Flawed math there. First, most teachers are contracted for 200 days, not 180. Further, you compared it to days in a year, not work days in a year. There are 250 work days in a year. Other salaried positions will also have time off, maybe 4 weeks or more per year. I had 5 weeks in my previous management job. That brings it down to 240 days. So, that comes down to about 8 weeks difference. When you add in the days/hours spent coaching, (which the pay for here is miniscule) you can see where the pay is not as great as you suggest for the amount of time involved. I make less than $60k per year with roughly 20 years experience and a Master's degree, even with my coaching supplement.
My opinion is based off my wife working for a fairly affluent district in California. Yes she works only 180 days and is well paid for not working long hours. It's a sweet gig. Teaching high school in a poorer district might suck but that's not what I'm talking about. We also saved a ton of money on daycare when the kids were younger. Teaching is a good gig for those who can get it in California.
I appreciate you prefacing your post with disclosing where you live. Teaching is a different gig all over this country. Also, there are chaotic, rough schools 10 miles from some of the most affluent districts in the country.
School districts make up their own calendars, time schedule, decide whether to assess through state tests or portfolios, fund sports, the arts, and have their own pay structure.
Given this it may be a good gig or a rough gig. I weighed the pros and cons and spent 34 years in a school system. Not too many teachers did the same, it wasn't worth it for them. When I was 24 I weighed the pros and cons of the teaching lifestyle vs being a buyer or eventually an executive at a large department store. Putting in 9 hours a day (includes coaching) and many weekends to be able to have 9 weeks off in the summer and a pension upon retirement was worth putting up with rough kids from tough neighborhoods, bad facilities, and a lower salary than my non teaching friends. Yes at times it sucked but don't all jobs?
If we want to treat teachers like doctors, they would need much more rigorous schooling and exam process.
I have a master's degree and countless hours of classes and seminars (required) on child abuse, various disabilities, and continuing education. I live in NY.
I think if I lived in Florida the standards might be lower.
Your overall assessment is flawed only because you lump all teachers in together.
There is a big difference between a teacher from NY or Illinois and one from Kentucky or Florida or Mississippi.
There are school districts near Seattle that are paying around $125K if you have a MS/MA and 15 years experience. Of course the housing costs are extremely high so there is that.
A lot of teachers are not very good and there is little to no monetary incentive for them to do better. A lot of teachers are really good despite that lack of incentive. I had some great teachers growing up (in FL public school) and agree that they should have made more than they did.
Almost all jobs are hard in their own way, sales people seem to have it easy and sometimes fewer working hours, but I couldn’t do it. I am envious of the summers off and the pension, but I wanted to make more a lot more than $65K early in my career.
Average is highly skewed since the variation is quite substantial.
Median is more indicative, which stands at 61k.
50% of teachers earn LESS than 61k.
25% of teachers earn LESS than 49k.
Are you saying 61k isn't a good amount of money? The schooling to become a teacher is not difficult. I am an engineer, I had quite a few classmates in college who weren't able to get through the engineering classes in college and switched to education and had no problems, now they're teachers. I have a cousin who was always a bad student and generally not smart, he is now a teacher. Because it's pretty easy to become a teacher, I don't think they should be paid more than a median of 61k as you say. These people can also do a part-time summer job and pick up another $5k if they choose. Their job is not hard, it might be annoying at times dealing with problem kids and hovering parents, but the actual act of teaching elementary/junior high/and many high school courses is not that tough. I can say this because I went through all of those grades and know what I was taught and how they taught it. A teacher does not know what my job is like and does not know what it took to know the things that I know which are needed to do my job. So teachers saying how hard it is to be a teacher doesn't really mean much to me since they haven't done anything else but school and I went to school myself and saw what my teachers did every day.
One last thing, I don't think pay should increase to attract smarter people. What is taught in elementary/middle/high school is not very complex unless you're getting into 'advanced' courses like Calculus, AP Chemistry, stuff like that. Even calculus is very basic compared to what you learn going through a college of engineering and yet that's one of the highest level topics taught by a teacher.
The subject matter may not be so difficult yet the ability to create an environment for learning is a skill. I bet you know lots of people who do their job well, but how well are they at explaining it to others?
For instance it could be like Rupp---a great runner, but could he coach others?
Just because you can find a solution to a calculus problem does not mean that you could teach others to solve the problem (or problems like it).
Just objectively, it is an above average job. Doesn't mean it's easy (it's not) but it's a pretty decent gig in most instances.
Yeah you gotta deal with crappy kids/politics/repetitiveness/frustration/etc. but there's a relatively low barrier to entry, guaranteed step raises, great benefits, good work-life balance (no matter what some try to say), and yes even pretty decent starting pay.
An anecdote: in my state, more districts have an average teacher salary of over 100k than under 60k. Not sure how other places work, but in my city the pension is also unreal-- 85% max pay for whoever lives longer between you and your spouse. Look at the market value of a perpetuity paying out ~85k a year and you realize that if you spend a career teaching, you are firmly upper class.
$65K seems pretty good for 9 months of a relatively easy job. I’m not saying it’s not important, because it is, it’s just not that hard. Of course the difficulty depends if your teaching 4 grade PE or AP Calculus
In my country, there are also these polarized teacher threads on a regular basis. There are no reasonable results in the heated discussions.
Next to teachers with low work ethic, who are rather incompetent but know every trick to exploit the system so that they have to work as little as possible, there is the opposite. There are many diligent, educated teachers. In the discussions, everyone chooses the examples that should prove their own opinion. That means someone who hates teachers will happily pick a PE teacher or math teacher who doesn't care. Anyone who finds the job difficult points to a literature and history teacher who works seriously.
Facts in my country: In the capital, up to 25% of the teaching positions at the "academic high schools" are in danger to be not filled in about two years. In other parts of the country the situation is different. The reputation of the profession is low, children and parents are often difficult, so there are many conflicts. Many don't want that and are looking for alternatives. In 2006 the National Institute for Statistics specified the average working time for teachers at academic high schools at 2092 hours a year. A look at the annual salary is also problematic. The job is considered to be safe and you hardly get fired but the chance of earning much more in certain sectors right from the start is tempting.
School year traditionally starts the day after Labor Day and is still the case in much of the US.
“Currently in Michigan, schools are not allowed to start their school year before Labor Day as there has been significant research indicating that a pre-Labor Day start would negatively impact tourism, and therefore businesses, around the state.”
Same around the world:
Europe (all member countries) “The school year may not begin before the second working day in September”
A couple Asian countries where I’ve lived are also early September (or late August) and most others I’m aware of in Asia are the same.
You are part of the exception my friend.
It starts early in many southern states, but it also ends earlier. In NY we finish in late June and start after labor day. However in many districts teachers go back a few days before labor day.
I grew up in WI and we always started after Labor Day. My understand was that this was for two reasons. First, we had no air conditioning in schools. So schools avoided hotter summer months like July/August. Second, many high school students worked part time jobs at swimming pools, camps, Wisconsin Dells, etc. If they didn't have to start back until after Labor Day, they could work the bulk of the summer.
I do not think the post-Labor Day schedule is typical. I live in Indiana now, my wife is a teacher. All the schools here start back in early August. Students are done around Memorial Day.
It starts early in many southern states, but it also ends earlier. In NY we finish in late June and start after labor day. However in many districts teachers go back a few days before labor day.
I grew up in WI and we always started after Labor Day. My understand was that this was for two reasons. First, we had no air conditioning in schools. So schools avoided hotter summer months like July/August. Second, many high school students worked part time jobs at swimming pools, camps, Wisconsin Dells, etc. If they didn't have to start back until after Labor Day, they could work the bulk of the summer.
I do not think the post-Labor Day schedule is typical. I live in Indiana now, my wife is a teacher. All the schools here start back in early August. Students are done around Memorial Day.