EducationNews.org

Interesting math. It appears that, by your calculations, America's workers don't get days off for Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day or July 4th.

OK StridentRhubarb. Let's suppose Nancy is a bit off here and let's be generous toward your position and say that private-sector workers take off all the federal holidays allocated to them. Let's be even more generous and assume that's 10 days more than Nancy is claiming. So the private sector worker is working 240 days compared to the teacher's 190, which is still 50 days more per year. That's 10 weeks of vacation more per year. Or, over the course of a 30-year career, almost SIX YEARS of EXTRA vacation above and beyond that granted to the private sector worker. To me that doesn't seem to change the flavor of her article much.

And there's another thing Nancy doesn't mention. For those who stick it out, at the end of the 30 or 35-year career the teacher has a publicly funded pension waiting - a pension that never runs out no matter what, while the private sector employee has a fixed-size 401K or IRA that could be demolished in a single catastrophe. The typical teacher's pension, if annuitized (i.e. paid instantly), would be valued at somewhere between 0.5 and 2.5 million dollars. Private-sector people should spend some time thinking really hard about how different their prospects would be if there was a pension like this waiting for them at age 60.

That's quite a deal, I think. I have a daughter who is real clever and who has already figured this out. She determined very young that public sector employees make out WAY better than private sector employees, and she's going for the government jobs. Maybe some day she'll be supporting me.

There's an interesting treatment of this subject at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-20-pen.... I think it will be both funny and tragic when the private sector boomers wake up in their old age to find themselves impoverished compared to their public-sector counterparts, who spent their careers enjoying their relatively (or in the case of teachers, extremely) long vacations while complaining constantly about their supposedly low pay.

This columnist's anti-teacher credentials are impeccable. Her hostility to unions is intense and mindless. She seems to equate them with bloody jungle communist revolutionaries. Does she feel that firefighters should be paid only for the time they are battling infernos or cops only for the time they are in hot pursuit? By her standards, these people are shirkers and skaters like teachers.

In general, I think its fair to say that most teachers complain about being underpaid. The people doing the complaining seem to never mention that teachers get almost half of every year off. On top of that a teacher that sticks it out to retirement is guaranteed a lifelong pension and lifelong healthcare. How much is that worth? I know it is something that is not even within the realm of possibility for the average American worker. I have a deep respect for teachers, particularly public school teachers, but that doesn't mean its fair to ignore huge components of their compensation package. I may be wrong but I didn't notice any glaring inaccuracies in the article. If you want more money go get another job crybaby.

This article failed to metion that the average starting pay for all teacher is around 37k, which is on par with other college grads. Also, a average of 50 percent of teacher quite within their first three years working. Like all jobs thier are good workers and not so good workers. A good teacher does not put in 40 hours a week and then does nothing over the summer ( i wish I could do that). Most teachers have other duties beyond classroom teaching (coaching, mentoring, school comitees, ect) and their nights and weekends are spent grading work. The summer is then spent on planning, trainning or maybe teacher summer school. Teaching is a great job but its not easy and it and deserves the benefits. Oh yeah, i forget, befor you attach teachers wont you study other public jobs such as IRS workers, public works and fire fighters. You will find that these jobs have a lot of down time and the pay is very very generous. Why do people love to put down teachers.

This article failed to mention that the average starting pay for all teacher is around 37k, which is on par with other college grads. Also, 50 percent of teachers quit within their first three years working. As in all jobs, there are good workers and not so good workers. A good teacher does not put in 40 hours a week and do nothing over the summer ( I wish I could do that). Most teachers have other duties beyond classroom teaching (coaching, mentoring, school committees, etc) and their nights and weekends are spent grading work. The summer is then spent on planning, training or maybe teaching summer school. Teaching is a great job but it is not easy and those who perform as teacher deserve the benefits. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, before you attack teachers, won

I have worked in both the private sector and in the education field. I am currently working as a middle school teacher. I will give a few of my insights. First, when I worked in the private sector my work week was usually 37.5 hours per week. Additionally, if I worked overtime I got paid extra ( this was in the insurance industry). When I went home each night or on Friday my work week was over. I never, in my 10 years in the private sector, took work home with me- and neither did my co-workers or my supervisors. I realize that as a teacher I am lucky to have two weeks at Christmas and 2.5 months in the summer. However, I get to work at 6:30am each day and do not leave until 3:30. When I get home, I have an average of at least 1-2 hours of paperwork to deal with. If I taught writing instead of math I would probably have double that amount of work. There is not a single weekend during the school year that I do not do at least several more hours of work. As I mentioned before, if I were working overtime in the private sector ( assuming I was not in management) I would be getting paid overtime.
In terms of benefits, I have been teaching for 6 years and am underwhelmed by the benefits. I pay more out of my paycheck for health care than I ever did in the private sector for about the same level of coverage. While I may be eligible for a pension (provided the govenor does not spend it before I retire) I would have been eligible for a pension with my company in the private sector as well. In addition, many companies offer a matching 401k program. My two previous companies matched my contribution dollar for dollar up to $1,000 per year. As 401K contributions are taken before taxes this is closer to $1200 per year. I can make 403k contributions as a teacher but I have never seen a school district offer any matching program.
Additionally, I would suggest that very few jobs are as mentally demanding as that of teaching--especially in an urban school district. There is little down time during the work day as I am educating 160 individuals each day. Furthermore, teachers are now expected to teach students proper behavior--things parents should be responsible for.
In terms of job performance, I saw two employees fired during my years in the private sector and this was for embezzelment, not due to job performance. I think most employers are reluctant to fire employees unless extreme conditions warrant it.

I agree that there are certain private sector jobs where your compensations is based on performance but I would wager that the number of people who are fired for not meeting performance benchmarks is small. I would surmise that the small number of people who lose jobs in this manner are in highly specialized positions. Underachieving employees may be passed over for promotion and they may not earn raises but rarely are they fired.
In terms of job pressure, how many times do you see a newspaper report on the sucess or lack therof for the the claims department of your local insurance company? Never. Yet, the result of statewide tests are reported within local papers regularly. The scores are usually broken down by subject area and school. In addition to the public scrutiny, teachers feel the heat from their bosses when scores fall ( see NCLB) below the acceptable level.

Every profession has employees who could improve-teaching is no exception. However, the teachers I have been associated with have been dedicated,caring teachers.

We all have a choice in our career. I am not trying to make the case that teachers are "underpaid". If we were underpaid the teaching schools would not be graduating thousands of new teachers each May. However, we are not "overpaid" either. We work hard and we are held accountable by our employers and the public.

The author pretty much states the obvious. The era of government run indoctrination is coming to an end. The perfect storm of technological change, market alternatives, and out of control property taxes will soon compel major changes that will force the exposure of the government-education complex to market forces. When that happens, education as we know it / business as usual in yet another failed government monopoly will be over. We'll always have public schools-- but they'll be a service of last resort (the y kind of are now for anyone with means)

The author is just jealous because she doesn't get paid to inspire young people! Stop whining because you're underpaid and your job blows.

Yeah, teachers are so overpaid. With a Master's degree we start at about $38,000/yr. The teachers making the big bucks are rare and have been teaching 30 years in the highly paid suburban districts.
All those days off? The students often have days off that the teachers don't. Those days are spent in planning meetings where curriculum and procedures are discussed and evaluated or preparation is done in the classroom. Teachers take their work home with them every day and on weekends; most other professionals do not...unless you want to talk about, let's say, lawyers, who make far more than $38,000/yr with their post-BA education. Teachers not only have to spend massive amounts of time planning lessons to meet the needs of all different learning abilities and making presentations and gathering materials, they have to spend the day with as many as 150 students or more (or teach 30 small kids all their various subjects), teaching those lessons as well as "babysitting", making sure they are all safe, keeping control and order. Then we get to take 150 papers home to grade, enter those grades, have parent-teacher conferences, spend our lunch time on the phone with parents, get involved in school committees and extra-curriculars, go to IEP meetings...
The summer off is not truly 3 months. Most schools let out sometime in June and start back in August, plus there are in-service days and beginning of the year prep days and professional development seminars etc etc. Many highly-qualified professionals receive fantastic vacation packages, 4 or 5 weeks a year, possibly more. Comparing a teacher's vacation time with the average for the whole country is comparing apples and oranges.
And of course, this is all if you even land a full-time position, which can be difficult, and comes after an entire certification process that includes an unpaid internship, criminal background checks, physical exams, state content area and basic skills exams (that are far from free) and the requirement of meeting more professional development benchmarks in order to keep your certification current.

So why do it? Because seeing children learn makes it all worth it. Because we believe that learning is exciting, and that education is one of the most important things in the world. How you can expect so much responsibility and so many credentials from one person and pay them less than $30-something thousand dollars a year is beyond me.

I am outraged! As a teacher, who by the way also qualifies for state aid due to low pay, I don't get 58 "extra days off" each year! There's summer school to teach, professional development courses to take...which are mandatory and I have to pay for, then there's the summer meetings our teams are expected to hold and are not paid for, and before you know it, it's time to clean the classroom...which isn't done by the building management people anymore, buying supplies..which is also at my cost, and planning. This list is incomplete but you get the picture. Each summer, I get about one week to breathe before it starts all over again. What other profession do you know of that requires a master's degree within the first 8 years of your career (at your cost), with starting salary averages below $25k/year, and due to public laws, public school teachers/schools have to accept anyone who walks through the door which can lead to all kinds of stressors other professionals don't experience. We have children whose parents don't know how to or don't want to "parent" their children so they leave it to us to do for six hours a day. Then, we have all the incompetent, illintentioned people who enter into MY profession with a hidden agenda who end up on the news or in prison for crimes against children which doesn't help our quest to be treated as equal professionals in the eyes of society. Due to those degenerates, we are required to have current fingerprint clearance, again at our cost, and we are held to standards 90% of our parents couldn't reach but if we fail to hold up, we get fired! What happened to our society? We used to have respect for teachers, at least where I grew up we did. Now, even if it's clear that the child was the culprit in a situation at school, the teacher gets blamed. It's to the point now where it's imperative that teachers have malpractice insurance through their unions, again at teacher's cost. Let's not forget the dues to PTA's and other organizations at school which hit you up for money during the first week when most of the teachers don't even have enough money for gas to get to work and are anxiously waiting for that first paycheck. We are nickle/dimed to death and are not compensated what we are worth. So, maybe now you can see why the average length of a teaching career is just 5 years. By that time we are broke, further behind than when we started, and disheartened at the circumstances surrounding our jobs and lives. I challenge anyone reading this to spend a few days, or even one day, in the classroom at a local school. Observe the level of disrespect the students dish out and the amount of work a teacher does in a day, then take half your paycheck and throw it away, then you will have just a glimpse of what life is like as a teacher.

It is really sad to see people bash teachers. I am a teacher and I definetly work well beyond the 7-3:30 clock hours. Oh and I also put in a number of extra hours during the weekend. I only started out making 28K. I am a professional, working hard. Why dont you pick on the sports players or the pornography industries, they are making millions, and they dont have it as hard as those of us that truly care about educating our youth.

I would like to address the comment Posted by bh and her job in the insurance industry. If Bh was paid by the hour, she had a clerical level job. Most people in those jobs don't have college degrees and don't qualify for the higher technical jobs. If she had an underwriter or claims job, she definetly would be working overtime, taking work home, and have travel as part of her responsibilities. She would not be paid overtime. Most insurance carriers now require all employees to work 40 hours. As economic times got tough, the work week expanded and pay did not go up. I don't know much about teaching, but I do know that my cousins husband was paid 150,000 when he retired as a PE teaching. He probably coached and maybe taught drivers ed. He retired when he was 55, is collecting at least 90,000 in retirement income and is also coaching at a Catholic high school. I am sorry, but this is just out of line with non management jobs in private industry. I do not believe that teachers are underpaid. I think that after they teach a course for a few years, they go on auto pilot.

THere really do need to be some changes in teacher retirement and benefit plans commensurate with what the taxpayers get and certainly need to be more parity with social security, which no one can collect until they are 62.

As a retired teacher, I can say there is always another viewpoint to every argument. I became a teacher because I wanted to know I would be secure in retirement. I also happened to like working with kids. As a high school English teacher, I hated grading 2 sets of 5 paragraph essays every week for more than 30 years. I relished my time off and have no apologies or regrets. I might add, however, if teachers have such a wonderful life I wonderful compensation package and work schedule this author LEFT for another career path? Also wonder why she now remains so angry about the choice? Wonder why more people don't become teachers?

We all make career choices for a reason--to be retailers, lawyers, researchers, teachers etc. based on salary packages, working conditions, and longevity in the field.