Study shows that Public School teachers are overpaid.

Most teachers are over paid. I have no idea what assessment you guys are when you say that they are over paid or under paid. But the reason why I am saying that they are over paid is because there are a surplus of unemployed teachers. If teachers were under paid we would see shortage of teachers. From my experience of trying to get a teaching job, there is no shortage of teachers except in rural areas. This is basic economics.

reply to post by neo96


you have no idea what you're talking about. Teachers need to be in a union because of how easy it would be to just fire a teacher if there was no union. I had a problem with older students drawing swastikas on my door (none of my students gave me a hard time as they really liked my teaching style). Being Jewish, I was obviously offended. When the administration did nothing, I went to the union. They got me out of a bad situation. Without the help of the union, if I would have started speaking up, they would have just fired me so the Principal wouldn't look bad.

Another example, a teacher was given a schedule where she had to teach five classes straight, with not even a five minute break to go to the bathroom, and not only that, they took away one of her prep periods (and no those aren't a break, but time to prepare "prep" for other lessons, grade tests, make phone calls.... so its very necessary time. The union helped her when the administration tried to bully her.

Please just stop talking.. you don't know anything.

I love these threads. Everyone twisting things around and never getting to the truth.

Teachers are overpaid compared to the private sector simply because the private sector does not pay enough.

I have the benefit of experiencing both sides of the coin since, I worked in the private sector for 12 years before fate sucked me into teaching CAD at a technical high school. (That's a story for another day). If someone told me I would become a teacher after graduating from college, I would have told them they were nuts! Having owned a graphic design business, worked in the private sector as a Technical Illustrator, and as a Corporate Advertising Manager, I think I'm in a position to give everyone here an honest assessment of our public education system.

Instead of thinking that our teachers are doing a terrible job, has anyone ever walked the halls, or observed a class in an inner city high school? A majority of kids today are simply not concerned about their education! It's not like previous generations where most kids knew if they acted up in class they would be paddled, or worst yet if their parents found out, there would be hell to pay at home. Students are not being held accountable for participating in their education.

These kids have no consequences if they choose not to participate in class. Receiving out-of-school suspension is a vacation, and a lot of students who are assigned detentions don't show. The deck is stacked against teachers and they're being the scape goat for a generation of kids who have become lazy, disrespectful, violent, rude, vulgar, or are simply not motivated to learn and would rather play video games or text on their cell phones all day.

I was also someone who thought the grass was greener on the other side. I thought teachers had it made! They had days off during holidays, three months off during summer, and decent pay. What a cake job, WRONG!!! Don't get me wrong, there are teachers who simply shouldn't be teaching and the system does need to be fixed. But than again, everyone here knows of people in their place of work that don't deserve to be working in a particular position. There is bad and good everywhere.

Look, there are definitely problems within the public school system. A lot of the problems stems from the federal government and state government trying to dictate education that should be controlled at the local level. Who knows more about their educational needs in their community than the local businesses. The system is way too political, and the bottom line is that school boards and government officials are not concerned about students learning, but are more focused on statistical graduation rates and test scores so they can receive additional federal funds.

People don't realize that the educational system is not like a manufacturing facility producing a product from raw materials. Teachers are dealing with a multitude of variables in the classroom in the form of young people who learn differently, some are coming from horrendous living conditions, some are in gangs, some have learning difficulties, some have anger problems, some hate authority, some have emotional problems, many are just plain lazy and a lot just don't care. The amount of discipline problems in today's classroom is really unmanageable. Most administrators are not strict or consistent with school behavior policies. Kids no longer care if they're called to the principals office. There's just not enough time in a day to address behavior problems without losing a whole day of conducting the business of educating.

The years of social promotion caused by pressure by administrators and politics have caused the public school system to produce a higher percentage of below average graduates and higher drop out rates. Teachers are not being allowed to honestly evaluate a students performance without having to justify a large failure rate or bow to a parent who thinks "the teacher is just picking on their son or daughter."

It doesn't matter how much knowledge a teacher may have, or the creative and fun ways they use to motivate their students, if a student just doesn't care or lacks the proper role model and support from their parents, they will not learn period. I apologize for this post being way too long and I haven't even scraped the surface! All I have to say to those of you who are blaming teachers, walk one day in their shoes and I guarantee it will be an eye-opening experience!

I leave you with this statement, "You can't get water from a stone."

I have an idea that will fix this problem. Let's dismantle the entire public education system and start over with something different. We'll do away with the Federal Department of Education (from what I hear here on ATS, the Dept. of Ed. is no good anyways), fire all the public school teachers (they're all overpaid and don't really teach the kids anything anyways), close and tear down all the schools (think of all the tax $$$ we would be saving on things like building maintenance, heating and cooling and electricity!), do away with curriculums and standards and instead we'll just leave it to the parents to teach their kids at home as best as they can. Everyone is always saying how great homeschooling is, so why not just go with that option for everyone?

Or I suppose the rich people with incomes in the high 6 and 7 figure range could just continue to send their kids to the expensive private schools or even hire private teachers. If you can't afford private school for your kids, oh well. The poor kid's parents will just have to be happy with teaching their kids themselves. And if it turns out that the poorer kids with parents who aren't "good" teachers or maybe don't have great educations themselves, end up, well, stupider than the rich kids, then that's the breaks. I guess it would ultimately be the fault of the poorer parents who might have less education if their kids end up with only the skills to enable them to work as servants for the rich, well-educated people.

Oh, wait...I forgot in this day and age with our current economy structure, most households require at least two incomes to make ends meet (most of the rich people can probably manage with just one income, though.) which means it might be even more impossible for the poorer people to make ends meet if one parent has to stay home to teach. Well, I guess one parent can maybe work only part-time, so at least they will have a few hours at home each day when they can teach the kids. Yikes, I do pity the parent who has several children to try to teach all at once!

Oh, wait again...I forgot about childcare issues. What will the working parents/part-time teacher parents do with their younger kids during the hours that they used to be in public school being "babysat" by the public school teachers? I guess the parents could just send them to daycare or pay a babysitter for part of the day, but daycare or babysitters can be expensive......oh well. Maybe we can change some of the child labor laws back to the way they used to be in the early 1900's and send the 8 and 9 year-olds to work somewhere. Education is really only for the elite rich people anyways, isn't it?

Everyone's performance is judged, so should teachers' performances be judged.

Let's ask the students to rate them on a scale of 1 to 5.

1. This teacher inspired me about the subject and supported me.

2. This teacher tried, but I was bored by the subject. But the teacher was OK.

3. Dunno

4. This subject was the boring and the teacher was boring.

5. Duh.

Or other options.

reply to post by sligtlyskeptical


You're exactly right. The private sector does under pay their workers. When I was interviewed for my Corporate Advertising position, the owner asked what I wanted for a salary, and at the time I said $25,000 which was extremely low considering I would be responsible for sales and advertising for (4) regional offices, in addition to the local office. The owner looked at me and said "I was thinking more in the area of $18,000!"

I got the $25,000 dollar salary and saved the cheap SOB $36,000 in advertising costs within my first 3 months on the job. I more than justified my asking salary. Having been in that position, I observed how he would slave drive people in the business that were making a few dollars over minimum wage at the time. (This was back in 1990).

reply to post by catwhoknowsplusone


Here's what you'll get if you have students evaluate teachers...

Teachers who challenge their students ,are strict and are concerned about their students performance will receive poor evaluations.

Teachers who don't try to motivate or push students to excel, or allow them to play video games, or let them watch movies when they should be teaching, or give them grades they don't deserve will get great evaluations.

Your idea is totally flawed. Kids are not in the position to evaluate a teacher's performance.

reply to post by WeRpeons


Yes,

Kids can't evaluate their teachers - I said that tongue in cheek.

But neither can parents evaluate teachers.

So that leaves us with this enigma - who evaluates teachers? No-one, because school inspectors are teachers.

So teachers are not accountable to anyone, even if they really damage children - which they do.

in the school district of my hometown, it seems that some teachers (the older ones) are very overpaid, while the newer teachers are quite underpaid. it seems to be easier to raise people's pay during the good times than it is to cut that pay during the bad times, that's true for all the sectors of the economy. when things are good, well, they work out these great deals and pay more, why not, they have the extra cash, but then when the leaner times comes along, well, the budgets are trimmed, those high salaries are worked in, and they find that they don't have the revenue to pay as much as they used to to the new employees coming in.

so, if you ask me, both are true,
the teachers are overpaid...
and the teachers are underpaid!!!

please note, that for awhile, they were having trouble bringing the new grads into the educational system. they didn't want to pay that much, and the want to be teachers found that they couldn't earn enough to pay their student loans and still have a decent standard of living. so well, off they went to work for wall street and the big banks...where the big bucks are!!!

if you ask me, the big part of the problem is we act like the contracts are written in stone and cannot be altered. not for labor, not for mortgages, not for much of anything, except of course when it comes to the biggest social contract that our gov't ever made to it's people...social security...
we'd rather spend a ton of money bailing out banks while the people are kicked out of their homes (all in the name of "contract laws" but, well, we're all too eager to give the shaft to those who are set to retire in the next decade or so....

if we had accepted the idea that the contracts could be revised to begin with, well we wouldn't be in this big of a mess!!!!

reply to post by FortAnthem


Common sense shows that football players, soccer players, Formula 1 drivers, hockey players, actors, artists, and any other proffesional sports that get millions a YEAR are overpayed.
Yet you claim people who try to teach OUR FUTURE are over payed?

Yeah what a crazy world we live in! Teachers getting payed to much! How about a freaking 30% TAX on those millionairs for just being selfish and spending it on cars, boats, houses, 1,000 dollar bottle of wine, etc!

I think it not more then fair that people with that much money should contribute to there own community/country to help people who are less fortunate! Not everyone is poor because they use CRACK! There are people out there who are broke because of valid reasons!

Haven't really seen this posted on here, but has anyone thought to consider what US teacher's salaries are as compared to teacher's salaries in other first-world countries?

You really want to know if your teachers are over paid? If you're in NY you can check this site: seethruny.com and you can look up your school district. I'm apalled by how much money some of the teachers in my school district bring in. Some well over 100k and gym/music teachers over 70k. Seriously? It is public record and you can all take a look and should.

In every country that I've been to, they've had this very same debate..... People in private sector think teachers are overpaid, and teachers think they are underpaid.

For me that is not the issue. The issue is that the future does not belong to us, our parents and us have made the world the messed-up place it is. The future belongs to our children, and we need the best people to educate them. The onliest way that you will get the best people to educate your children, is by paying them the best too. Teachers have the most important job on the planet, they have the future of the world in their hands.
Like the old saying goes, "If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys working for you", and we don't need monkeys in teaching, we need the best of the best.

Yes, teachers have a lot of liberties, but they take more crap than everybody else too. I haven't seen a CEO, or politician, or a banker putting more extra time into their jobs that the better teachers.

Teaching isn't a profession, it is a calling. I view being a teacher as being the most important job in the world, because they hold our future in their hands...

Here's how to fix them overpaid teachers; pay them babysitter wages!

Are You Sick Of ‘Highly Paid’ Teachers?

Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do – babysit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan– that equals 6 1/2 hours).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day.

However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET’S SEE….

That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!

Addicting Info


That'll learn them overpaid leaches on society!

reply to post by FortAnthem


So you don't like the economy so you go after public employees? Always looking for a scapegoat, and one analysis by some analysist isn't the holy grail, and it doesn't include thousands of government employees.

Most public jobs are not paid equal to the sector. And if you start threads like this, get your facts straight, benefits are not free.
In fact, the government loses a lot of employees to the private sector because the private sector pays more.


Secondly,. teachers don't work 8 hour days. Teachers work very long days, having to stay after school and then grading papers and reports when they get home. 12 hour days are not uncommon.

Most summers are not either. many have to spend them taking classes and renewing certifications that are required.

I have to question the mental stability of someone who makes going after teacher's salaries a personal vendetta.

reply to post by nixie_nox


And who the hell are you to question the wisdom passed down to us commoners by the men in the white lab coats?

Don't you know that the highly educated geniuses who spend long hours producing these studies are infallible and that lowly mortals like you and I have no business questioning their unparallelled authority?


How dare you question the wisdom of the study writers.