$100,000+ Salaries for School Teachers?

Originally posted by kinda kurious
just a few quick points since there have already been great replies.

#1 Thread title is intentionally misleading as it implies $100K salary alone.

#2 Most of the naysayers are comparing the teachers pay / workload to their own. It is not a zero sum game. The fact teachers make more won't deprive you of your earning potential.

#3 America is no longer a "super power" in terms of best and brightest where the education of our children are involved.

#4 As the old adage goes: "If you think education is expensive, try to pay the cost of ignorance." (something close to that)

edit on 20-2-2011 by kinda kurious because: (no reason given)

I don't think most people are saying to bring down their level of compensation.
I, for one am just tired of all the whining and crying when they are asked to cut back.

Any government worker should not be making more than 50k per year unless your police and fire...They risk their life to that job...Teachers dont...And dont give me the argument that kids bring guns to school. People bring guns to malls too, should everyone get hazard pay?

If teachers are so skilled by is it they can get a sub in one day to fill in? I mean these teachers have masters degrees and stuff right? Why are they so easily replaced?

Seriously what did you learn in school kids now days cant learn on the internet at home? The education problem is not the teachers, its the parents who dont care about their kids.

I didn't learn one single thing in high school that I have taken into my php/mysql programming job today. I learned a minimal amount in college and simply started at the bottom and worked my way up. Kids are just not disciplined at all. Bring back martial law in the schools and I guarantee the education will go up, the teachers will feel better about getting lower pay cause they have more power.

Make the kids scared to death of the teachers like we were in catholic private school. Bring back the ability to wack the kids publicly in front of all the other kids if they misbehave. Its all about discipline. Kids now days will laugh at the teacher.

Dont get me wrong, teachers are great and they deserve respect, they dont deserve the amount of money they are getting though, especially with the lack of money every state has.

Sorry guys there is no more money. Why does no one understand this?

reply to post by crimvelvet


Touche!

I'd neglected to consider that aspect, you're correct, of course.

You might be interested in adding some thought to this thread:

What would REAL House reform look like?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I've outlined a proposal to restore some citizen control, I'd be interested in your take on it.

Originally posted by apacheman
reply to post by macman

 

How much does your boss make?

how much does his boss make?

How much is your labor making them?

What percentage of that do they pay you?

I suggest that you suck it up, grow some balls and negotiate for better wages and working conditions, rather than demand that others surrender their negotiating rights. If you can negotiate better on your own kudos to you. But it sounds to me like you are too fearful to ask for what you've earned, so you lash out at those who aren't afraid to stand up for their rights.

Again, it's about bargaining rights, not pay: they've already given back a lot.

Again, the 100K salary assertion is proven false.

edit on 20-2-2011 by apacheman because: sp

I do not really care what my boss makes, or further on up the line. Its not my business. They did what was right to be in charge.

I can and will negotiate for a higher wage. Patience is the key for my personal success.
As for grow a pair?? really?
I'm not the one rioting and protesting in the street, screaming boo hoo over a compensation cut.
Spare me your BS.
I am playing the world's saddest song, on the world's smallest violin for the teachers and union members.
Funny, its like a 5 year old throwing a fit because mommy and daddy took away their play things.

When you consider how many HOURS a teacher puts into their job, that $100,000/year translates to something like $60,000/year. Big deal - they are working their butts off, dealing with a stupid bureaucracy, bratty kids they can't discipline, and under the constant threat of lawsuit if some stupid kid hurts him/herself under your supervision.

That, PLUS the fact that our society generally looks down on teachers as a some lessor capable people, I'd say the sacrifices they make TO EDUCATE YOUR KIDS is worth the $100,000 (i.e. $60,000)/year salary they EARN.

Teachers rock.

reply to post by illusion987


Why police?

Their job might be stressful, but it sure as hell isn't dangerous.

They rank far, far down the list of workplace fatalities and injuries.

Firefighters on the other hand are genuine heros who work a very dangerous job day in and day out without whining like cops do.

Anyway.

I guess you learned math, english and programming basics in college or on the job, huh?

Did you make the effort to learn in school or did you ignore the teacher?

Teaching and learning is a two-way street that requires some effort on the student's part.

Originally posted by harrytuttle
When you consider how many HOURS a teacher puts into their job, that $100,000/year translates to something like $60,000/year. Big deal - they are working their butts off, dealing with a stupid bureaucracy, bratty kids they can't discipline, and under the constant threat of lawsuit if some stupid kid hurts him/herself under your supervision.

That, PLUS the fact that our society generally looks down on teachers as a some lessor capable people, I'd say the sacrifices they make TO EDUCATE YOUR KIDS is worth the $100,000 (i.e. $60,000)/year salary they EARN.

Teachers rock.

edit on 20-2-2011 by harrytuttle because: (no reason given)

Your figures are off.
To be fair, it is $100K in compensation. But, there are really no jobs in the private industry to offer such comps. Yet, they still make $60 a year, working 9 months of the year. It still does not compute.
If everyone is asked to give up a little, then the Unions and teachers and Govt workers need to as well.
And I gotta say, maybe parents that home school their kids should get paid by the Govt also.
Fair is fair right? Teachers should be paid?

reply to post by macman


Again you ignore the issues:

it's about bargaining rights.

How is what your boss makes not your business if he's telling you he can't afford to pay you what you're worth?

If he's making some comfortable multiple of what you are p[aid, it isn't that he can't, it's that he won't and isn't likely to ever raise your pay until you quit. How many years have you been patiently waiting for a pay raise or some help?

Originally posted by apacheman
reply to post by macman

 

Again you ignore the issues:

it's about bargaining rights.

How is what your boss makes not your business if he's telling you he can't afford to pay you what you're worth?

If he's making some comfortable multiple of what you are p[aid, it isn't that he can't, it's that he won't and isn't likely to ever raise your pay until you quit. How many years have you been patiently waiting for a pay raise or some help?

I work for a Corp, not an individual owner. Apples to oranges.
What my boss makes is still not my concern, as I am not concerned with others. That is your problem. You are more concerned with what the boss makes, then just with worrying about yourself.
I have a disdain for Unions. They are crippling companies like QWest and breed laziness.

reply to post by apacheman


Further more, I gained most of my new certs last year. Our company has been on a pay rate freeze since last year.
I am a man, I do not need a group to speak for me. I do not need nor want an automatic pay increase, just because I show up. That is what Unions provide.
If that is what you want, more power to you. More power to the company that has it, and then topples under the weight of overhead.
The math does not work. Unions and the requirements that are set forth are not sustainable. No matter how cooked the numbers are.

reply to post by apacheman

Far down? I think police are like third, dude. It varies from year to year and study to study but that job is definitely at the top. In addition, it's many times it's the police who get to an accident or fire first and are the heroes. Unsung ones, clearly.

Originally posted by intelinside451
I have zero sympathy for teachers who can barely teach in the classroom to get these kind of benefits. The numbers are hideous, consistent and staggering year over year.

God forbid they have a decent salary in order to be able to better help the students learn... I mean... Hey, it's not like they are doing anything important. They are just teaching the future owners of this world.... Who cares? They would probably just use that money to buy better supplies and go to school and learn new teaching techniques or something stupid like that....

That money is far better off going to Tom Cruise and Michael Vick.....Those are the real heros of the world... God help us... We may have stupid kids, but at least they have a crappy actor and a football player who abuses dogs, to look up to and entertain them!

/ Major sarcasm, over.

Originally posted by PlanterZ
Well, my mom is a second grade teacher and I think that all teachers deserve this pay. Teaching is a very tough and time consuming job and unless you've done it, or know someone who has done it, you never really know how much work goes into it. My mother is constantly working on lesson plans, grading papers, writing reports, coping with the stress factor that comes with the job.

I also believe that teaching is one of the most crucial jobs out there. Come on, what would you do without teachers? They deserve that salary.

By the way, teaching is a "highly skilled job".

edit on 20-2-2011 by PlanterZ because: (no reason given)

Your mother as a second grade teacher, even in the US, I'm in Canada, is not making 100 K a year, trust me.
My family had many teachers. An example for Canadian wages, is that roughly a decade or so ago, they made just over 30,000 a year on average. If you had a masters degree, you could make just over 50,000 a year, as my uncle and my an inlaw did. They have pensions, and extended medical/dental plans, however, they're probably one of the few middle class groups there is. And we all need to achieve this, or greater actually. Because years ago based on a release of the known wealth and its distribution in Canada and the US, from Statistics Canad and some American releases, there is a small minority living on a huge majority of the pie. The vast majority are living on crumbs of the whole pie here.

There was one group that was of prime interest to me in Canadian stats then, and this was years ago, I would never be able to find this info again, but that was, the 70-80% group were living off of 11% of the economy, in otherwords, if the money was equalized, we would all be making far greater salaries no matter what vocation or disablitiy status we had, than any teacher.

Think deeply.

Now I realize your post was in support of this salary, but it also accepted a distortion being put out deliberately concernign salaries. A fear campaign that was meant to confuse people even more and create a sense of injustice over middle class incomes, often lower middle class, for many teachers, and a willingness to run away from the semi protection of collective bargaining into the arms of the wolves and slave labor wages for the majority in this Illegal Pyramid System Mascaradign As a Free Enterprise Democracy. So its just knowing that they arent telling the truth, these stats are distortions and lies.

Originally posted by gimme_some_truth

Originally posted by intelinside451
I have zero sympathy for teachers who can barely teach in the classroom to get these kind of benefits. The numbers are hideous, consistent and staggering year over year.

God forbid they have a decent salary in order to be able to better help the students learn... I mean... Hey, it's not like they are doing anything important. They are just teaching the future owners of this world.... Who cares? They would probably just use that money to buy better supplies and go to school and learn new teaching techniques or something stupid like that....

That money is far better off going to Tom Cruise and Michael Vick.....Those are the real heros of the world... God help us... We may have stupid kids, but at least they have a crappy actor and a football player who abuses dogs, to look up to and entertain them!

/ Major sarcasm, over.

I gotta say, teachers are a much higher level of person then about 99.99999% of people in entertainment and sports.
Yes, they teach. And when they don't get what they want? They cry like a toddler, throw a tantrum, riot, protest and complain.
I would not send my kids to any of these schools.
Teachers are there to teach, that's it. A child's role models should be their parents, grand parents and family.

reply to post by illusion987

Sorry guys there is no more money. Why does no one understand this?

I pretty much gave up. Until the super market shelves are bare, we have 25% to 50% unemployment and the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) comes knocking on the White House door with their Structural Adjustment Policies, no one will believe the USA is in VERY BIG Trouble.

This was said in 2009:

The bald fact is that the combination of ignorance, negligence, and ideology that permitted the crisis to happen still prevails and is blocking any remedy. Either the people in power in Washington and the financial community are total dimwits or they are manipulating an opportunity to redistribute wealth from taxpayers, equity owners and pension funds to the financial sector. - Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury www.countercurrents.org...

Stewart Dougherty, a specialist in inferential analysis, agrees. It is now "statistically impossible for the United States to pay its obligations". www.silverbearcafe.com...

Do you KNOW what happens when a country bankrupts, and a country CAN bankrupt. The world Bank and IMF force the country to accept a Structural Adjustment Policy.

Structural Adjustment Policies are economic policies which countries must follow in order to qualify for new World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and help them make debt repayments on the older debts owed to commercial banks, governments and the World Bank. Although SAPs are designed for individual countries but have common guiding principles and features which include export-led growth; privatisation and liberalisation; and the efficiency of the free market.

SAPs often result in deep cuts in programmes like education, health and social care...

By devaluing the currency and simultaneously removing price controls, the immediate effect of a SAP is.. that riots are a frequent result. www.whirledbank.org...

Think I am joking??? U.S. Government Bonds LOSE AAA Rating

United States Congressional Record - March 17, 1993 - Vol. #33, page H-1303 - Speaker- Rep. James Traficant, Jr. (Ohio) addressing the House:

"Mr. Speaker, we are here now in chapter 11. Members of Congress are official trustees presiding over the greatest reorganization of any Bankrupt entity in world history, the U.S. Government. We are setting forth hopefully, a blueprint for our future. There are some who say it is a coroner's report that will lead to our demise." [He was silenced ]

....In short, the United States is in deep trouble. We have lost a huge amount of our manufacturing capacity, and those products we still make do not compete well on the world market, despite the steady devaluation of the dollar. In short we have vast debts to pay and little to pay them with...
whatreallyhappened.com...

STILL do not believe me???
The Department of Homeland Security says 80% of our ports are operated by Foreigners and they are buying and running US bridges and toll roads. www.alabamaeagle.org...

Statistics (courtesy of Bridgewater) showed in 1990, Foreign ownership of U.S. assets amounted to 33% of U.S. GDP. By 2002 this had increased to over 70% of U.S. GDP. www.fame.org...


Unfortunately people bury their head in the sand and throw hissy fits when asked to cut back on their generous salaries.

Originally posted by apacheman
Notice how new all these union bashers are?

Mods, I think a review is in order here to see if some of these folks are Koch bros employees paid to bash unions. I notice that they seem oblivious to factual argument and their links mostly point to various outfits funded by the same. The thread title is a lie, and the posts are merely repetitve assertions of the same lie.

Just saying.

LOL The truth hurts doesn't it?

A persons salary, as defined, is the amount of compensation they receive for the work performed. Compensation also includes benefits.....

The ignorance in this thread is astonishing, from the people who have ignored the facts about where they came up with this misleading figure, to the people who ignore the fact that teachers don't just work from 7:30 to 3:30 but usually stay after school until at least 5 and then take work home to do.

I am not picking on illusion, but he does a good job of presenting some of the biggest examples of ignorance.

Originally posted by illusion987
Any government worker should not be making more than 50k per year unless your police and fire...They risk their life to that job...Teachers dont...And dont give me the argument that kids bring guns to school. People bring guns to malls too, should everyone get hazard pay?

So salary should be based on hazard?

If teachers are so skilled by is it they can get a sub in one day to fill in? I mean these teachers have masters degrees and stuff right? Why are they so easily replaced?

MOst subs are simply showing a movie or watching the kids take a test or read. The few times a sub actually teaches it is because they are a certified teacher who retired or is looking for a job.

Seriously what did you learn in school kids now days cant learn on the internet at home? The education problem is not the teachers, its the parents who dont care about their kids.

Agreed about the parents, but if you think that everything learned in school can be leaned on the internet then you have no clue how the human learning process works.

I didn't learn one single thing in high school that I have taken into my php/mysql programming job today. I learned a minimal amount in college and simply started at the bottom and worked my way up. Kids are just not disciplined at all. Bring back martial law in the schools and I guarantee the education will go up, the teachers will feel better about getting lower pay cause they have more power.

Make the kids scared to death of the teachers like we were in catholic private school. Bring back the ability to wack the kids publicly in front of all the other kids if they misbehave. Its all about discipline. Kids now days will laugh at the teacher.

1) There are and have always been some jobs that you learn on the job, just as their are many that you learn in school.
2) Martial law will not bring the education up, getting the parents to be involved at home (i.e. making their kids study, working with them, teaching them to be responsible for their actions) will. It doesn't matter how great a teacher is or how much power he or she has, if the kid has no help at home and has learned to simply blame others, nothing will improve.
3) Power does not make one feel better about making less money, that's an asinine assertion.

Dont get me wrong, teachers are great and they deserve respect, they dont deserve the amount of money they are getting though, especially with the lack of money every state has.

Sorry guys there is no more money. Why does no one understand this?

Walk a mile in a teachers shoes before you make assertions like that. I recently resigned from a college coaching job and took a temporary teaching position while I am looking for a new coaching position and my whole outlook on teachers hours, pay and respect has changed.

I have the utmost respect for teachers. However, their compensation is obscene. There is no reason someone should be paid that much, have all those benefits, just to teach elementary school classes.

Not to mention, the video shows that there is a 68% graduation rate. Some great job they're doing. It's just proving higher pay does not equal better students.

The only money going to Tom Cruise and Michael Vick is from people watching them on TV, Movies, ETC. If you don't pay your taxes, you're going to jail..... The state is in miserable debt, time to balance the budget before things get worse and we simply cannot pay state employees or have to lay them off.

[digression]


reply to post by ~Lucidity


www.bls.gov...

www.bls.gov...

www.bls.gov...

Here's some of the 2009 data first number is fatalities, second millions of hours worked, and the last is the fatality rate.

Groundskeepers have a higher fatality rate and lose more people, should they get danger pay, too?

Management, business, and financial operations occupations 538 44,160 2.4
Management occupations 514 32,344 3.2
Farmers and ranchers 293 1,521 38.5
Construction managers 28 2,152 2.6
Food service managers 22 2,226 2.0
Property, real estate, and community association managers 24 1,108 4.3
Business and financial operations occupations 24 11,760 0.4


Professional and related occupations 220 55,542 0.8

Architecture and engineering occupations 41 5,517 1.5

Community and social services occupations 29 4,329 1.3
Education, training, and library occupations 21 13,926 0.3
Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations 41 4,613 1.8
Athletes, coaches, umpires, and related workers 17 393 8.7
Healthcare practitioner and technical occupations 54 14,280 0.7


Service occupations 612 40,422 2.9


Protective service occupations 243 36,265 7.2

Fire fighters 29 771 4.4
Police and sheriff's patrol officers 97 1,470 13.1
Security guards and gaming surveillance officers 63 1,735 7.3


Food preparation and serving related occupations 55 11,645 0.9


Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance 248 8,757 5.6
occupations

First-line supervisors/managers of landscaping, 41 506 16.2
lawn service, and groundskeeping workers
Grounds maintenance workers 147 1,937 15.0

Janitors and building cleaners 41 3,574 2.2

Construction and extraction occupations 818 13,383 12.1

Miscellaneous agricultural workers 118 1,302 16.7

Driver/sales workers and truck drivers 586 6,363 18.3

Fishers and related fishing workers 56 56 200.0

[/digression]

reply to post by backwherewestarted


Even working 38 weeks a year, 10 hours a day is 380 hours a year.
Personally, I work 430 hours a year, on a low average. I don't get 3 months off, including holidays, spring vacation, a pension where I paid only 8% into and health insurance where I pay 15% into and have the tax payer foot the rest.
Also, when my departments funds are dry, I don't get to run the sugar daddy Govt for more funding. I get to make due.

Teachers are paid via the tax payers forced payments. They, by default are at the whim of the voter. The voter has spoken in most of these areas and now the teachers a crying foul.