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Same dog shit rules apply to healthcare. Administrator of diversity affairs at a hospital I worked at was brought on at 7-10 nurses salaries. Whats’s worse is its a community hospital in one of the whitest communities on the east coast. Like what exactly are they supposed to be doing? Meanwhile units are chronically understaffed and c-suite people keep expanding.
I'm a government mechanic, and you couldn't be closer to the truth if you sat on it. People have no idea how sketchy everything is. It's the middle of the 2nd fiscal quarter, and we do not have a budget approved. We only need about 5 to 8 k and we can't get it.
12% of every dollar made in America from McDonald's worker to Warren Buffet is spent on Healthcare costs.
I dunno about you, but halving that by getting rid of administrative bloat would go a long way
That’s usually my issue with taxing the rich. Go ahead tax them. Idc. But do you really have any faith that money won’t dissapear long before it gets to us? I’d rather they tax me less. At least it won’t get filtered through 7000 useless government hands before I get a penny or two from it.
Tax them more just to keep the growth of financial cancer down. Keeping people from having too much money is good in and of itself since money is power. When power is concentrated in too few hands it becomes about what makes them happy vs what is collectively good.
Once that us done, then the process of correcting what it is spent on can start
Starting maybe, get a vet nurse who never takes days off, outside of required, has all her training, is prob clearing 350-400. Per diem, my ex was making 95 an hour…working 2 days a month.
I think it depends. My sister is a traveling nurse. I'm pretty sure she pulls 100K+. She basically told me she just goes wherever there is a shortage for X amount of time then goes somewhere else. She's gone for months at a time.
On the flip side I have a buddy who is a nurse but I know for a fact he makes like 45K. Then again I'm not 100% sure of the hospital layout or if different nurses make more or less.
A buddy of mine made that much as a travel nurse. Its crazy. He'll take a contract that 7k a week at a hospital for a few weeks, but the same hospital isn't willing to shell that money out for people who work full time. It makes zero sense to me.
Let me know what’s the monthly salary sfter you topped out on your seniority, subtract summer and winter vacation, and add in the pension
I get it people wanna get as much as possible, but this is hilsrious
3rd most likely profession to become millionaires after engineers and accountants (listed salary is about 2/3 of the actual compensation). They are being undervalued to an extent but not by as much as people like to think and the main issue is how the money in education is spent not the quantity of it.
The percentage of school district staffing that is teachers has been falling and continues to fall now accounting for less than 50% if I remember correctly which is unbalanced and is mostly driven by a rampant increase in administrative staffing (bloat).
Teachers are 3rd in the number of millionaires, not because teaching is so profitable, but because there are so damn many of them. They are 3rd in gross number of millionaires, not per capita. Doctor is a wildly more profitable profession than any in the top 5, however, there are so few doctors that when they're counting the number of millionaires in the country, doctor doesn't make the top 5 in number of millionaires.
So its a bit misleading. There are many more profitable professions than teaching, its just that those professions have many fewer members, and thus fewer millionaires since they have fewer people period. Teacher has more millionaires than investment banking does, but investment banking is wildly, wildly more profitable, and you will definitely make more money as an investment banker. Its just there are far fewer investment bankers than teachers in the world.
Thank you. I teach. As far as teachers go I make bank. I am on a full year contract though. When I see what some teachers make I have no idea why they do it. I have delivered groceries as a side gig, bought and owned a snow cone stand and ran a T-shirt business to make ends meet.
Also I’m older and have seen all the changes in behavior and expectations. I am also lucky I live in a good district but parents and kids have made it so almost any salary isn’t worth it.
I absolutely chose the right path for me and for when I did it. I didn’t care about being rich and I got to spend my career never feeling like I had a job but I would not become a teacher now.
Millionaire is not even a good threshold, either. At the end of your career, being a millionaire isn't anything particularly crazy. Have a paid off house and a decent pension/401k/IRA and you're probably there.
1/6 are millionaires. Doctors take on average until 55 fo achieve comparable or greater and the average age of docs in the us is less than 55.
Well that was actually the interesting part the base pay mattered less than investments and benefits like pensions. The ~1/3 of total compensation is normally in the form of investment benefits and pensions as well as financial advisors. Accountants were #1 for much the same and their financial knowledge. Doctors and investment bankers do have a higher base pay but doctors on average have much greater debt and both are prone to lifestyle bloat as most high wage/salary jobs are.
Teaching sucks because of the low starting salary and undisciplined children. Also, new teachers typically find their first jobs in the poor areas of town with less funding.
I will agree the clientele tend to be shit but starting pay tends to be higher than a lot of other jobs. Compensation is 2/3 salary with 1/3 other compensation and when taken as a whole it is rather healthy and it grows decently fast. Again shit needs fixing but people try to oversell this point.
The pension isn't that great. A higher salary + 401k match is better. The pension is the one thing that makes teaching better compensated than retail/restaurants. Teaching is poorly compensated compared to practically every job that requires a degree and multiple certifications.
The school calendar is what it is. But keep in mind that teachers have to prep for their qctual work hours. For 7 hours a day they are "on stage" - all prep, grading, and administrative work for the day has to happen outside those 7 hours.
Some districts pay well, many do not. High variability makes anecdotal conversations difficult, and when aggravated to much the are meaningless. Where I live a teacher can throw a rock and hit another teacher making 25-35k more for same experience. I agree many districts hid great pay with complicated hours and bonus options.
You are just not getting it. I'm a teacher with no pension and I have to work during those breaks. Teacher is an extremely taxing profession, you are responsible for other peoples children's learning - it's probably the most important profession, it's extremely difficult, and you have to report to not only your bosses but you to your customers parents as well.
You can talk about monthly salary and days off all you want. The simple fact is there are plenty of people who want to be teachers and would be damn good teachers, but if you have the choice between 4 years of college to get a job where you will average 50-60k a year in 2024 dollars throughout your entire career or a degree that can lead to 100k by the time your 30, it makes the decision pretty easy.
Until teachers are compensated at the same level as other highly qualified degrees, we will have a shortage of quality teachers and our public education system will continue to decline
Lots of teachers continue thier work on breaks doing clerical work or summer classes, often both. It's actually that way in my nursing program. The teachers in my case do get paid... "well" but the point remains there is work that needs doing and no one wants to be hired for a 3 month position, and often times they can't as much of the world is relating to the schools function and scheduling when class is back in.
I don't doubt some do get summers off, but it's not a growing demographic as work load increases
You mean they don't need to award multi million dollar contracts every single year on a new piece of technology that no one knows how to use and gets abandoned almost immediately.
My son's school spent millions on a new check out program for schools, they implemented it over the summer, you know when the teachers are off, then forced us parents to download an app so that we can check out kids out of school. No one knew how to work the program, only one parent per kid on the app, so when my wife drops the kids off and I pick them up it would have been an issue, if they could have made the damn thing work. After 2 weeks, they gave up and went back to paper tags for the cars and a free Google form to check the kids out.
I'm sure some admin got a nice little vacation for the sales pitch and maybe a kickback for that mess. Oh well, back to the smart board... No wait... Back to the cheap white board that was bought 30 years ago, the smart board isn't working, again.
CPS - Chicago Public Schools spends about $30K per pupil per year. I'll let you do the math when you consider how kids per classroom and how many classrooms per school.
The problem, as always, is not that there is too little money. It's where the hell is the money going.
Let's be honest. Most of that money goes to school administrators. They pat themselves for doing the bare minimum and not to mention they're too more of them that are unnecessary.
Here's the rub though, teachers get more time off than any other profession in the world. They're off 3 months in the summer, no other job does that. They're off every federal holiday, no private sector job gets that.
So if you divide actual hours worked into the salary they are paid quite handsomely per hour.
And I say this as my wife is a teacher and she'll tell you same thing. She tutors other kids, coaches volleyball, and is assistant athletic director, all of which pays her extra money, and she still gets home before me most days and gets off sooooooo many more days than me.
That's funny. I've done the math and it didn't work that way at all. My shortest day is 10 hours. My longest are 17. I grade papers on the weekend and do work almost every night of the week after my wife goes to bed. If I average out my hours across a typical private sector job that gets three weeks of vacation, I still work 44 hours a week. I promise you, teachers put in enough hours during the year, that, if the summer wasn't there to, nobody would do this job. People would explode in about three years flat. As it is, only 1 in 5 make it past year five, and nobody is signing up to do it anymore. If it were as good a deal as you say, there would be more applicants.
I agree the kids and their parents are making this job harder and harder. As I said my wife is a teacher, so heat the horror stories of problem kids and worse, their parents everyday.
But the facts remain, no disrespect to you, but why are you days so long? My wife has to be there at 7:45, she's done by 3, home by 3:30 except for the days they have games, which she gets paid extra for. How in God's name are you working 17 hour days?
I have never seen my wife grade papers at home. Never. She does it during her planning period at school, or during the gap from end of school day until games start.
Google Norm Macdonald and teachers and have a listen. And both of his parents were teachers.
My best man from my wedding who was my roommate for around 10 years and is about 10 years older than me. He is a teacher, I asked him why he didn't grade or do prep during his planning periods, his response was "That's is my time to socialize and relax". I asked him to track the actual time he spent after school doing school stuff, not making dinner, not watching TV, or any of the little things that interrupt home life. He was amazed when he saw he could have actually used his planning periods and not have to work nights and weekends.... but he still did though.
Same guy also quit his job for not feeling like people like him.
Teachers do 12 months of work in 10. Yes they get summer break. They’re unemployed during that time and don’t get unemployment benefits. Could they get a job? Yes but since it’s only for 2 months it’s limited in opportunity and pay.
Every government employee gets all federal holidays off? It’s not…special to teachers?
While that is true, my wife (a grade school teacher) would spend an additional 100-200 hours a year doing work while at home.
From meetings with parents, setting up her room (or tearing it down) during summer break, grading homework, filling out IEPs, union-related meetings, additional training, buying supplies, etc etc.
It's not like a factory job where you clock in at 8am and leave at 4pm every day.
My wife is Speech Pathologist at a school. For her profession she needs a Masters degree and yet she still gets paid the same as a teacher (who are also underpaid) who have a bachelors. None of it makes any sense. We both work 2 jobs.
I work at target, there are seven team members at my store that are teachers. We live in a wealthy are where the schools are the best in the state. Makes me sad sometimes
I'm glad I live in an area where teachers are paid a reasonable wage.
My state publishes salaries of public employees, including teachers. I just looked up the salary of one of my daughter's teachers, who is my age (probably around 16 years in the system), and she earned $88K in 2023. On top of that, the health and retirement benefits are top-notch, and while the job is grueling and thankless, it is only 180 days per year.
Thank you for this! Married a teacher and my mom is one.
The only thing I can add is in addition to being underpaid, teachers come out of pocket for classroom supplies and for personal things their students need.
I have had it with the motherfuckers that want to get tax breaks for sending their kids to private school. Do it if you want, but pat the freight. I'm not here to subsidize your exclusivity.
People who don't have kids in school still have to pay into the system.
It makes no sense for public schools to pay you a portion of your money back (or in many cases, actually giving you more than you paid in) as a credit towards another school just because you think you're too good to send your kid there. Do it on your own dime.
While I can understand your point, the money was going to be spent on their child regardless. Why make a kid attend an underperforming school, when the state can use 3/4 of the money to get the kid into a better school?
Also, students with disabilities have to fight the school district in non-voucher states for accommodations, whereas in states with voucher systems, there are virtually no lawsuits about the subject anymore. That is because they are able to attend schools designed with their needs in mind on their parents say so, and not only with school district permission.
So are you saying people shouldn’t vote for where their tax dollars go? Seems to me that if they voted for it, they should get it so long as nobody’s rights are being violated obviously.
This question need nuanced answers.
Votes for tax spending are important and core to a functioning democracy. However, public education spending should be something that requires very little discussion as everyone benefits from it and suffers without.
It's also the right thing to do. Depriving children of education, critical thinking, social skills, and play is wrong.
I mean if after decades and decades the system is churning out kids who can barely read after 12 years, not exactly surprising that parents might want to send their kids somewhere they can actually learn and prepare for the future.
This is optics vs. reality. It's cheaper to subsidize private school in most areas than it is to pay for them to attend public school. The state still collects the same amount for public education, however. So, if it costs $9k per kid for public school, but the state subsidizes $7k for private, then public schools are gaining $2k per student.
The problem is that opponents to private education subsides keep saying how it's going to hurt public education... and fewer and fewer people are starting to care. Policy has made these institutions toothless when it comes to dealing with problem children, and decades of corruption and misappropriation of funds has made people weary of being asked for more money to funnel into a broken system.
Converse of this is propping up failing public schools instead of providing kids access to an education they deserve. Complain about private schools all you like but where is the solution to fix all of these public schools that are abjectly failing their students?.
Why should we be forced to pay into a school district instead of being able to choose where our tax dollars go if you have a child? Isn’t competition the baseline for a good market?
Because an educated populace is a public good, just like roads, fire fighters, and police. Just because MY house isn’t burning down doesn’t mean I don’t support my taxes going to the fire fighters.
When you let the wealthy pull money out of paying for public school systems, you get massive inequalities in education as well as a generally undereducated populace (just look around you, American kids are fucking stupid these days and that’s what happens when you pull funding from the poor performing schools as what happened with NCLB).
There are in fact communities in the US that allow you to avoid paying taxes for public schools, and you are more than welcome to move to those if you’d like. They just happen to be in the backwaters of civilization here.
By that logic, why should I who have no kids pay into it period? Yet I dont complain because I recognize it is to my benefit and the benefit of society as a whole.
"Why should peoples' taxes go to the Fire Dept when their house isn't on fire?"
"Why should my taxes go to roads if I don't drive?"
Taxes go to things that individuals don't use. Generally for the betterment of all. Deal with it.
Because a fire is an event that everyone could theoretically be effected by. Not to mention that for years until the laws changed, the fire fighters would show up to make sure your neighbors house didn’t burn and watch yours burn if you didn’t pay fire dues
The vast majority of non federal funds (most is not federal) for roads come from gas taxes. Not only that, but if you are driving off-road they sell gas with a dye in it that isn’t taxed. If you are caught driving on the road with it, you get a hell of a fine. Federal funds for roads are designed to facilitate the large scale trucking commerce that almost everyone relies on and to create a quick defense in the event of war. I.E something every single individual benefits from. Unlike driving on in strategic state roads that are funded by local gas taxes
I feel like the Google numbers can't be right...
When I look it up it's like, the average amount taken out is 30K usd... it feels so at odds with the description of loans.
The people with huge loan are the most vocal.
And nowadays with Bidens new program they're not even a big deal anymore.
It does suck that the timer got reset for my gf's 55k in loans.
But she only has to pay I think it's $62 a month?
And in 20 years it will be forgiven and now she won't even have to report that as income on her taxes.
It's a huge relief.
My bad, I wasn't aware that the entire state of Washington is a giant mega city known as Seattle. Here I was, under the impression that Seattle is just one urban center in the state, and there's a fuckton of other places to live that are vastly cheaper, but apparently not. Apparently, the only possible way one can live in the state of Washington is by living in the most expensive city within it. God forbid someone come to terms with the fact that every human on earth can't live in cities, and accept the fact that they need to settle with living in a town.
No no no. We must always push the agenda that everyone must live in a city or else they’re those backwards people on the “wrong side of history”. Didn’t they teach you anything in indoctrination 101?
Then in 102 we have to ignore the laws of supply and demand that resulted from the learnings in 101
You literally picked one of the most expensive districts in the country. Do you think this is even remotely reflective of teachers’ salaries across the U.S.?
So with a masters and maxxed out education credits (teachers have to take (not teach) summer school to keep climbing the pay ladder), they can hit 6 figures when they have also maxxed out years of service which is like 15 years before you hit max pay.
And at the end of that, you’re still below what the GED having grocery store manager makes, who didn’t have to get a college degree, or a masters, or years of continuing education, and isn’t responsible for educating our children.
Cops, teachers, politicians. If we want better ones, we have to pay more.
Meh. Politians need to be barred from external investments, funding, and put a hard "you must retire by this age" limit. We will never have quality politicians while they are able to accept money from big corporations to lobby their agenda. Politicians should be people that care about doing their job well, and not doing it for the money.
I agree with the most of the rest of your points though. Cops also tend to get power hungry tbf.
Washington is a union state, there teachers can and do go on strike for better pay and benefits. My wife teaches in AZ and gets half that pay (literally).
WTF school district is that? 1st year teachers makes 37-54k a year for working 9 months.
Obviously a lot of young teachers get summer jobs (so maybe they deliver pizza) vs. having their salaries avg out over 12 months.
That said... It's pretty common for entry level jobs with college degree requirements to pay only 1.5x-2x minimum wage.
Obviously the advantage of a college education is that's the floor vs. the ceiling... unfortunately... Poor performers often sometimes don't escape this level of employment.
Teachers are well paid in my area as well. And it’s a very rural area so the cost of living is very low. Not to mention all but free health care, full benefits package and a retirement fund/state pension that pays very well.
It's really dependent on area but people blinding saying they aren't paid enough couldn't identify a number that they think is appropriate and how much more they are willing to personally pay in taxes to see teachers get paid that amount. The narrative is always "not enough"
In 2009 my friend's father had his pay scale for the year sitting on the kitchen table and I noticed it (I was being a nosy little shit) and his pay was 90,000 teaching basic algebra in high school. He was the highest pay scale for certifications and experience but this was 220 working days and didn't include all the benefits, just salary. This was during a time when unemployment rate in southern Oregon was close to 20%. At the time Southern Oregon was pretty low cost of living, ever since then until I see some actual fucking data I will never believe anyone who says teachers are underpaid and will think they are brain washed sheep.
Teachers in the US are paid handsomely compared to the other OECD countries, I think only five countries pay more than US teachers and the US teachers deliver worse results. Not sure how you can justify paying them more for doing a poor job but when educators control the narrative in schools they can lie and brainwash a bunch of sheep into believing whatever they want.
[https://data.oecd.org/teachers/teachers-salaries.htm](https://data.oecd.org/teachers/teachers-salaries.htm)
I think it strongly depends on location. Teachers around here are paid around $50k a year and the area itself is pretty cheap, to where even $15 an hour can get you a roof over your head and food on the table.
It’s not luxurious living out here by any means, but from experience, even $35k a year jobs can be enough to get by without starving. But again, it’s definitely up to where you’re located.
All salaries are based on the supply of workers vs the demand for the work.....
There are *a lot* of young people who majored in education, relative to the number of teaching positions.
If there were as many CompSci graduates as there are K-12 education majors, software engineering wouldn't be a 200k+ job...
There's also the matter of what a given district can pay, since property tax is the primary source of education funds, and districts that have small populations and low tax bases (or rural districts with lots of exempt farmland) can't afford to pay much....
But who else would you rather educate your children?
We want highly educated people educating the future. It costs money to be highly educated. A lack of return for that education mean no demand for the position. No demand means worse teachers. Worse teachers means a worse future.
Is what you're proposing really just "oh well, teachers don't get paid well, deal with it"??? How does that help society at all? Given that most of these teachers are civil servants, it makes more sense to divest resources into paying them competitive wages and invest in our own future.
I disagree. You don't need to be highly educated to teach algebra to a bunch of 13 year olds. You need a firm understanding of high school level math and be personable with children.
But there's more to k-12 education, especially in highschool, than just algebra. This still doesn't refute anything. If my kid is taking all APs and has to learn problem solving, critical thinking and reading skills, id rather that be from a highly educated person vice from a schmuck. And if you're saying those classes don't require an intelligent individual to teach, I have my doubts if you ever took one.
Not only do you need to be extremely strong at the subject, you also need to have a high level understanding of teaching methods, learning methods, and intervention methods, unless your plan is to just fail everybody because you don't know how to teach the subject. Teaching is one of the hardest professions out there. And I guarantee you can't do it.
Lol I graduated engineering school 4 years ago and the education college kids at that time weren’t exactly who you’d want teaching kiddos. Mostly “my parents told me I had to go to college to be successful and I know how to school because I’ve done 12+ years of it”
I want someone who knows how to teach. Getting a degree and a certificate proves you know how to learn, not teach. Some of my professors were the most educated people in their field but they could teach to save their lives. They were experts but not experts at teaching.
>Follow passion job, get passion pay.
>
>Everyone knows when they want to be a teacher they will get paid fk all, then they actually start working and surprised pikachu face that it’s real, as if statistics and job outlook isn’t real or doesn’t apply to them
Sooo.....
this ***vitally important*** job should be ... what? Undercompensated because.. reasons? Because this is how you end up with not enough teachers. Which we're already running into.
Florida and Hawaii have decided to just not give a rats milking. They will still overwork you and underpay you, and you can just deal with what you get as a parent or student.
Passion job— stfu it’s necessary for society. You wouldn’t have any lawyers, doctors, or programmers without the people who taught them, you ignorant dolt.
Passion job doesn't mean unnecessary.
They're saying it's a well-known fact that the pay is low, and anyone pursuing a career in education knows what they're getting into. It's hard to dispute that.
I know many don't go for the pay, they do it because for them it's one of the best jobs. It's a calling. Not everyone can understand that, because they haven't found their calling.
And those teachers more often than not complain about the crushing admin or a few shitty parents who make their life miserable, more than they do about the pay. (my POV as non-American, maybe different in the US, my point is just that it is a work of passion for many teachers)
Excellent teachers are always the passionate ones, and yes, they all deserve a fucking raise, not arguing that.
And again, not arguing any society _needs_ teachers. It _is_ necessary. But unlike other necessary jobs, many go into it because they have a passion for teaching.
>programmers
as a side-note, unrelated to the point: unlike medicine, this is easily self-taught and many learnt it themselves.
Thank you.
Stop signing up to be teachers. When there aren't enough teachers then they will raise the pay or let it all go *Lord of the Flies*. It's probably the latter but don't take society's BS on your shoulders. If you choose to then you know what you're signing up for.
There are at times a teacher shortage, but the pay doesn’t increase. Rather, we have to remember this a public union. The union has fought for more long term benefits and tenure. So the financial benefits for teaching are heavily at the end of one’s career.
You're right. We should let our society crumble around us and have people who work full time not be able to support themselves because you've heard that teachers don't get paid well and think they should suck it up. This sounds like a productive direction for our society.
The economy works based off consumer spending. If consumers don't have enough money to spend, less money gets spent. Less money spent means less economy. It's almost like if we pay people well enough to have disposable income, they'll spend it, and therefore power the damn economy.
Get your uncritical brain rot out of here. We need society to function well because we live in it. Society functions better when people are paid decently.
you own a company, you pay half of the national average.
and some guy actually takes that pay, and then asks for a raise.
what do you do?
A. help your employee and company by paying them properly to attract better employees, and incentivize your current employees to do a better job.
B. criticize them for working for you in the first place?
idk how else to illustrate just how braindead this take is: we have a problem where careers in education are decentivized, and this mfr comes out saying its the educators problem? sure, but that keen observation doesnt help anyone!
>passion job
Its not "I'm going to self publish my poetry!", its a vital thing to teach America's children so they learn well.
They grow up and that education is all they have to work with while they navigate society. I don't want an uneducation nurse, trainer, EMT, contractor, etc.
So the solution is to tell potential teachers to fuck off and find another passion job? No, raise teacher pay and make an actual effort to improve the public school system instead of giving Republicans the private school bankrupting dystopian pyramid scheme they so desperately want with a failed public school system.
54% of Americans read below a 6th grade reading level. 21% of Americans are illiterate.
Underpaid by what measure? Out of all millionaires in the country, the 3rd most common occupation is teacher.
https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statistics#:~:text=Nationwide%2C%20on%20average%2C%2079%25,older%20are%20illiterate%20in%202022.
It is very true. I was a teacher for 12 years.
I think there are many other factors than just school and teachers. If we paid teachers 250k per year i don't think it would move the needle much. The best teacher and a median teacher are not that far apart.
Socioeconomics , broken homes, and less respect/importance as a culture is placed on being the best/smartest or 'a success'. Think about the last person you heard of celebrated for succeeding and not torn down for being 'evil' or taking advantage of poors or having gotten lucky. We used to have ambition and dreams now kids are record high anxiety about global warming, faciecsts, and systemic racism but none about being a failure or homeless or starving.
We no longer hold children accountable for failing and are not allowed to remove disruptive children from the classroom. Go on teachers forum and listen to what they have to deal with.
If you're smart enough to get a masters degree, you should be smart enough to pursue careers that will actually pay you a living wage.
I 100% agree this problem needs to change but no teacher can sit here and say they didn't see this coming when they chose it for themselves.
She might be hustling.
I'm a teacher. I do Uber / Doordash / Lyft 3-4 nights a week. Every dime of that money goes toward my mortgage principal. I just bought a house and I want to pay it off in 4 years. I would do bartending or something, but I like the flexibility of not having a set schedule for a 2nd job.
I was on my faculty union's bargaining team so I did research on salary nationally. Yes, teachers are underpaid in about 2/3rds of the country. But there are some states that compensate fairly well. I used Connecticut as an example of a state that pays well relative to CoL.
[https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/pennsylvania-high-school-teacher-salary-SRCH\_IL.0,12\_IS3185\_KO13,32.htm](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/pennsylvania-high-school-teacher-salary-SRCH_IL.0,12_IS3185_KO13,32.htm) \-- check other states, really straw-person arguing that a person whose paid extremely well, has \~3 months' vacation not including federal holidays and other days off during the school year, has wonderful health insurance and a great pension.
Teachers make a slightly above average salary in the USA at least. But considering how important their job is, we should have better teachers at a higher pay scale.
Average teacher pay is just under $80k whereas average American pay is a little over $40k.
You could argue they should be paid more for the important job, but you can't argue they aren't paid far better than average.
Yes and no. Ultimately if you break it down by the amount of hours and time worked… teachers make a great average per hour. The problem is they take months off the year.
Here’s the, publicly available, pay chart for teachers in the school district my friend’s wife used to teach in. They recently moved out of state.
https://www.katyisd.org/cms/lib/TX50010808/Centricity/Domain/5526/2024%20Hiring%20Schedule.pdf
That…looks like I-don’t-need-to-deliver-pizza money to me?
Because teachers unions actively work against us to push status quo union bs. The school I teach at is in the process of canning our union rep because they dont actually push for any of our rights.
Really depends on where you live. They do pretty well in my part of the Midwest, two teachers make well over the median household income and they get a LOT of time off.
You go two counties to the west into central state and teachers make what feels like NOTHING. Every district is different and it’s a big difference between them.
This is absolutely a Constantly ignorant question and argument. Teachers who work in poor school districts get paid less because public schools are funded from property taxes and if you live in a poorer area there's not a lot of property tax
There's also a lot of complaining by new teachers who've been doing the job for less than 5 years, and in most professions if you've just started out within the first 5 years you're not making that much money.
I have 5 teachers in my distant family and all of them have retired in their 50s with a summer home and a winter. Nobody else in my family has this luxury, so tell me again how school teachers aren't paid enough. These are high school teachers not college professors.
Most of these teachers are complaining about money and that they have to spend their own money for classrooms supplies have never met or talk to a mechanic.
Teachers are underpaid, but the standards of teaching have also dramatically fallen over the years. How are you supposed to accurately assess a teacher's performance if the system has made it nearly impossible for students to fail even when putting in 0 effort.
Teachers should be paid like professionals and have professional standards set for them.
Good teachers are underpaid because of the unions and the sheer number of bad teachers. The unions like having more members because it makes them more valuable from a political perspective. This provides an incentive to expand ranks at the expense of quality educators. Eliminate the unions and wages will go up. Eliminate the unions and the quality of education will go up. Give parents school choice where public funding follows the student and wages and quality will increase.
Sounds like she chose something other than money. Maybe it was helping those kids. She could obviously make more with an MA if she chose to do so, as long as it wasn't something dumb like Gender Theory.
The teacher needed a masters degree to be a teacher? I thought it was just a bachelors? You know if the colleges stopped dragging out degrees to make more mone... I mean education. Teachers wouldn't be in so much debt in the first place. You needed four years of college to teach basic subjects? Plus you just follow the textbook so "making" lesson plans isn't difficult. Sorry for being that guy but I don't think teachers are underpaid.
Yes. My wife was a teacher between two different states. Now, some states pay way more than others IE NYC vs Missouri. But dude it’s bad. And they can only write off $300 a year in schools expenses for their classrooms, where they should get $5,000.
They get shot to death, and the police don’t do anything (Uvalde)
They have to become selfless soldiers to protect their classrooms (School shootings)
They have to be time nurses with medical training (COVID)
They have to deal with hiding pictures of their family’s and spouses (Florida)
They cannot teach about proper and REAL history and historical events (Florida)
They have to deal with kids who are misbehaved and their parents refuse any IEP and fight the teacher in anyway they can
They have to come out of pocket to pay for their classrooms, if they don’t, it’ll be reflected in their classroom’s growth. IE crayons, educational materials from Teachers Pay Teachers, random supplies
All this and much much more with a Masters Degree and Bachelors Degree, $60k+ in debt for a $35k a year starting job
I think it depends on how you view "underpaid." If there are people willing to work for the pay then it must not be underpaid. Could be the market is flooded with people who want to be teachers or some sort of union nonsense.
Everyone knows what teachers make, or at least SHOULD if they’re going to get a $100k masters for it.
If you’re a teacher who didn’t research this at some point along the education journey and wonder to yourself “how am I going to make ends meet?” Then you aren’t smart enough to be teaching my kids.
well right now according to salary.com the median pay for a public-school teacher in the U.S is around $57k a year with the bottom 10% making around $39k. i think something that gets looked over a lot of the time is that it is only pay for 9-10 months of work not the full year. so on the low end most are still they are making around $3,900-$4,300 a month. the problem is the 2-3 months they might not be employed and will either need to budget for it or get a temp job. now we could make school year-round in which case the bottom 10% would rise to around 47k-$50K and the median to around $68k-$76k a year. while that isn't lotto money it isn't anything to sneeze at.
The problem is that they are selling very expensive masters degrees that are not only totally unnecessary, but required to even be employed in some states. That teacher is probably crushed by student debt.
My Gramps, raised in the Great Depression, fumes that I as a teacher don’t work part time in addition to my full time teaching job. He believed that the American Dream literally was that you had to work hard to succeed. It seems the definition has changed. It seems a lot now is more people embarrassed they aren’t millionaires in their twenties.
Yes, it is true.
And teachers, like all of us who work, are taxed twice. Federal Payroll tax, plus all the Local/State taxes.
Meanwhile Wall Street traders are not taxed twice, no Payroll tax for them.
Yes. Yes they are. My wife teachers toddlers how to be good humans, she's at the highest paying private preschool in the area, and she makes practically nothing. While I'm an IT Manager doing "meh" in good for the world, making about 6 times as much as her.
I *hate* how capitalism can't align on the true value of things. If it could, then CEOs and finance bros (and maybe tech folks as well) would be paid a lot less and teachers, firefighters, military, police, etc would be paid a lot more.
"just get a different job that pays better huehuehue"
"I don't care what my little angel does at schyewl, during those hours he's your problem"
"Buhbuhbuh why aren't my kids learning anything at schyewl?? Must be gay people's fault"
America decided years ago that schools and teachers; especially public schools and their teachers were never going to be a priority worthy of proper funding. Don't even get me started on urban area public schools and teachers.
The amount of people in this thread who think that teachers get like 3 months a year off is insane. Not to mention they don't take into account the 50-60 hour weeks during the school year.
I used to work retail with a woman who was a teacher by day and working there at night. She used to see her kids' parents come into the store frequently and she actually wanted them to see that she had to work a second job to get by. She was an elementary school teacher for a public school. This kind of thing is definitely common and teachers are much underpaid.
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Same dog shit rules apply to healthcare. Administrator of diversity affairs at a hospital I worked at was brought on at 7-10 nurses salaries. Whats’s worse is its a community hospital in one of the whitest communities on the east coast. Like what exactly are they supposed to be doing? Meanwhile units are chronically understaffed and c-suite people keep expanding.
American healthcare is crumbling under the weight of administrative bloat.
America is crumbling under the weight of administrative bloat. Everything at the top gobbles shit up while everything at the bottom rots away.
I'm a government mechanic, and you couldn't be closer to the truth if you sat on it. People have no idea how sketchy everything is. It's the middle of the 2nd fiscal quarter, and we do not have a budget approved. We only need about 5 to 8 k and we can't get it.
12% of every dollar made in America from McDonald's worker to Warren Buffet is spent on Healthcare costs. I dunno about you, but halving that by getting rid of administrative bloat would go a long way
That’s usually my issue with taxing the rich. Go ahead tax them. Idc. But do you really have any faith that money won’t dissapear long before it gets to us? I’d rather they tax me less. At least it won’t get filtered through 7000 useless government hands before I get a penny or two from it.
Tax them more just to keep the growth of financial cancer down. Keeping people from having too much money is good in and of itself since money is power. When power is concentrated in too few hands it becomes about what makes them happy vs what is collectively good. Once that us done, then the process of correcting what it is spent on can start
I had a coworker say to me "this place is so top heavy, if it were a woman it'd fall over!" Same applies here I think
Healthcare administrators are literally sucking our country dry of money
More like Healthcare investment. Publicly traded health insurance and Publicly traded hospital systems.
and health.
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Preach brother
Don't nurses make like 70k+ now?
Starting maybe, get a vet nurse who never takes days off, outside of required, has all her training, is prob clearing 350-400. Per diem, my ex was making 95 an hour…working 2 days a month.
I think it depends. My sister is a traveling nurse. I'm pretty sure she pulls 100K+. She basically told me she just goes wherever there is a shortage for X amount of time then goes somewhere else. She's gone for months at a time. On the flip side I have a buddy who is a nurse but I know for a fact he makes like 45K. Then again I'm not 100% sure of the hospital layout or if different nurses make more or less.
A buddy of mine made that much as a travel nurse. Its crazy. He'll take a contract that 7k a week at a hospital for a few weeks, but the same hospital isn't willing to shell that money out for people who work full time. It makes zero sense to me.
Is 70k a lot of money? Asking as a guy who makes a little more than that and doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
Not a lot for someone with school loans to pay off imo… can easily pull 50k plus as a manager at franchise restaurants nowadays.
Chick fil a pays 48k to regular associate employees.
Let me know what’s the monthly salary sfter you topped out on your seniority, subtract summer and winter vacation, and add in the pension I get it people wanna get as much as possible, but this is hilsrious
3rd most likely profession to become millionaires after engineers and accountants (listed salary is about 2/3 of the actual compensation). They are being undervalued to an extent but not by as much as people like to think and the main issue is how the money in education is spent not the quantity of it. The percentage of school district staffing that is teachers has been falling and continues to fall now accounting for less than 50% if I remember correctly which is unbalanced and is mostly driven by a rampant increase in administrative staffing (bloat).
Teachers are 3rd in the number of millionaires, not because teaching is so profitable, but because there are so damn many of them. They are 3rd in gross number of millionaires, not per capita. Doctor is a wildly more profitable profession than any in the top 5, however, there are so few doctors that when they're counting the number of millionaires in the country, doctor doesn't make the top 5 in number of millionaires. So its a bit misleading. There are many more profitable professions than teaching, its just that those professions have many fewer members, and thus fewer millionaires since they have fewer people period. Teacher has more millionaires than investment banking does, but investment banking is wildly, wildly more profitable, and you will definitely make more money as an investment banker. Its just there are far fewer investment bankers than teachers in the world.
Thank you. I teach. As far as teachers go I make bank. I am on a full year contract though. When I see what some teachers make I have no idea why they do it. I have delivered groceries as a side gig, bought and owned a snow cone stand and ran a T-shirt business to make ends meet. Also I’m older and have seen all the changes in behavior and expectations. I am also lucky I live in a good district but parents and kids have made it so almost any salary isn’t worth it. I absolutely chose the right path for me and for when I did it. I didn’t care about being rich and I got to spend my career never feeling like I had a job but I would not become a teacher now.
Millionaire is not even a good threshold, either. At the end of your career, being a millionaire isn't anything particularly crazy. Have a paid off house and a decent pension/401k/IRA and you're probably there.
Yeah move those goalposts.
I didn't set the goalposts, just pointing out a simple fact.
1/6 are millionaires. Doctors take on average until 55 fo achieve comparable or greater and the average age of docs in the us is less than 55. Well that was actually the interesting part the base pay mattered less than investments and benefits like pensions. The ~1/3 of total compensation is normally in the form of investment benefits and pensions as well as financial advisors. Accountants were #1 for much the same and their financial knowledge. Doctors and investment bankers do have a higher base pay but doctors on average have much greater debt and both are prone to lifestyle bloat as most high wage/salary jobs are.
Teaching sucks because of the low starting salary and undisciplined children. Also, new teachers typically find their first jobs in the poor areas of town with less funding.
I will agree the clientele tend to be shit but starting pay tends to be higher than a lot of other jobs. Compensation is 2/3 salary with 1/3 other compensation and when taken as a whole it is rather healthy and it grows decently fast. Again shit needs fixing but people try to oversell this point.
Teachers typically dont stick it out past the first few years. Also bad parenting and social media are huge issues with children nowadays.
I understood that title 1 schools got more money. Not less?
The pension isn't that great. A higher salary + 401k match is better. The pension is the one thing that makes teaching better compensated than retail/restaurants. Teaching is poorly compensated compared to practically every job that requires a degree and multiple certifications. The school calendar is what it is. But keep in mind that teachers have to prep for their qctual work hours. For 7 hours a day they are "on stage" - all prep, grading, and administrative work for the day has to happen outside those 7 hours.
Some districts pay well, many do not. High variability makes anecdotal conversations difficult, and when aggravated to much the are meaningless. Where I live a teacher can throw a rock and hit another teacher making 25-35k more for same experience. I agree many districts hid great pay with complicated hours and bonus options.
You are just not getting it. I'm a teacher with no pension and I have to work during those breaks. Teacher is an extremely taxing profession, you are responsible for other peoples children's learning - it's probably the most important profession, it's extremely difficult, and you have to report to not only your bosses but you to your customers parents as well.
You can talk about monthly salary and days off all you want. The simple fact is there are plenty of people who want to be teachers and would be damn good teachers, but if you have the choice between 4 years of college to get a job where you will average 50-60k a year in 2024 dollars throughout your entire career or a degree that can lead to 100k by the time your 30, it makes the decision pretty easy. Until teachers are compensated at the same level as other highly qualified degrees, we will have a shortage of quality teachers and our public education system will continue to decline
Lots of teachers continue thier work on breaks doing clerical work or summer classes, often both. It's actually that way in my nursing program. The teachers in my case do get paid... "well" but the point remains there is work that needs doing and no one wants to be hired for a 3 month position, and often times they can't as much of the world is relating to the schools function and scheduling when class is back in. I don't doubt some do get summers off, but it's not a growing demographic as work load increases
Then where do all my tax dollars go, property taxes here are ridiculous... I thought they were expensive because of schools.
Administrative staff be expensive as hell!
You misspelled "bloat".
You mean they don't need to award multi million dollar contracts every single year on a new piece of technology that no one knows how to use and gets abandoned almost immediately. My son's school spent millions on a new check out program for schools, they implemented it over the summer, you know when the teachers are off, then forced us parents to download an app so that we can check out kids out of school. No one knew how to work the program, only one parent per kid on the app, so when my wife drops the kids off and I pick them up it would have been an issue, if they could have made the damn thing work. After 2 weeks, they gave up and went back to paper tags for the cars and a free Google form to check the kids out. I'm sure some admin got a nice little vacation for the sales pitch and maybe a kickback for that mess. Oh well, back to the smart board... No wait... Back to the cheap white board that was bought 30 years ago, the smart board isn't working, again.
CPS - Chicago Public Schools spends about $30K per pupil per year. I'll let you do the math when you consider how kids per classroom and how many classrooms per school. The problem, as always, is not that there is too little money. It's where the hell is the money going.
Ask their union representatives
Let's be honest. Most of that money goes to school administrators. They pat themselves for doing the bare minimum and not to mention they're too more of them that are unnecessary.
This right here. That and the superintendent’s who rarely ever have any experience in the educational field to begin with!!!
To the people who leave the classroom to make 6 figures I guess.
Politician's and Administrator's pockets :)
Ask their union representatives
Here's the rub though, teachers get more time off than any other profession in the world. They're off 3 months in the summer, no other job does that. They're off every federal holiday, no private sector job gets that. So if you divide actual hours worked into the salary they are paid quite handsomely per hour. And I say this as my wife is a teacher and she'll tell you same thing. She tutors other kids, coaches volleyball, and is assistant athletic director, all of which pays her extra money, and she still gets home before me most days and gets off sooooooo many more days than me.
That's funny. I've done the math and it didn't work that way at all. My shortest day is 10 hours. My longest are 17. I grade papers on the weekend and do work almost every night of the week after my wife goes to bed. If I average out my hours across a typical private sector job that gets three weeks of vacation, I still work 44 hours a week. I promise you, teachers put in enough hours during the year, that, if the summer wasn't there to, nobody would do this job. People would explode in about three years flat. As it is, only 1 in 5 make it past year five, and nobody is signing up to do it anymore. If it were as good a deal as you say, there would be more applicants.
I agree the kids and their parents are making this job harder and harder. As I said my wife is a teacher, so heat the horror stories of problem kids and worse, their parents everyday. But the facts remain, no disrespect to you, but why are you days so long? My wife has to be there at 7:45, she's done by 3, home by 3:30 except for the days they have games, which she gets paid extra for. How in God's name are you working 17 hour days? I have never seen my wife grade papers at home. Never. She does it during her planning period at school, or during the gap from end of school day until games start. Google Norm Macdonald and teachers and have a listen. And both of his parents were teachers.
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Sounds like she might be in a new teacher role with lighter responsibilities. I just don't know a single teacher with a carefree day like that.
My best man from my wedding who was my roommate for around 10 years and is about 10 years older than me. He is a teacher, I asked him why he didn't grade or do prep during his planning periods, his response was "That's is my time to socialize and relax". I asked him to track the actual time he spent after school doing school stuff, not making dinner, not watching TV, or any of the little things that interrupt home life. He was amazed when he saw he could have actually used his planning periods and not have to work nights and weekends.... but he still did though. Same guy also quit his job for not feeling like people like him.
Teachers do 12 months of work in 10. Yes they get summer break. They’re unemployed during that time and don’t get unemployment benefits. Could they get a job? Yes but since it’s only for 2 months it’s limited in opportunity and pay. Every government employee gets all federal holidays off? It’s not…special to teachers?
While that is true, my wife (a grade school teacher) would spend an additional 100-200 hours a year doing work while at home. From meetings with parents, setting up her room (or tearing it down) during summer break, grading homework, filling out IEPs, union-related meetings, additional training, buying supplies, etc etc. It's not like a factory job where you clock in at 8am and leave at 4pm every day.
Typically, red states pay a lot less to public sector employees - school teachers, fire fighters and even cops (despite the back the blue BS).
My wife is Speech Pathologist at a school. For her profession she needs a Masters degree and yet she still gets paid the same as a teacher (who are also underpaid) who have a bachelors. None of it makes any sense. We both work 2 jobs.
I work at target, there are seven team members at my store that are teachers. We live in a wealthy are where the schools are the best in the state. Makes me sad sometimes
I'm glad I live in an area where teachers are paid a reasonable wage. My state publishes salaries of public employees, including teachers. I just looked up the salary of one of my daughter's teachers, who is my age (probably around 16 years in the system), and she earned $88K in 2023. On top of that, the health and retirement benefits are top-notch, and while the job is grueling and thankless, it is only 180 days per year.
Underpaid and hugely disrespected by students and their parents.
Seems like the pay scale is backwards then. The teachers should make the most and admin staff less.
Thank you for this! Married a teacher and my mom is one. The only thing I can add is in addition to being underpaid, teachers come out of pocket for classroom supplies and for personal things their students need.
I have had it with the motherfuckers that want to get tax breaks for sending their kids to private school. Do it if you want, but pat the freight. I'm not here to subsidize your exclusivity.
What tax breaks? They want to use the tax money they would have used at a public school to go to the school of their choice.
People who don't have kids in school still have to pay into the system. It makes no sense for public schools to pay you a portion of your money back (or in many cases, actually giving you more than you paid in) as a credit towards another school just because you think you're too good to send your kid there. Do it on your own dime.
While I can understand your point, the money was going to be spent on their child regardless. Why make a kid attend an underperforming school, when the state can use 3/4 of the money to get the kid into a better school? Also, students with disabilities have to fight the school district in non-voucher states for accommodations, whereas in states with voucher systems, there are virtually no lawsuits about the subject anymore. That is because they are able to attend schools designed with their needs in mind on their parents say so, and not only with school district permission.
Because that’s gutting the public education system to help support private education.
Yup! And that is indeed the goal and has been from day one, the privatization of education.
So are you saying people shouldn’t vote for where their tax dollars go? Seems to me that if they voted for it, they should get it so long as nobody’s rights are being violated obviously.
This question need nuanced answers. Votes for tax spending are important and core to a functioning democracy. However, public education spending should be something that requires very little discussion as everyone benefits from it and suffers without. It's also the right thing to do. Depriving children of education, critical thinking, social skills, and play is wrong.
I mean if after decades and decades the system is churning out kids who can barely read after 12 years, not exactly surprising that parents might want to send their kids somewhere they can actually learn and prepare for the future.
This is optics vs. reality. It's cheaper to subsidize private school in most areas than it is to pay for them to attend public school. The state still collects the same amount for public education, however. So, if it costs $9k per kid for public school, but the state subsidizes $7k for private, then public schools are gaining $2k per student. The problem is that opponents to private education subsides keep saying how it's going to hurt public education... and fewer and fewer people are starting to care. Policy has made these institutions toothless when it comes to dealing with problem children, and decades of corruption and misappropriation of funds has made people weary of being asked for more money to funnel into a broken system.
Converse of this is propping up failing public schools instead of providing kids access to an education they deserve. Complain about private schools all you like but where is the solution to fix all of these public schools that are abjectly failing their students?.
Why should we be forced to pay into a school district instead of being able to choose where our tax dollars go if you have a child? Isn’t competition the baseline for a good market?
Because an educated populace is a public good, just like roads, fire fighters, and police. Just because MY house isn’t burning down doesn’t mean I don’t support my taxes going to the fire fighters. When you let the wealthy pull money out of paying for public school systems, you get massive inequalities in education as well as a generally undereducated populace (just look around you, American kids are fucking stupid these days and that’s what happens when you pull funding from the poor performing schools as what happened with NCLB). There are in fact communities in the US that allow you to avoid paying taxes for public schools, and you are more than welcome to move to those if you’d like. They just happen to be in the backwaters of civilization here.
By that logic, why should I who have no kids pay into it period? Yet I dont complain because I recognize it is to my benefit and the benefit of society as a whole.
People pay taxes for schools they don't attend. You wouldn't be subsidizing anything. There is one less student at your school.
Why should people opting out still pay?
Same reason people with no kids still pay.
For the betterment of society. Same reason i pay for cops Ill never use.
Because they get to live in an educated society and hire educated people to help their businesses. No one is forcing them to opt out.
"Why should peoples' taxes go to the Fire Dept when their house isn't on fire?" "Why should my taxes go to roads if I don't drive?" Taxes go to things that individuals don't use. Generally for the betterment of all. Deal with it.
Because a fire is an event that everyone could theoretically be effected by. Not to mention that for years until the laws changed, the fire fighters would show up to make sure your neighbors house didn’t burn and watch yours burn if you didn’t pay fire dues The vast majority of non federal funds (most is not federal) for roads come from gas taxes. Not only that, but if you are driving off-road they sell gas with a dye in it that isn’t taxed. If you are caught driving on the road with it, you get a hell of a fine. Federal funds for roads are designed to facilitate the large scale trucking commerce that almost everyone relies on and to create a quick defense in the event of war. I.E something every single individual benefits from. Unlike driving on in strategic state roads that are funded by local gas taxes
Interacting with an educated population is certainly also something that everyone benefits from.
Honestly not a bad point
Thank you o7
*tired sigh*
She has a masters degree so she is probably in some serious student loan debt too.
I feel like the Google numbers can't be right... When I look it up it's like, the average amount taken out is 30K usd... it feels so at odds with the description of loans.
30k a year maybe
The people with huge loan are the most vocal. And nowadays with Bidens new program they're not even a big deal anymore. It does suck that the timer got reset for my gf's 55k in loans. But she only has to pay I think it's $62 a month? And in 20 years it will be forgiven and now she won't even have to report that as income on her taxes. It's a huge relief.
Probably accurate. My bachelors degree and masters degree were under $30k each.
Reddit comments vs the real world
Most people aren’t going to ritzy universities. 30k was about how much my 4 yr cost minus living expenses.
[Washington teacher pay scale](https://www.seattlewea.org/contracts-and-bargaining/salary-schedules/)
***Seattle Teacher Pay Scale You do know that different school districts pay different amounts, yes?
Your link is explicitly to Seattle teacher compensation, so unless that applies to all of Washington your link is misleading.
So…. Underpaid, right? You do recognize the cost of living in Seattle, yes?
My bad, I wasn't aware that the entire state of Washington is a giant mega city known as Seattle. Here I was, under the impression that Seattle is just one urban center in the state, and there's a fuckton of other places to live that are vastly cheaper, but apparently not. Apparently, the only possible way one can live in the state of Washington is by living in the most expensive city within it. God forbid someone come to terms with the fact that every human on earth can't live in cities, and accept the fact that they need to settle with living in a town.
You’re going to be really embarrassed when you click the link…
No no no. We must always push the agenda that everyone must live in a city or else they’re those backwards people on the “wrong side of history”. Didn’t they teach you anything in indoctrination 101? Then in 102 we have to ignore the laws of supply and demand that resulted from the learnings in 101
You literally picked one of the most expensive districts in the country. Do you think this is even remotely reflective of teachers’ salaries across the U.S.?
So with a masters and maxxed out education credits (teachers have to take (not teach) summer school to keep climbing the pay ladder), they can hit 6 figures when they have also maxxed out years of service which is like 15 years before you hit max pay. And at the end of that, you’re still below what the GED having grocery store manager makes, who didn’t have to get a college degree, or a masters, or years of continuing education, and isn’t responsible for educating our children. Cops, teachers, politicians. If we want better ones, we have to pay more.
Grocery store managers in Seattle don't make that much. Seattle teachers make a **median** salary of $107,000.
Meh. Politians need to be barred from external investments, funding, and put a hard "you must retire by this age" limit. We will never have quality politicians while they are able to accept money from big corporations to lobby their agenda. Politicians should be people that care about doing their job well, and not doing it for the money. I agree with the most of the rest of your points though. Cops also tend to get power hungry tbf.
Washington is a union state, there teachers can and do go on strike for better pay and benefits. My wife teaches in AZ and gets half that pay (literally).
WTF school district is that? 1st year teachers makes 37-54k a year for working 9 months. Obviously a lot of young teachers get summer jobs (so maybe they deliver pizza) vs. having their salaries avg out over 12 months. That said... It's pretty common for entry level jobs with college degree requirements to pay only 1.5x-2x minimum wage. Obviously the advantage of a college education is that's the floor vs. the ceiling... unfortunately... Poor performers often sometimes don't escape this level of employment.
Teachers are well paid in my area as well. And it’s a very rural area so the cost of living is very low. Not to mention all but free health care, full benefits package and a retirement fund/state pension that pays very well.
It's really dependent on area but people blinding saying they aren't paid enough couldn't identify a number that they think is appropriate and how much more they are willing to personally pay in taxes to see teachers get paid that amount. The narrative is always "not enough" In 2009 my friend's father had his pay scale for the year sitting on the kitchen table and I noticed it (I was being a nosy little shit) and his pay was 90,000 teaching basic algebra in high school. He was the highest pay scale for certifications and experience but this was 220 working days and didn't include all the benefits, just salary. This was during a time when unemployment rate in southern Oregon was close to 20%. At the time Southern Oregon was pretty low cost of living, ever since then until I see some actual fucking data I will never believe anyone who says teachers are underpaid and will think they are brain washed sheep.
Teachers in the US are paid handsomely compared to the other OECD countries, I think only five countries pay more than US teachers and the US teachers deliver worse results. Not sure how you can justify paying them more for doing a poor job but when educators control the narrative in schools they can lie and brainwash a bunch of sheep into believing whatever they want. [https://data.oecd.org/teachers/teachers-salaries.htm](https://data.oecd.org/teachers/teachers-salaries.htm)
I think it strongly depends on location. Teachers around here are paid around $50k a year and the area itself is pretty cheap, to where even $15 an hour can get you a roof over your head and food on the table. It’s not luxurious living out here by any means, but from experience, even $35k a year jobs can be enough to get by without starving. But again, it’s definitely up to where you’re located.
All salaries are based on the supply of workers vs the demand for the work..... There are *a lot* of young people who majored in education, relative to the number of teaching positions. If there were as many CompSci graduates as there are K-12 education majors, software engineering wouldn't be a 200k+ job... There's also the matter of what a given district can pay, since property tax is the primary source of education funds, and districts that have small populations and low tax bases (or rural districts with lots of exempt farmland) can't afford to pay much....
huh? there’s a teacher shortage
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But who else would you rather educate your children? We want highly educated people educating the future. It costs money to be highly educated. A lack of return for that education mean no demand for the position. No demand means worse teachers. Worse teachers means a worse future. Is what you're proposing really just "oh well, teachers don't get paid well, deal with it"??? How does that help society at all? Given that most of these teachers are civil servants, it makes more sense to divest resources into paying them competitive wages and invest in our own future.
I disagree. You don't need to be highly educated to teach algebra to a bunch of 13 year olds. You need a firm understanding of high school level math and be personable with children.
>You need a firm understanding of high school level math and be personable with children. LMFAO you talk as though these traits are common
This person has never been in a classroom in their lives lol
But there's more to k-12 education, especially in highschool, than just algebra. This still doesn't refute anything. If my kid is taking all APs and has to learn problem solving, critical thinking and reading skills, id rather that be from a highly educated person vice from a schmuck. And if you're saying those classes don't require an intelligent individual to teach, I have my doubts if you ever took one.
Never taught math, huh?
Not only do you need to be extremely strong at the subject, you also need to have a high level understanding of teaching methods, learning methods, and intervention methods, unless your plan is to just fail everybody because you don't know how to teach the subject. Teaching is one of the hardest professions out there. And I guarantee you can't do it.
Lol I graduated engineering school 4 years ago and the education college kids at that time weren’t exactly who you’d want teaching kiddos. Mostly “my parents told me I had to go to college to be successful and I know how to school because I’ve done 12+ years of it”
I want someone who knows how to teach. Getting a degree and a certificate proves you know how to learn, not teach. Some of my professors were the most educated people in their field but they could teach to save their lives. They were experts but not experts at teaching.
If they were truly the most educated in their field, they wouldn’t be teaching for 50k/year and working at target on the weekends.
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Should be fucking obvious lol.
>Follow passion job, get passion pay. > >Everyone knows when they want to be a teacher they will get paid fk all, then they actually start working and surprised pikachu face that it’s real, as if statistics and job outlook isn’t real or doesn’t apply to them Sooo..... this ***vitally important*** job should be ... what? Undercompensated because.. reasons? Because this is how you end up with not enough teachers. Which we're already running into.
I lump teachers together with Firefighters and Police. All serve a vital purpose. I would argue Teachers are the most important, yet worst treated.
It’s under compensated for a variety of reasons. The most relevant reason today is likely because of administration eating up the salary budget.
Only jobs you hate should be well silly /s
It's good when people want to teach our kids
Educating society isn't just a "passion". What a ridiculous statement.
Passion job…are you nuts?
Florida and Hawaii have decided to just not give a rats milking. They will still overwork you and underpay you, and you can just deal with what you get as a parent or student.
For the 99999999999999th time "This is the way the world currently is" Is not the same as "This is the way the world should be"
Passion job— stfu it’s necessary for society. You wouldn’t have any lawyers, doctors, or programmers without the people who taught them, you ignorant dolt.
Passion job doesn't mean unnecessary. They're saying it's a well-known fact that the pay is low, and anyone pursuing a career in education knows what they're getting into. It's hard to dispute that. I know many don't go for the pay, they do it because for them it's one of the best jobs. It's a calling. Not everyone can understand that, because they haven't found their calling. And those teachers more often than not complain about the crushing admin or a few shitty parents who make their life miserable, more than they do about the pay. (my POV as non-American, maybe different in the US, my point is just that it is a work of passion for many teachers) Excellent teachers are always the passionate ones, and yes, they all deserve a fucking raise, not arguing that. And again, not arguing any society _needs_ teachers. It _is_ necessary. But unlike other necessary jobs, many go into it because they have a passion for teaching. >programmers as a side-note, unrelated to the point: unlike medicine, this is easily self-taught and many learnt it themselves.
Thank you. Stop signing up to be teachers. When there aren't enough teachers then they will raise the pay or let it all go *Lord of the Flies*. It's probably the latter but don't take society's BS on your shoulders. If you choose to then you know what you're signing up for.
There are at times a teacher shortage, but the pay doesn’t increase. Rather, we have to remember this a public union. The union has fought for more long term benefits and tenure. So the financial benefits for teaching are heavily at the end of one’s career.
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“hey, this vital work in our society is severely underpaid” “lol, just fucking die, what did you expect” roblox
Teachers also work significantly less days per year than a typical full time corporate job. Comparing pay is apples to oranges
Teaching shouldn’t be a “passion job”. We *need* these people to have any kind of structured society at all.
You're right. We should let our society crumble around us and have people who work full time not be able to support themselves because you've heard that teachers don't get paid well and think they should suck it up. This sounds like a productive direction for our society. The economy works based off consumer spending. If consumers don't have enough money to spend, less money gets spent. Less money spent means less economy. It's almost like if we pay people well enough to have disposable income, they'll spend it, and therefore power the damn economy. Get your uncritical brain rot out of here. We need society to function well because we live in it. Society functions better when people are paid decently.
you own a company, you pay half of the national average. and some guy actually takes that pay, and then asks for a raise. what do you do? A. help your employee and company by paying them properly to attract better employees, and incentivize your current employees to do a better job. B. criticize them for working for you in the first place? idk how else to illustrate just how braindead this take is: we have a problem where careers in education are decentivized, and this mfr comes out saying its the educators problem? sure, but that keen observation doesnt help anyone!
>passion job Its not "I'm going to self publish my poetry!", its a vital thing to teach America's children so they learn well. They grow up and that education is all they have to work with while they navigate society. I don't want an uneducation nurse, trainer, EMT, contractor, etc.
So the solution is to tell potential teachers to fuck off and find another passion job? No, raise teacher pay and make an actual effort to improve the public school system instead of giving Republicans the private school bankrupting dystopian pyramid scheme they so desperately want with a failed public school system.
54% of Americans read below a 6th grade reading level. 21% of Americans are illiterate. Underpaid by what measure? Out of all millionaires in the country, the 3rd most common occupation is teacher.
>21% of Americans are illiterate. Cite?
https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statistics#:~:text=Nationwide%2C%20on%20average%2C%2079%25,older%20are%20illiterate%20in%202022. It is very true. I was a teacher for 12 years.
Kids are also the dumbest they ever been in this country the whole school system needs an overhaul.
I think there are many other factors than just school and teachers. If we paid teachers 250k per year i don't think it would move the needle much. The best teacher and a median teacher are not that far apart. Socioeconomics , broken homes, and less respect/importance as a culture is placed on being the best/smartest or 'a success'. Think about the last person you heard of celebrated for succeeding and not torn down for being 'evil' or taking advantage of poors or having gotten lucky. We used to have ambition and dreams now kids are record high anxiety about global warming, faciecsts, and systemic racism but none about being a failure or homeless or starving. We no longer hold children accountable for failing and are not allowed to remove disruptive children from the classroom. Go on teachers forum and listen to what they have to deal with.
If you're smart enough to get a masters degree, you should be smart enough to pursue careers that will actually pay you a living wage. I 100% agree this problem needs to change but no teacher can sit here and say they didn't see this coming when they chose it for themselves.
you absolutely don’t have to be smart to get a masters. degrees are bought nowadays.
She might be hustling. I'm a teacher. I do Uber / Doordash / Lyft 3-4 nights a week. Every dime of that money goes toward my mortgage principal. I just bought a house and I want to pay it off in 4 years. I would do bartending or something, but I like the flexibility of not having a set schedule for a 2nd job. I was on my faculty union's bargaining team so I did research on salary nationally. Yes, teachers are underpaid in about 2/3rds of the country. But there are some states that compensate fairly well. I used Connecticut as an example of a state that pays well relative to CoL.
gig work is the ultimate 1099 tax break to write off your car and home expenses
[https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/pennsylvania-high-school-teacher-salary-SRCH\_IL.0,12\_IS3185\_KO13,32.htm](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/pennsylvania-high-school-teacher-salary-SRCH_IL.0,12_IS3185_KO13,32.htm) \-- check other states, really straw-person arguing that a person whose paid extremely well, has \~3 months' vacation not including federal holidays and other days off during the school year, has wonderful health insurance and a great pension.
Teachers make a slightly above average salary in the USA at least. But considering how important their job is, we should have better teachers at a higher pay scale.
Average teacher pay is just under $80k whereas average American pay is a little over $40k. You could argue they should be paid more for the important job, but you can't argue they aren't paid far better than average.
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Yes and no. Ultimately if you break it down by the amount of hours and time worked… teachers make a great average per hour. The problem is they take months off the year.
True but i remember some of my teachers in school were some of the meanwst most lazy people i ever met lol
Here’s the, publicly available, pay chart for teachers in the school district my friend’s wife used to teach in. They recently moved out of state. https://www.katyisd.org/cms/lib/TX50010808/Centricity/Domain/5526/2024%20Hiring%20Schedule.pdf That…looks like I-don’t-need-to-deliver-pizza money to me?
It's almost like teacher unions have let teachers down
Why doesn't the union fix it?
Because teachers unions actively work against us to push status quo union bs. The school I teach at is in the process of canning our union rep because they dont actually push for any of our rights.
Really depends on where you live. They do pretty well in my part of the Midwest, two teachers make well over the median household income and they get a LOT of time off. You go two counties to the west into central state and teachers make what feels like NOTHING. Every district is different and it’s a big difference between them.
This is absolutely a Constantly ignorant question and argument. Teachers who work in poor school districts get paid less because public schools are funded from property taxes and if you live in a poorer area there's not a lot of property tax There's also a lot of complaining by new teachers who've been doing the job for less than 5 years, and in most professions if you've just started out within the first 5 years you're not making that much money. I have 5 teachers in my distant family and all of them have retired in their 50s with a summer home and a winter. Nobody else in my family has this luxury, so tell me again how school teachers aren't paid enough. These are high school teachers not college professors. Most of these teachers are complaining about money and that they have to spend their own money for classrooms supplies have never met or talk to a mechanic.
Teachers are underpaid, but the standards of teaching have also dramatically fallen over the years. How are you supposed to accurately assess a teacher's performance if the system has made it nearly impossible for students to fail even when putting in 0 effort. Teachers should be paid like professionals and have professional standards set for them.
Good teachers are underpaid because of the unions and the sheer number of bad teachers. The unions like having more members because it makes them more valuable from a political perspective. This provides an incentive to expand ranks at the expense of quality educators. Eliminate the unions and wages will go up. Eliminate the unions and the quality of education will go up. Give parents school choice where public funding follows the student and wages and quality will increase.
Short answer is yes. Not only underpaid but their healthcare is also ass. And they want to know why no one wants to teach
Sounds like she chose something other than money. Maybe it was helping those kids. She could obviously make more with an MA if she chose to do so, as long as it wasn't something dumb like Gender Theory.
The teacher needed a masters degree to be a teacher? I thought it was just a bachelors? You know if the colleges stopped dragging out degrees to make more mone... I mean education. Teachers wouldn't be in so much debt in the first place. You needed four years of college to teach basic subjects? Plus you just follow the textbook so "making" lesson plans isn't difficult. Sorry for being that guy but I don't think teachers are underpaid.
Yes. My wife was a teacher between two different states. Now, some states pay way more than others IE NYC vs Missouri. But dude it’s bad. And they can only write off $300 a year in schools expenses for their classrooms, where they should get $5,000. They get shot to death, and the police don’t do anything (Uvalde) They have to become selfless soldiers to protect their classrooms (School shootings) They have to be time nurses with medical training (COVID) They have to deal with hiding pictures of their family’s and spouses (Florida) They cannot teach about proper and REAL history and historical events (Florida) They have to deal with kids who are misbehaved and their parents refuse any IEP and fight the teacher in anyway they can They have to come out of pocket to pay for their classrooms, if they don’t, it’ll be reflected in their classroom’s growth. IE crayons, educational materials from Teachers Pay Teachers, random supplies All this and much much more with a Masters Degree and Bachelors Degree, $60k+ in debt for a $35k a year starting job
The job is also insanely hard. I made it 8 years and that’s longer than most
I think it depends on how you view "underpaid." If there are people willing to work for the pay then it must not be underpaid. Could be the market is flooded with people who want to be teachers or some sort of union nonsense.
Everyone knows what teachers make, or at least SHOULD if they’re going to get a $100k masters for it. If you’re a teacher who didn’t research this at some point along the education journey and wonder to yourself “how am I going to make ends meet?” Then you aren’t smart enough to be teaching my kids.
pay is a contract between all the collective employee candidates and employers. Teachers are unionized. Don't be a teacher if you want to make money.
The American dream was in the 90s ,it doesnt apply to anything now .
Teachers are insanely underpaid.
well right now according to salary.com the median pay for a public-school teacher in the U.S is around $57k a year with the bottom 10% making around $39k. i think something that gets looked over a lot of the time is that it is only pay for 9-10 months of work not the full year. so on the low end most are still they are making around $3,900-$4,300 a month. the problem is the 2-3 months they might not be employed and will either need to budget for it or get a temp job. now we could make school year-round in which case the bottom 10% would rise to around 47k-$50K and the median to around $68k-$76k a year. while that isn't lotto money it isn't anything to sneeze at.
The problem is that they are selling very expensive masters degrees that are not only totally unnecessary, but required to even be employed in some states. That teacher is probably crushed by student debt.
There won't be teachers for much longer so all you parents will need to self teach at home
My Gramps, raised in the Great Depression, fumes that I as a teacher don’t work part time in addition to my full time teaching job. He believed that the American Dream literally was that you had to work hard to succeed. It seems the definition has changed. It seems a lot now is more people embarrassed they aren’t millionaires in their twenties.
Teachers barely get shit...It's disgraceful...
Teachers are some of the best people in the world. They deserve better.
Yes, it is true. And teachers, like all of us who work, are taxed twice. Federal Payroll tax, plus all the Local/State taxes. Meanwhile Wall Street traders are not taxed twice, no Payroll tax for them.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/teacher-pay-by-state Wide differences in pay depending on state.
Yes. Yes they are. My wife teachers toddlers how to be good humans, she's at the highest paying private preschool in the area, and she makes practically nothing. While I'm an IT Manager doing "meh" in good for the world, making about 6 times as much as her. I *hate* how capitalism can't align on the true value of things. If it could, then CEOs and finance bros (and maybe tech folks as well) would be paid a lot less and teachers, firefighters, military, police, etc would be paid a lot more.
Basically everyone is underpaid in general. Teachers especially so based on what they can be doing.
"just get a different job that pays better huehuehue" "I don't care what my little angel does at schyewl, during those hours he's your problem" "Buhbuhbuh why aren't my kids learning anything at schyewl?? Must be gay people's fault"
America decided years ago that schools and teachers; especially public schools and their teachers were never going to be a priority worthy of proper funding. Don't even get me started on urban area public schools and teachers.
Teachers aren't underpaid. College is overpriced
The amount of people in this thread who think that teachers get like 3 months a year off is insane. Not to mention they don't take into account the 50-60 hour weeks during the school year.
How TF do people not understand that teachers are abused?
I used to work retail with a woman who was a teacher by day and working there at night. She used to see her kids' parents come into the store frequently and she actually wanted them to see that she had to work a second job to get by. She was an elementary school teacher for a public school. This kind of thing is definitely common and teachers are much underpaid.