Working Class

[President Camacho]

Stupidity is a systems error and not a faculty error. You can't tie someone's hands behind their back and then ask them to juggle. Fact: The Average starting salary for a teacher in Ga is less than 35k. The Average salary for ALL high school teachers here is about 48k. I don't know where your 100k figure comes into play but I can assure you that it isn't normal for a teacher to make a whopping 100k.

Don't bring up the 186 days a year. Most teachers are so underpaid they fight for extra classes, extra curriculars, and summer school. I wonder how much those on site psychologists make and if that person really is a doctor or just a counselor.

I'll write some more later. If I had children I'd want them taught by the best in a system that works. I don't want them taught by someone who checks boxes because they're bitter their college education didn't get them more from life. Who would become a teacher with what they have to go through and the salaries they make??? It's wrong. It's going to hurt the country immensely long term. People aren't as altruistic as they used to be and if this country keeps bending teachers over it's going to get what it pays for - and you're already seeing that with your "Have you heard the grammar used by some young people?"

Parents don't care and you don't care. Next time you hear some child say something incorrect, I hope you smile and congratulate yourself on your accomplishment.

[lady of shallot]

Wow you really are angry. I am not saying I don't care. But I care about balance. Are you perhaps a teacher? That figure I quoted you is correct. It is a position in Ohio.

I think you are not hearing what I am saying, but that is o.k. except it makes a conversation difficult. Let me just posit this situation. You have a small town like mine. A wealthy small town. Some of the wealthy people get on the school board and the town council. They vote in the budgets and the taxes. They want the very, very best education for their children (who can blame them?) they want it so the children can get into Stamford, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Brown. They want that so these same children can go on to law school or medical school, so they too can become rich. Now although this is a wealthy town it is only in comparison to other towns in Maine. Not everyone in this town is wealthy. Only about 1/3 of the families have children in the schools. Yet everyone pays to support the school system.

By the way my niece who earns the nice salary teaching does not work in the summer or take on any extra classes. She travels a lot in the summer.


Let me ask you this. How did I graduate from high school using pretty good grammar? I went to an inner city high school in a mid sized city. We had no school buses and either walked or took the city bus to school. I have no idea how much my teachers made. Maybe I will try to check that out. Try not to be angry on me Pres Cam. I am just presenting a different viewpoint/perspective. Oh also I never in my life took a class that had only 12 other students in it. Much more likely to be 30 or 40.

[lady of shallot]

I just found this. Looks like overall Georgia does well by its teachers. Certainly better than Maine.


TeacherPortal Salary Score

The TeacherPortal Salary Comfort Score is a proprietary way to tell how far a teacher's salary will go in each state. We look at cost-of-living, average salaries, starting salaries, and more. Then we rank the states - the lower the number, the more "comfortable" your teacher's salary will be.
1. Illinois
2. Delaware
3. Georgia
4. Michigan
5. Pennsylvania
6. Ohio
7. Texas
8. Indiana
9. Tennessee
10. Minnesota
11. Arkansas
12. Colorado
13. Alabama
14. Oregon
15. Kentucky
16. Missouri
17. Nebraska
18. Oklahoma
19. Mississippi
20. Louisiana
21. Kansas
22. Connecticut
23. North Carolina
24. South Carolina
25. Virginia
26. Florida
27. Wyoming
28. Wisconsin
29. New Mexico
30. Alaska
31. Iowa
32. Washington
33. Idaho
34. Massachusetts
35. Arizona
36. New Jersey
37. Maryland
38. New York
39. Utah
40. West Virginia
41. South Dakota
42. Rhode Island
43. North Dakota
44. California
45. Nevada
46. Montana
47. Maine
48. New Hampshire
49. Vermont
50. Hawaii

[geo]

My two cents: Many of the wealthy deserve to have money. They work hard and they actually create much of the the wealth that is being ballyhooed over.

On the other hand, we have a very, very corrupt political system. That 20% that controls 85% of the wealth also controls our government to the extent that we are in danger of becoming an oligarchy. Those greedy Wall Street bastards almost took down our financial system a couple of years ago with our politicians sticking out of their back pockets. And who gets to bail them out? Us peons.

I think teachers are grossly underpaid too. Also, due to the corrupting nature of unions, our public schools tend to favor keeping dead wood around who are no longer energetic and enthusiastic about teaching. In my experience our public schools do have many great teachers, but you definitely come across quite a number of uninspiring ones as well. When I was a newspaper reporter, I used to cover negotiations between the teacher's union and the local school board. I think you will find that our states are being browbeaten into accepting pensions and insurance benefits that over the long term only hurt our education system. This is is symptomatic of many states' dire fiscal troubles. We need to just say no to unreasonable demands made by unions.

By the way, Camacho is not so bad once you get to know him. He's just a bit excitable.

[lady of shallot]

Geo.

By the way, Camacho is not so bad once you get to know him. He's just a bit excitable.

Actually Geo. So am I! I'm a pretty nice little getting older lady! But feisty as my mother used to say!

Other than of course, my own schooling and that of my daughter, my experience of teaching/teachers is through two school systems and those of my relatives/friends/neighbors who are teachers.

Both school systems have excellent standards, however the taxes of the towns reflect this. both of these towns have only one each, grade school, middle school and high school. I mentioned previously that one grade school had a psychologist. Pres. C. challenged that, so I looked it up. It is incorrect. That school has THREE psychologists. In fact it has 39 positions connected with it that are not teaching positions. There are 29 teachers at this school. I don't know if all the positions are full time or not. I could not find the student body size but probably between 6 and 8 hundred.

Geo you mention once being a reporter. Well my husband also worked for our local newspaper (as an artist) so you know what those salaries are. If you check on line about acquiring teaching positions you will see that the big sell is the short hours and the great benefits. Nothing about helping the youth of America.

I guess I just don't understand why you say teachers are "grossly underpaid" How is 93K a year for teaching 2nd grade underpaid? And that is just the salary, not the benefits.
If only 20% of the people make 80% of the money do you think the other 80% of the people are all teachers? Of course not. They are people working at lots of different types of jobs, many of these people are just as well educated as teachers and yet do not make any more (or often as much) as a teacher. Even if magically a wand could be swung that would increase the salaries of all these people to a level now considered adequate and maybe ample, how long would it be before we started decrying those who still had more?

We just don't appreciate how well we really live in this country. My sister volunteers at a food bank. She says there is not one person in that line who does not have a cell phone or drive up there in a car. It is not that I begrudge those people those things, we have to live in the society we live in, at the speed the society is moving at, but we should try to view all these questions from a little perspective.

Teachers today are not boarding with a family and getting up at dawn to start a fire in the school house and retiring when they get married. Just like newspaper employees are not setting type by hand and inking the presses.

[geo]

I'm excitable as well. You make some very good points about how well we live today, even the "poor." Thanks for the perspective.

More on teachers' unions:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_2_how_teachers.html

[President Camacho]

If teachers make more it will be easier for another working person to demand the same wages and benefits. We shouldn't be trying to limit our fellow educated workers, we should be nodding our head in approval. Raising them up raises us all up.

[lady of shallot]

Pres. C.

If teachers make more it will be easier for another working person to demand the same wages and benefits.

How would this work? Unless everyone worked for the government as teachers do.

[President Camacho]

That article really brings to the surface a deeper problem which teachers have been struggling with forever - their union. The article is correct in that the union protects the status-quo. It collects dues and kowtows to every politician's wish. When was the last time you heard of the teacher's union standing up for itself? I've never ever, ever heard that in Florida in my lifetime. The union doesn't organize teachers or protect them. Teachers can't strike. They allow politicians to promise pay raises and not deliver, to actually take away payments they've promised, and then to give teachers added un-paid working days throughout the year. Whoever heard of such a thing?!?!?!?!

There's a lot you can pin on the union but culture has a lot to do with lower 'this and that'. Teachers can't touch a child, embarrass them, or even fail them anymore. Parents have made sure that the children can skate on through without any consequences. This is a culture fail. I want to see how well you teach a fat, dumb, lazy child with angry parents. It's impossible. If parents were more concerned with their children passing there wouldn't be a decrease in test scores. They assign work but if the work doesn't get done it isn't the teacher's fault. It's funny how you can pin anything on teachers, really. It takes an active and concerned parent to make a successful child who would otherwise be a lazy little shithead.

Too bad both parents today work. Too bad that many kids come from broken homes. Too bad there is a deeper underlining issue......

[President Camacho]

Why are people so quick to grab from their neighbors.... Relative wealth and jealousy. It's crazy to me how solutions are found by trying to eat ones own. It's like the people who riot in their own neighborhoods. Just dumb.