Teachers in the US usually must have a B.A./B.S. In my state they must go for a "fifth year" of educational credits earned in the summer months before they are ganted a "Standard certificate" as opposed to a "Provisional." In some states, they have to work for a Masters, usually in education. The whole salary schedule revolves around degrees and credits. They are not required to have PhD's (in the K-12 system), though it would earn them a few extra bucks if they did. Any teacher's salary and credits is public information and could probably be pried out of the school district with an FOIA request. In our area, you can just look it up on the web.
The salary schedule is a two-dimensional grid with time-in-grade down the left side low to high and credits earned left to right, low to high. The highest salary is at the bottom right. There is a great deal of incentive to move right. Down is automatic. So someone with 20 years experience, BA + 135 credits is making a very good salary. Lots of places salary plus benefits exceeds $100K per year. Yeah, teachers get summers off, but if you're going to play the credit game, your summers are spent in school for many years and the fact is, any teacher really trying spends a lot more than 8 hours a day on the job. They all have "homework" to one extent or another and nobody fixes up their classrooms for them, so this is "donated" time.
The post degree credit issue is a bit of a scam some places. In my state teachers could earn credit for courses like, "Sightseeing Vancouver, BC" which amounted to a group tour. Pay the tuition, get the credit, raise your salary. A few years ago my state did a review of these "soft credits" and disallowed a bunch of these courses, so it's harder to do now. But the fact is, public school teachers' coursework and expectations are not all that high. A PhD from MIT would be MOST unusual.
My former spouse was a grade school teacher for many years, so I am very familiar with the setup, went to all the parties, read all the documents, etc. I'm not particularly "pro-teacher" Indeed, I hate their unions with a passion, but I'm just responding to your question. Hope this helps.
Whether Imbrogno used fake degrees to boost his own public school teacher salary is at this point unknown, I would guess. That might be an interesting avenue to follow because that would take this from fake bragging rights on shows and book jackets, which is unethical, but probably would not interest a prosecutor, to criminal fraud, which definitely would.
edit on 7/9/2011 by schuyler because: spelling, as usual
