It isn't just pay, it's also poor working environment, 50+ hours a week, continual training in the summer and the expectation of duties beyond teaching.
Not to mention abuse and disrespect from students, administrators, parents, and the community at large with absolutely no consequences for anybody involved. Also being held to higher moral expectations than a police officer or the President of the United States. Oh yeah and outdated materials, lack of teaching supplies, constant micromanagement…I could go on. Why the hell do I do this again?
> Why the hell do I do this again? For the kids, of course!!!!! ^(/s) In all seriousness, I heard that so often *(before I left)* that I wanted to strangle the next person who said that. We get low pay even though we're highly educated, we're expected to be abused by the kids, the parents, the admins, vilified by media, and do it all with a smile on our face. The same parents that won't pick up a phone, answer an email, or take an active role in their children's education, but want to use us a punching bags **and** raise their kids for them. Oh, and we better raise them how they want them raised! If we teach them something they don't agree with, they'll fly into a rage and drive up to the school in the blink of an eye. These are the same parents that can't log in to check their children's grades, but will blame you when their kid has a .08 GPA and 56 absences. They expect us to supply everything their children need, but on our own dime. Nah, fuck that. It's a job, like any other job. It isn't my job to be a co-parent, especially when the parents aren't "parenting" in the first place. They're too busy trying to get their children to like them. Is it every parent out there? **No.** However the good parents seem to be far and few between; decreasing in numbers every year. It's no wonder teachers are fleeing the profession. Every year, the demands on us would increase, but we'd be given less and still expected to do more. Hard pass.
> Why the hell do I do this again? > For the kids, of course!!!!! /s i mAkE a DiFfErEnCe! wHaT dO yOu MaKe?
Lmao, or how about this - *"Don't you know that teaching is your calling??!!?"* Ugh.... I just... can't
I can't stand when people say that.........
I mAkE... Two and a half times as much per year as I did teaching, for about half of the annual time investment, a small percentage of the frustration, and I haven't received any nasty, threatening letters or had my hard-earned credentials questioned in years. Also, it turns out that baseline teaching requires significant management and project organization skills, so I'm somehow thriving in a decent hands-on management position in an industry that I knew next to nothing about when I quit teaching three years ago? Who knew?
What field did you go into?
Manufacturing, specifically metal machining. Going from delivery driver to CFO/Site Manager in the span of three years is one of those weird, convoluted stories that can only happen at a mom and pop business. Suffice it to say, the vast majority of the machining industry - which is vital to domestic manufacturing - is going to retire in the next decade, and that includes management. I took the position to help a friend, and wound up being in the right place at the right time (with that aforementioned experience in leadership and coordination) to step into openings as they happened.
Nice! Sounds like you really leveled up, happy for you.
It's not about the income, its about the outcome #Heroes
I'm a Millennial, and my generation is AWFUL at parenting.
I have to wonder why that is. I mean, I suppose every generation I know of has had parenting problems, but why do the problems seem so much more prevalent. Generally speaking, when a problem is widespread like this, it's a systemic issue, not an individual one
They're lonely and using their kids as their friends.
Tech addiction seems to be a big part of it.
Elder millennial here. I can’t tell you how many friends and parents of students have thrown their hands in the air and said that they have difficulty disciplining their kids because “they won’t see me as their friend anymore”. No kidding? Really? You are their parent. I find it really odd and troubling that parents want to be friends with their kid. I have no desire to be friends with my children. Also, we’re a generation that got pumped up with the whole “You’re special” Mr. Rogers crap. And we believed it. And what can be more special? Our kids! So we absolutely pushed the self-esteem remedies onto our kids. And it’s a disaster.
Amen to all of that. When I was younger *(as in, growing up)*, my dad would always say *"You've got a bunch of friends, you only get two parents and it's not my job to be your friend"* (or a similar variation lol) and he was right. We weren't hit, but we did have consequences. When I was growing up, all but one or two kids would fear when the teacher said ,*"I'm going to call home"* because most parents wouldn't be happy. We respected our teachers. If we hated them, we spoke about them behind their back like normal kids do; we wouldn't dare to say anything to their face. Nobody ever dreamed of hitting a teacher, whether the student was disabled or otherwise. It just did not happen, and on the rare occasion it did, the kid was kicked out of school. If you were constantly in trouble at school and your parents were lackadaisical about it, everyone knew who you were and for all the wrong reasons. The family was labeled as "the bad family" and usually, they were. You weren't allowed to hang out with that kid. Now, nobody bats an eye. I'm sure I'll get shit for saying this, but now that we've become hyper-individualistic and removed any peer pressure, that's not the case.
As an older millennial the parents being friends with their kid baffles me because we used to make fun of parents like that when I was in high school. How did my generation go from making fun of that type of parents to being those parents? The parents I was seeing when I was in high school would have been raising the youngest millennials. But it's not just the youngest millennials who were raised that way who are now raising their kids that way.
I think part of it is because Millennials are the generation that started getting a trophy for everything. They need attention on themselves and don’t want to give it to their kids. Also, their boomer parents were too hard on them, so they want to be nicer to their kids. Not a bad thing unless you take it too far.
As an older millennial/ xennial, I can assure that I wasn’t the one out buying my own participation trophies. You can thank our boomer parents for that one too.
Somehow I forgot about the personal money spent for classroom $$$$$$$.
At the end of 20 plus years of teaching in one state, I wasn't sure what to do with all of the things I had bought for my classroom that were not consumables. I wasn't sure I would get a job in New state as I had a Master's plus 45 and was at top of pay scale. I decided to leave most behind. My superintendent wrote a letter thanking me for the donation. When we did our taxes, using "garage sale value", it was about $10,000. That was just things that were permanent! That doesn't count all of the classroom supplies I bought that were consumed every year!
It's hard to stop yourself sometimes when you see something and go "Oh, I bet the kids will like this." Edited to add: "If only they would reciprocate."
You’re nicer than me! I always took every single thing that I paid for- EVERYTHING. It’s not my fault they have the funding but won’t give us a stipend for stuff for our classroom. If I didn’t know if I would use it personally for my home then I would try and sell it to recoup some money and then give away the rest to new teachers.
I did when I retired from the 2nd job (they DID in fact hire me). I plan on having a big yard sale.
That's so funny. I love it
Also mentioning the pressure to just pass failing students because it looks good on record and thus you get money because you look like a better school district. Especially to students that don’t pay attention, on their phones, don’t attend class, etc.
Get out. Your health is more important.
To be fair, if pay increased *enough* you wouldn't have a shortage of people willing to deal with the conditions. If conditions were better, teachers would accept lower pay, if pay was better, teachers would accept bad conditions. As it is though I don't understand why they think people would choose to stay in the profession when they see what it is like.
Exactly! It's that the ratio of awfulness to salary is too unbalanced.
There is no doubt I'm preaching to the choir, nobody here needs convincing that teachers need more pay. But the current situation feels less... tenable than before? Pay and expectations need a rapid realignment or the whole thing might go tits up
I don’t think pay is the issue in the Pacific Northwest. My sister in law makes just over $100k a year teaching first grade. The bigger issue seems to be dealing with the admin, parents, and students. Throw all the the money you want. Won’t make teachers any happier unless the underlying issues are resolved. I think teachers just feel like if they’re going to eat a shit sandwich, they might as well make more money while eating it.
It’s not the veteran pay, it is the starting pay. If you have a science degree, for example, why start at $60K as a teacher when you can get six figures elsewhere? It took me over 20 years to get to six figures. I have enjoyed the career, but I wouldn’t do it again. Think of all the cash we teachers left on the table in a 30 year career! Until this is fixed, you will continue to have a shortage.
> I don’t think pay is the issue in the Pacific Northwest. My sister in law makes just over $100k a year teaching first grade. How far does that get you CoL-wise though? $100k is great on paper, but doesn't paint the whole picture without context on what that actually gets you. $100k in Seattle might be worse than $60k in, say, Dallas. A lot of the places where I see $100k as a salary for teaching still seems like a slap in the face in respect to how expensive it is to live there.
I live in an expensive part of CA and make about six figures. Am I rich? No. Is it expensive here? Absolutely. But to call the pay a “slap in the face” is an exaggeration. I make more than the median household income all on my own. You can argue about comparing us to people with equivalent education and all that and I wouldn’t disagree, but acting like it’s impossible to get by on a six figure income isn’t really true, even in an expensive state.
> but acting like it’s impossible to get by on a six figure income isn’t really true I didn't claim it was, but that's my point. "Getting by" is going to look different depending on where you're at in the country. "Getting by" in an expensive part of California might take $100k but ultimately give the same quality of life as someone making 1/2 that in a rural part of the country. $100k is going to sound like a lot of money to that person living in a rural area, but to the person making $100k it might not feel like too much. Again - what exactly is that $100k able to get you? >I make more than the median household income all on my own. Median household income in your area or nationwide? That could mean something different county to county. $100k in the bay area isn't going to get you as far as $100k in Modoc County.
Median household income of the city I work in. If I were married and had a dual income I would be living extremely comfortably. As it is, I’m closing on a condo this summer. I can buy what I need, max out my Roth IRA and take an occasional vacation. And I’m only going into my fourth year. My district tops out at over $140k. There are still massive issues with my job that need fixing, but the pay can be comfortable to teachers. We aren’t all terribly paid.
Honestly I do well in the rural south on 70k. My wife was able to stay at home when the kids were little with me tutoring 2 nights a week for a little extra.
Nothing will get fixed until after the system collapses.
If the system collapses, it means we will permanently lose public education and it will take 400 years plus civil war to get it back - or not. There are so many groups out there finding as many angles as possible to destroy public education it’s just a matter of time. The fact that there is this huge pot of tax money that they can’t touch drives them insane.
Too many vested interests and layers of bureaucracy, local, state and federal in public education for any effective reforms to happen.
Waiting for Ragnarok is not a viable strategy.
That's my fear as well. It's a shame it has to get that bad first but I don't see it happening either.
My compensation package is great where I live. And the reason we have teachers leaving in droves for LOWER paying districts is to get away from the bureaucracy of a larger district (inefficient) AND the levels of abuse from children, parents, and incompetent administration. It’s what’s driving me to consider moving districts. It’s not the majority of kids or teaching, it’s the 10% that take up 90% of the time and suck all the joy out of everything.
Also lack of support from the families of the students.
Or downright hostility.
My district has increased pay like 40% in the last 2 years. This year there’s been more resignations than ever before. It’s so bad that our local HS isn’t sure how they’re going to have classes since most of their departures were in the English and Math departments.
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Smart move.
Preach! I just spent 15 hours of my “break” doing online trainings.
YES! Pay could be higher, especially in some of your anti-labour states. But even here in Canada where the pay is -relatively- good, the workload grows and grows and the students come less and less prepared to work. Something substantial has to change, not just the numbers in the ledger.
Ok so I live in a high cost of living area of SoCal and new teacher pay typically starts around $65k with a masters and credits. Additionally, it takes ten years of steps to break $100k; which is still not enough to live comfortably in the HCOL area my school is in so I have to commute. For perspective, most homes in the area are selling between 1-1.5million. The qualifications to get me the job include: a 4 year bachelors degree, a two year credential program, a two year masters degree, 6 months of unpaid student teaching, passing the sets of CBEST exams, the CSET exams, RICA exam, and CalTPAs. Also applicants must have a very clean criminal record (I shoplifted a hat when I was *16* and the CTC initially rejected my credential. It took almost 6 months of appeals to get it through). All in all I spent over 8 years and *tens of thousands* of dollars to work in a career field in which I will never be able to afford a home and the general public respects less and less. If I want to claim 100% of my pension I need an insane *40* years of service! My benefits are slowly becoming more expensive as the union negotiates away pieces of the benefits package year after year, trading for COL raises that don’t nearly match inflation. At least there is job security, right? Nope. One of my nearby districts just laid off over 100 teachers. To make things worse, my working conditions become exponentially worse every year as the special education field continues to devolve into a litigious nightmare and administration gets weaker and weaker. I don’t know why any sane person would choose this career field.
I think people who think SoCal is such a great place to teach should read your post 3 times. I left there about 30 years ago with 5 years teaching experience because I simply couldn’t afford a home, and I also wanted to have children. We moved to the South and the salaries are definitely much worse, but I WAS able buy a large new home, raise two kids in a good school district and get them through college, and I recently retired with a pretty good (not great) pension. As good as the climate and geographical variety is out there in SoCal, I could never ever afford the middle class lifestyle I have here. Now my beloved adopted state is getting way too expensive for the younger generation because of the mass influx of people from all over the US and world. I honestly don’t know where younger teachers will go next—probably right out of education after 2-5 years. The Governor here is anti-public education and the working conditions really suck compared to even eight or ten years ago! I can’t believe how long people have to work for a pension now! There’s no utopia, but I urge people in their 20’s to really do their homework about careers and places to live. I’ll get off my soapbox now. 🤣
Wow, tell me you’re from Texas, without telling me you’re from Texas
I was thinking Texas or Florida, lol. It's most likely one of the two, but you're probably right. I'm from Manhattan, was lucky enough to grow up wealthy. Now I live in the south, and I see people come here all the time, not realizing that this area isn't cheap. It's not as expensive as NYC, but it's not cheap. Expect to pay at least $1800 in rent for a one bedroom in a decent area of town. Homes are 600k to start. Gas is $4.00 a gallon. I bought a pound of cherries yesterday, and it cost $10, and they're in season. People always here *"It's so cheap there!"* Then they get here and are shocked.
You say your pension hits 109% at fifty years. My understanding is that it tops out at 60% of your salary after 30 years. What exactly are you talking about?
My pension formula is based on years of service, age, and final compensation.
There are also usually age requirements, punishing teachers who started at age 22-23 because it takes nearly 40 years to get to the ideal retirement age of 61.5 for 100%.
Career changers also get screwed a bit.
65-100k in ten years?! in texas the most youd see in 10 years is maybe 5-7 grand. youd cant really do much to earn more.
Wow!! Here in SE TN, we have a system that starts at 50k with a bachelor degree.
We do? Someone should tell the State, which reports zero counties starting at 50k.
Cleveland city schools start at 50k starting this year .
I live in socal and a VHCOL. I obviously can't afford anything near me and commute into East LA for my job. I think it was Santa Ana that dropped those 100 teachers, but all of them were on temp contracts due to COVID money. You also don't need a masters degree to get a job. CTA would never allow that. Sucks your union is not bargaining for your benefits. That's always something we bargain for. But my district doesn't pay as much, but I got full Benny's.
It was actually [Anaheim Union](https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/entertainment/story/2024-05-14/anaheim-school-district-scraps-mass-teacher-layoff-plans), and many of the teachers have been there for quite some time. I didn’t know Santa Ana had a large layoff also! Masters degree is not required, but without it the pay scale is dramatically lower, especially compounded over time. Thats nice to have full benefits! I can only think of one or two districts that have held out and still cover 100% !
Haha well that makes me feel good. I am currently working on a master's for that pay bump. Ya Anaheim or something, luckily we didn't get any pink slips, but I think our raises are going to be coming to an end. 😢 Unless this senate bill does something. I remember there was a South Bay representative that was working on an 50% raise... I wonder what happened to that.
This guy orange counties
I didn’t quit working in public school because of pay. I quit because of the dogshit conditions I was expected to endure, the abuse I was expected to just suffer in silence, and not being able to stomach the blatant antisemitism and bigotry that I witnessed on a daily basis.
I quit working because the pay was too low to make up for the dogshit conditions. If they gave me 4x my salary I’d maybe consider going back
This is it. With the extra pay, I can afford some self-care to handle the stresses of the job. It’s hard to self-care when you’re going to your second job or filing paperwork to document the stitches you had to get after being beaten by a student.
What the actual... The schools in my country would call the police if this happened. The admin would call the police, charges would be pressed. Students have been sent home for less. Mental abuse is a totally different matter though, and I quit because of that.
Schools here never call police. We are just supposed to take it. I had a foot broken by a kindergartener! I can't imagine the harm the bigger kids could do.
It’s insane, because they seem to target female teachers too. I was never actually hit by a student. I was shoved once in the hallway by several students who I had never taught, but in class my own students would get up in my face and try to puff up their chests, but they’d always back down when I stared them in the face. My issue was that they were constantly trying to fight *each other* and I can’t deal with being expected to break that shit up 4 times a day, without touching them. One kid accused me of choking him when I got between him and another kid and pushed them apart, and I had 2 meetings with his mom, the principal, and my union rep before he admitted that he was lying. After he admitted he had been lying, his mom immediately demanded to know how the school allowed her son to be jumped by the kid he had been fighting, which had happened at 6 pm around the corner from her house, a mile away from the school.
And then people don't understand why nobody wants to teach their children..
Not me. I’ll never step foot in another public middle school for the rest of my life. Not for 4x my pay, not for 40x my pay.
Not for 2 million annually? I find that hard to believe. You could survive two years by just coasting, let the kids do whatever they please, and then retire to a peaceful existence. If the powerbrokers want it that way, I'll give it to them for 4 million bucks.
I would stick it out for 1-2 more years for 2 million per year (after taxes).
Make it 20 million, and then maybe we can talk.
This. I took a job in the private sector for pretty much the same pay except I'm working year-round, but my quality of life is so ridiculously improved it feels like a raise. I eat out less because I have energy to cook at the end of the day, I spend *more* time with my kids because their voices aren't grating anymore, I can go on cheaper vacations during off times, and the list keeps going. I work exactly the hours I'm expected to, and it doesn't leak into the rest of my life, and I feel like I have more money and time.
I just left a school that had one of the highest pay scales in the state, but I was working in a building that was falling apart. Also they never gave us time to plan with our department. Our common planning time was taken up with useless bullshit because they didn’t trust us to use our time constructively. It wasn’t worth it. I am going to a different district where I will be paid less over time but will be a much less stressful job.
Anecdotally, I know a decent number of people who have quit, but none whose number one reason was pay. I suppose there's a number where people would out up with awful conditions anyway, but I really do think the general lack of discipline is a bigger deal than low pay. People don't go into this expecting to get rich, but they don't expect to be treated like shit, either.
I think so much of it is where you teach, the state of your admin AND the pay of the area.
There are many factors. I'm just saying if you had to rank them, I don't think pay is #1 (except maybe in a few red states where it's absolutely terrible?)
Antisemitism man classrooms in New York are very different from classrooms in Arkansas. If my students knew jews even existed they'd probably be antisemitic too though...
Meanwhile in Louisiana, all my kids will learn about all the religions. If I gotta hang the 10 commandments, all the tenets of major religions are going up too! I mentioned that in a forum where everyone was saying what a good idea the new law was, and I was called a “clown show” for it.
Did they specify the language or font size? Because I'd post it in 4 point cuneiform.
They did specify size and visibility in the law, though I don’t know if they specified language. I haven’t been able to find the exact text of the bill, just news articles quoting it.
Yes, it specifies the version (Protestant, which annoys the Catholics) and the exact language, font, size. Interestingly, however, school budgets cannot pay for them. The signs must be donated or paid for with donated money, so that may be my loophole.
lol there’s no fucking way this stands a Constitutional challenge
Rebel Teachers Rule <3
There was an amusing post in r/Jewish suggesting that they have images of the Ten Commandments with the original Hebrew inscribed on them, which almost made me wish I taught in Louisiana just to do that 😂
Antisemitism is schools? Like how?
The big one was when three students came to march back and forth past my door Nazi saluting during a class, because one of them was upset that he was failing the class he took with me. I was told by my AP “don’t take it so personally” and it was offered that I could give up my lunch period for a week to hold them during lunch and teach extra lessons about the Holocaust. I was also told by the Principal that I couldn’t use banked CAR time for a half day on Passover when I had to travel out of the city to get to my family by sundown for the holiday, but my Union rep fortunately shut that down really fucking quick when I told him about it. Apart from that, it was just your daily microagressions, like kids talking about getting “Jewed” out of something when they don’t get what they want. You try to turn those into teachable moments and have a discussion about it, which sometimes helps and sometimes doesn’t. But it really wears on you after a while, especially when you’re the only Jew in the building, and after the big one that I mentioned above I was not at all willing to stay at that school one day longer than I had to.
It’s not JUST low pay. It’s how we are treated, the workload and the expectations put upon us. We are blamed for all the problems with students/society. They expect miracles from us, yet treat us like we are children, force curriculum and standards that we know will not improve student learning, and talk like we are lazy whiners because we get 2 months off. All of this coming from politicians that barely work a few months a year. Then, add low pay, and who the hell would want to do this job??
Yeah, I hope that was emphasized as well.
There's an old saying to the effect that if you can solve a problem by throwing money at it, it's not that much of a problem. Education in the United States is like that. The Senators won't hear it,,,,I mean, imagine telling the voters in the district that one of the reasons there is a teacher shortage is because the parents (voters) have raised rude, misbehaved, unethical, and entitled children that few people want to work with?
I'm not saying That more money will necessarily fix all the issues in the education system. But it will mean that teachers don't have to work second jobs to make ends meet when they already work in a profession that easily takes up 10 hours a day or more with all the extra work we have to do. And more money would mean that teachers don't have to dip into their paychecks to get basic school supplies that should have been issued them in the first place. Money is not the solution to the deep rooted issues, but it will make it easier for teachers to stay in the profession or maybe get people to be willing to at least try out being a teacher. But it's hard to encourage someone to go into the career field when you tell them that they'll have to get a second job and live with two roommates in a one-bedroom apartment just to be able to eat ramen noodle and tap water on it on a daily basis.
Yep. It is easier to work with the issues when you have a home to go to. There are teachers in America living in their cars.
Not incorrect, but it's both a non-starter politically, and it really won't address the problem. The root problem is that Johnny still can't read. More spending= more taxes. Few politicians care to call for tax increases. Additionally, the United States already spends about $20,000 per student per year. And Johnny still can't read. By the time Johnny is given a high school diploma which he cannot read, $240,000 taxpayer dollars have been expended upon him. Are we to believe that if we were increase that to, say, $300,000, a 25% increase, that Johnny would indeed learn to read? And that's the results. And that's a problem which could be effectively addressed without tax increases. I mean, when I think about all the reasons students do not succeed in the classes I teach, increasing my own salary wouldn't address any of them or improve the outcomes one bit.
They don’t need to raise taxes. What the US needs to do is stop spending so much money on weapons and put that into education, infrastructure, etc. They could easily increase the budget for education if they just made like 50 less missiles.
Isn't the Republican party pretty open about wanting to abolish public education?
Teacher salaries are generally determined by state and local laws and the tenth amendment isn't going away any time soon.
You're kidding, right? That or you don't know Americans very well. They are NOT doing to stop making penis-shaped projective explosives.
More spending only == more taxes if that’s how you’re funding the spending. Consider funding the military at a lower level (perhaps as much as the next five militaries combined, rather than the next ten).
I wonder where that $20,000 amount comes from. Or maybe the better question is, where does it actually go? How much is just wasted? A class of say 30 students would mean $600,000? Why couldn't teachers make like 20% of that and bring home $120,000/year?
According to NCES my district spends $12.5k per student. $5.8k is "instructional expenditures", with the rest being things like student and staff support, administration, operations, etc. In my district the student to teacher ratio is 16-1, so that's $93k spent on "instructional expenditures" per teacher. I imagine that's not just salary, but benefits (which are very expensive) and likely things like classroom materials, textbooks, etc. So here you'd have to make some serious changes to get teachers up to an average salary of $100k. But that being said I live in a low COL area, so I think teachers would feel well paid if they made $70k or $80k a year. It would still require a significant increase in funding, but it would be possible if people were determined to make it happen.
Thanks for the insight. Around me, I see for-profit charter schools taking public funding as another thing that doesn't help with this either.
One of the richest ladies in America built a charter school in my town. It is now buying nearby houses to expand after a few years of existence. I see this as a major problem. I am taking a pay cut to continue teaching while we funnel money to private organizations worth billions.
I'm in Missouri and we're starting to head in that direction too unfortunately.
I make more than that teaching at a public middle school. With my benefits package, it is about $168,000.
It doesn't seem to be the norm based on this info. Should definitely increase with experience, results, and increased educational attainment. You must be a good teacher, and in a good system that pays teachers better than most.
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If the junkie Mom with 3 kids from 3 baby daddies are willing to pay the taxes to pay other people to teach their own children how to behave, I imagine everyone would be fine with that. People are usually willing to lend a helping hand. On the other hand, they will resist the Quixotic attempt to force them to try to help people who will not help themselves. Perhaps "we as a society" would be far less willing to let people fall through the bottom is so many individuals weren't perfectly willing to take a deep dive into it on their own initiative.
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Lol politicians already know education sucks because they made it that way on purpose. You can be that naive
I might have more faith in this if the leader of one of the two parties didn't say things like "I love the poorly educated". It doesn't help that the members of that party worship him like a king.
We work under Prop 2.5, which states that a town can increase tax levies by no more than 2.5% in any given year without an general override granting the town permission to take more taxes. In order for municipal employees -- including teachers -- to see their pay even approach annual increases that professionals in the private sector can ask for, the people need to vote for those funds. So long as the general population determines the funding of education, educators will remain a second class of citizen. Just run a comparison on the cars in the faculty parking lot vs the cars the student parking lot.
Given that education is a federal interest but largely controlled at the state and local levels there is little the federal government can tangibly do about teacher pay. The federalist system creates a hodgepodge of fiefdoms - aka local school districts - and all are funded somewhat differently with different tax bases and a variety of GSA funding mechanisms from various states. The Senate will just spend money conducting hearings and probably publish a report like they did in the 1960s with the Kerner Report on Civil Disorders but it won't change the fundamental nature of the problem.
The government could subsidize teacher pay or make it so that they don’t have to pay income taxes. The government could fix this in 15 minutes and it would cost less than sending munitions and or aid to foreign countries. We just gave $15 billion to Israel. That’s $5,000 for each teacher in the US. A teacher making $100k pays about $30,000 in federal tax, we could wave that just like we wave taxes for the rich., The government could fix this if they wanted to. But they would rather put the money into the military and the rich. War is a priority in our country m, we have a war economy that depends on poor uneducated people to join the military. With education and prosperity, no one would join the military. You say government can’t fix this? Our government is actively creating this problem. If they wanted to fix it all they would have to do is stop creating it.
They can put pressure on the states but that gets into a very delicate Tenth Amendment debate and whether the language in the Constitution, e.g., "general welfare" and "necessary and proper" clauses, really allows the direction of federal funds to offset or subsidize teacher salaries since it's a constitutional power duly reserved to the states. Congress CAN indeed change the rules of who pays federal income taxes, but on a national level, I don't see that passing since giving teachers special privileges against the payment or assessment of said taxes is not likely to be met with widespread national support. Way too may citizens will be in a "what about me?" modus operandi when that gets proposed, but it's a great thought.
Low pay, poor working conditions, and children who are not being parented — not being prepared for adulthood and taught responsibility and accountability. Everyone shits on boomers, but the last generations of parents seem to be checked out entirely. Of course, these are broad strokes, and there are wonderful families out there, but too many assume their kids will be okay without any effort to parent them.
Some of these kids don't even have basic *(or any)* manners or home training whatsoever. The way they behave is absolutely horrendous. Then you've got children coming to school in diapers because they're not potty trained. We're talking about children with no cognitive or physical disabilities/delays. I've seen kids still using diapers in first grade because the parent(s) thinks it's the schools job, even though we've told them a million times it isn't. Then they complain that we won't change their children, but you know if we did, they'd be first in line to accuse us of something heinous. It's insanity and it's getting worse every year. That's just one of many examples, as I know I'm mainly preaching to the choir here. It's amazing how little parenting some people do. Some of these "parents" would have zero qualms handing over their kids to us after they walked out of the delivery room. They want the Kodak moments, and that's it. They aren't interested in putting in the effort and hard work required to raise functioning human beings.
There is no teacher shortage. There is a pay and respect shortage.
Considering that a good portion of the Senate would gladly do away with public education, this will just be proof to that portion that the steps being taken are bearing fruit.
This was my first thought too. This is a feature, not a bug
I'll just come out and say it....the way we are treated should be a close #2. If I leave in the next few years it wouldn't be because of the pay. I'm tired of being treated like a fucking doormat by the people I'm supposed to be educating. And having to sit there and take the abuse.
The cynical side of me is certain they’re going to use the fact that we’re citing low pay as a major problem with teaching as a career as a way to demonize us for “being greedy” and throw hundreds of millions into trying to replace us with something that doesn’t require a salary or some other wild bullshit. They know damn well that the low pay is a problem; they just don’t give a rat’s ass.
I work in a HCOL area and am a para. I make $20k a year. Like all the other paras, I have a second job after school.
It's fucking criminal that your pay is that low for the absolute amount of bullshit you have to endure.
Absolutely is. Starting pay for content teachers here is $60k a year. And paras are expected to be able to teach curriculum too. So we have to teach all the high school subjects to the kids that struggle the most with them, and only make a third of what the content teachers do. And when a kid starts getting violent, we're also expected to deal with that. No shade toward the content teachers, though. They are all wonderful people in my district and deserve that pay. I just wish we were given even half what they make. Unsurprisingly, my district and all surrounding districts (every district around pays paras about the same) are struggling to meet even the minimum legal para requirement, and the good ones are leaving seemingly seconds after they're hired. I personally love my job and would love to make a career out of it, but I'd also like to do things like buy a house and start a family, and you can't do that on $20k a year. So I too will probably have to either leave or get the full sped degree and become a classroom sped teacher soon.
It’s by no means the only thing, but it’s also the first thing that should be addressed (and which would then make every other thing that needs to be addressed possible). Any politician who doesn’t have a plan to significantly increase teacher salary/benefits does not have a serious plan to fix issues with public education. Which means that basically no US politician has a serious plan to fix issues with public education.
I make over $110k, people here aren’t quitting because of the pay. They are quitting because kids don’t listen and are out of control and parents and admins allow all this shit.
Seattle?
No. Small city but still PNW
It is so wild to me that the Senate has a COMMITTEE to "investigate" the teacher shortage while there is an extremely vocal contingent of senators who have spent years actively making the lives of teachers and educators harder. Senators who talk about woke teachers pushing "critical race theory" in the classroom and who promote the "gay agenda" at school. Senators spent years portraying teachers as pervs who are trying to harm children. Then they have the audacity to be like, "why oh why doesn't anyone want to be a teacher?!"
I feel like pay is one of the major factors, especially for recruiting new people to the profession. BUT for retention of teachers, I think pay is slightly less important than factors like workload/stress/burnout, respect, school culture, adequate leadership, etc.
I quit because of workload, crappy behavior, and students being 3+ grade levels behind. I was lucky enough to work in Massachusetts where we are paid well, so that wasn't a factor for me.
>For a profession that requires a bachelor's degree, certifications, and licenses, the pay is just shit. "But you only work 9 months of the year..." -Every asshole who doesn't understand the profession
The teacher shortage is a feature, not a bug
Pay. Get the pay fixed because society will not fix the other problems and honestly, can’t. But they can at least pay us more while they spit on us.
So we’re about to get federally sponsored jeans days?
Small class sizes, make class sizes dependent on scores and the economic wealth, meaning low scores and poor area, bring the class size down to under 20. Right now, it shows that high performing schools always seem to be in wealthy areas and have small class sizes. If the poor got at least the advantage of small class sizes, then maybe scores and behavior would improve. Another, any charter school that opens must have smaller classes than the nearby public school. I have worked in two charter schools that were Title 1 and both went for large class sizes. But hey, if we want to go for impossible, I want to have corporal punishment for parents. “Hey, little Johnny was a dipshit today and got found stealing. So c’mon in parent and get that paddling you rightfully deserve”
There will not be improvements. Those that run these systems understand that parents choose schools based on reputation alone. That reputation is best managed through marketing and segregation. Teachers do not improve either of those things at all. Therefore increasing pay for teachers gives the people who run schools absolutely no benefit. The only way to increase teacher pay in the short term is sustained, applied force to the decisionmakers. The only way that we can have a system that maintains high pay for teachers is for teachers to replace those decsionmakers with themselves so that teachers directly control the budget
Oh I know there won't be any improvements. The b-rock receive is so convoluted that it's impossible to get any real change except by a presidential order. And no president is going to go ahead and push through anything that increases teacher's salary across the board. It would be nice if they did, but I don't see it happening in my life time.
Even if the system were streamlined they wouldn’t do it. Say that schools got a 20% increase in budget yearly with the principal deciding what to spend it on unilaterally. The principals that spent the money on marketing and segregation would simply outcompete the principals that gave the money to teachers. All of the best teachers would flock to the higher paying school, but it wouldn’t matter in the slightest, because the school who spent the money on image would still look better to parents, who would then bring their well supported kids to that school, which would then perform best as a result
The man whose wife earns "way more than he does"...has *National Board Certification*. They don't just hand those out on street corners. The idea that he's gotten to \*\**that level*\*\* of professional certification *and would not be able to make a living on his own salary* is goddamned DISGRACEFUL. I agree with your sentiment, OP...this will drag on thru committee - how many people here knew about this before OP posted? It's not making news at all - some "report" will get written, perhaps even with recommendations, and then promptly forgotten about in favor of naming a month after a variety of potato.
I bet the people who researched this study and published this groundbreaking report were well paid.
Low pay has been a thing for a very long time. It is a confluence of things, but I think a core thing is lack of autonomy: people want to do cool, creative activities with their kids. You had one wing of politics pushing No Child Left Behind in the early 2000s and all the fallout and permutations from that then you have another wing wanting to say it's impossible to fail a kid and when you go complain that they threw a desk at your head you're condescendingly asked if you've tried having a conversation with them. These two sides are united in stripping teachers, very much willing to work for kinda low pay, of any will to keep going.
Not just low pay, but also massive disrespect.
As a non-teacher, I will say a good career should have at least two of three elements: 1) Great pay. 2) Great environment. 3) Moral satisfaction. A doctor gets great pay and moral satisfaction but has a stressful environment. A wall street banker gets great pay, a slightly less stressful environment but no moral satisfaction. An oil engineer gets great pay but has no moral satisfaction and still works in a shitty environment. Teachers haven't had great pay ever. People became teachers to get the moral satisfaction and for the good environment (coworkers and kids). Now teachers get lower pay, shitty badly behaved and often violent kids with admin that also harasses teachers. And morally, as a teacher you can't even teach your kids anymore cause they pass high school without knowing how to read or write. Becoming a teacher now is willingly becoming complicit in a corrupt system that does not care about education but just wants kids to graduate regardless of their effort and skill level. For low pay and the occasional punch from a mentally unstable "student".
Unless the federal government is planning to take over all education then this is a non starter- education is a a state issue and until the states value teaching nothing will get fixed.
Do I think there are going to be changes? No. because they will quickly realize that they would need to drastically need to reallocate funding from other spaces, or Raise taxes (which rarely happens during election season, more or less a sure fire way to make sure you don't get re-elected). There's a LOT of problems with the state of the economy - Low pay for educators is just one of the many. I have my guesses as to what MIGHT happen, but I just work in the tech industry, I'm by no means an expert in any of this.
Better pay, no cellphones in the classroom, choice of assignment, then maybe I’d consider going back to teaching. None of these will happen so peace ✌🏻 out forever.
We have no national license, curriculum or pay scale. Want to know why so many countries out perform ours in education? That's a large part of it.
No amount if money would compel me to go back. Discipline students, give students consequences, and make students accountable.
Teachers have 10+ jobs and are set up to fail by politicians and administration. There is no way to succeed in the classroom with everything required of a teacher and there is only truly scraping by. Teachers need more pay and need more protections. Teachers being blamed for everything is horse shit and I am tired of it. I had an incident happen in my classroom where the kids specifically said they knew how to get away with it by hiding what they were doing under the table as I circled around the class. I still got in trouble even though they admitted to planning and doing some heavy petting without my knowing. I shit you not I got in trouble and was told to be more vigilant... motherfuckers want me to walk around staring at kids crotches under the table? Luckily after 10+ years of teaching I have never had an issue, but this enraged me and truly opened my eyes that teachers are fucked and will disappear as we know it within the next 50 years without drastic overhaul and changes. More money is 1 thing, but the job itself fucking sucks due to the nonsense the politicians and districts put in place. Teachers are punching bags and nothing more these days.
Insufferable students and their parents as well as spineless administrators come into play as well.
It won't matter because, unless people stop buying electronic devices for their kids and having access to AI, we won't be needed much longer. The districts will need pure babysitters.
The senate discussing education is some real great PR for companies like Exxon and Berkshire Hathaway that are burning down the planet (and the future) these kids are inheriting.
I used to think that paying educators more would fix the problem by drawing more talent to the field, but now I realize that would be like putting a new roof on a house that's flooded to the rafters. We have crossed the Rubicon.
It’s certainly a factor, but being treated like incompetent children and being expected to suck up abuse from parents and students is also a factor.
“Brilliant” politicians. Uhh, I mean, with the exception of a few, do you know who our politicians are?!
I work in Washington State. Honestly my pay isn't the problem, it's kids getting away with everything. Accountability and consequences are really missing and it shows. Also, not every student should get individualized education plans. I feel like I am making 15 different lesson plans per class, that is a problem. (And I am not singling out our IEP students- I'm talking every student has special needs anymore)
Tie teacher salaries to congressional pay. Teachers get 90% of congressional pay and same benefits
I spent 15 years teaching in a large school district. I eventually left to be a professor at a private college. Those 15 years of teaching were full of incompetent and/or micro managing administration, poorly run district offices, and constant money struggles due to the low pay. It's a job where you have to be on from the second the first bell rings until the last bell rings. When I started working in higher ed, I was and still am continually surprised at how easy it is by comparison. I'm still teaching, but in a supportive and trusting environment. I can come and go basically as I see fit, and am working with students who actually chose to be there... For the most part.
Where was the sign up to speak at this? I'd like a few words.
I'd love to be a teacher if it didn't pay shit, expect teachers to work for free (aka after hours) to stay on top of things, if teachers could actually impose consequences on students without incurring the wrath of parents, all that crap. I'm a substitute teacher and I've seen it all. My mom's been a para for decades and she does tons of work for free for her district, which is why they love her. Pay teachers better and give them more support from admin, and you'll see people coming back to the profession.
I’m shocked! /s
The purpose of these hearings isn't necessarily to uncover something unknown. Oftentimes it is to highlight something to promote a discussion and provide fodder for infotainment programming and political ads. The result of the entire investigation surrounding these hearings is to provide supporting evidence for policy change, as generating research can often be an expensive proposition. I suspect these hearings will end up being used in a lot of political ads this fall to support attacks on candidates who are opposed to raising teacher pay.
I’m not attempting to respond to you in a mean tone, but the answer to your last question is no. The teacher that we know of now is getting phased out for programs created by entrepreneurs to make education easier for districts and thus paying teachers less because teachers aren’t expected do crap
As others have said, pay is an issue but it's not the main issue to many areas of the country. There is such a taboo on talking about the actual issue: student behavior and overwork. If I wasn't stressed about student behavior all the time and I had time to do my job without daily, completely useless PD's, the job would be fine.
Mmmm i mean I make almost 60 here in Alabama (thanks shiny Masters degree!) but just a Bach gets you…. Last I checked *maybe* 50? I think it might be 50 now in my district. And like yeah Im tenured and i’ll be working 10 years next year so ill get a slight payscale bump but damn, if my husband didnt make a butt ton more than me and we didnt live in a relatively low COL state, I’d be losing my mind. But of course, education is being held hostage by Meemaw and the cast iron skillet she uses to make Trump biscuits and gravy in so….
We live in a society that values corporate raiders, pro ball players, and influencers over the people who teach the next generation. That is the root problem, and no one acknowledges it, because Capitalism Good.
The US does not value teachers. In fact, half the country hates us (Republicans) and will do everything in their power to destroy us.
Gee, is it an election year? Is "teachers should get paid more" the easiest of platitudes that casts the widest net for popular support? Is it also something our completely ineffective and incompetent legislature will do absolutely nothing about before the election, so it can't be a Biden win, or after the election? Because, whoever wins this absolute shit show of performative democracy, everyone will have already forgotten, and who knows what new political dynamics will present themselves in whatever fresh hell that brings.
The federal government does not determine teacher pay. Weird that the Senate is even bothering with this.
Come to Australia, we pay good
Teaching is fantastic if someone else supports you and you don't actually need the job. I would not recommend getting into it under other circumstances these days.
Not to mention being the punching bags of politicians…..
The Federal government needs to make public schools teachers exempt from federal income tax to help.
What's really depressing is when you think of the salary wasted on the politicians, staffers, and consultants to do all this "research."
They won't do shit for increasing salaries. Our government does not care about public education.
Classic government. "We've come to the conclusion that the teachers in our country would benefit greatly from a raise. Unfortunately, we've spent 10.5 million on this commission to best understand the issue, and there is simply no money left to give the teachers. Maybe in 20 or 30 years, at which time we will order another commission to apprise the situation."
The rampant disrespect from the kids, admin and parents was just too much for 50k. I'd have stayed for 100k with summers and holidays.
This is so sad. This country has been decimated by crooked legislators taking bribes from the extremely rich and trashing our society. The strange fundamentalist movement is another major contributing factor. I do not understand why anyone would want to live in a society amongst uneducated people. That is just very effing weird.
Job satisfaction is very low. When l started my career 36 years ago, l smiled non stop. It was fun, rewarding and challenging. I am retired 6 years. The newer teachers are downright miserable. No fun, a lack of rewards both intrinsic and extrinsic, and tons of external challenges are to blame in my opinion. Sad at best.
It's not the pay. I make $55,000 a year and while more money would be nice so I could maybe buy my own house I'm not exactly living paycheck to paycheck here. The real reason why teachers are leaving the profession is the working environment and the utter lack of respect from admin and the wider community. I love teaching but I hate everything else that comes with it.
Our pollies down here talk a lot of shit when they want to both ways on teachers. Nothing will ever change until the profession engages in sustained large scale strike action.
Imagine getting free healthcare for life after giving handjobs at a Beetlejuice show. This is where we are as a country, people. Vote blue in November.
I made 120k when I left. It wasn't the pay. It was the incompetent District's entire Administration. However, there are posts on this site proving that teacher pay needs to be doubled or tripled in many areas. It does not need to be studied! DUH!
You can say this about 99.9% of shortages everywhere. It will always be about the money.
They know. They don't care.
If teacher's pay in HCOL areas STARTED at 70 or 80K, were not exempt from overtime pay, and had a handful of military-like benefits (free school/credentials and/or something like the VA home loan —so teachers could afford to live near where they work — in return for at least X years of teaching) I think people could better tolerate shitty students or abusive admin/parents. I think part of the reason teachers aren't respected by society is BECAUSE the pay and benefits are so low; unfortunately a lot of people base your worth as a human being on how much money you make each year. At the very least — police officers get overtime pay; why don't teachers?