Why do teachers ALWAYS complain of being underpaid?

A nurse can easily triple or quadruple it in 10 years? Amazing. I must know a lot of underachieving nurses. I don't think I've ever met a nurse that has tripled her salary (if you adjust for inflation) over their entire careers.

Glassdoor says the average starting salary for a nurse is $57,201. With 10-14 years, the average "jumps" up to $73k.

Starting EE, $67k. 10-14 years EE, $91k. Accountants are $48k to $58k from new hires to 10 years.

So, it's "easy" to triple or quadruple your pay, yet the average nurse, accountant, or engineer can't even manage a 50% increase in pay over their first 10 years, let alone double it, triple it, or quadruple it.

It sounds to me like teachers are right in line with pretty much every other professional degree.

Sadly, this is almost entirely correct. To clarify, by "under-served", I refer to the lack of opportunities that my students have outside of school. There is a real lack of jobs, summer or year-round, that many of us took for granted when we were in HS.

However, yes, I agree, many of them would benefit greatly from learning a labor skill rather than us ramming our heads against the wall trying to prepare them for college that they'll never get into or worse, go for a year, use all their financial aid on remedial no-credit courses and then drop out and move back home to the projects when the work gets too difficult for them.

But teaching poor kids how to be electricians or mechanics so they can get into a union themselves and earn six-figures has been deemed racist by the left, so lets just keep them where they are so maybe one out of 50 can eventually graduate college and THEN be unemployed.

Here’s the problem.

There’s not one school district in this country that isn’t top heavy with ‘administration.’

They pay these clowns way too much and there are certainly too many of them.

Further these administrators being clueless will do stupid things: case in point the Urbana, IL school district. They hired for $170,000 a ‘consultant’ to help them improve their attendance record and truancy problem.

Her recommendation for this $170,000?

No more suspensions of students for fighting, bringing weapons, stealing, etc. Instead create a panel of other students to ‘encourage and reach out to these (troublemaker losers) students.’

The liberal administration thought this was ‘ground breaking’ and kept this moron consultant on the payroll for another year.

Of course 30% of the teachers then subsequently quit.

You can google this mess.

Here in New Hampshire, a teacher is paid the same no matter what they teach. So, a teacher teaching AP chemistry with three years experience, get's paid the same as a gym teacher of Phys Ed teacher with the same experience. Perfect example; A friend who is a teacher, who taught Chemistry, and calculus, decided to take a test to become a gym teacher. He did this after 30 years as the chemistry teacher. He get's the same pay, with no homework to grade!

Tristate wrote:

Here in New Hampshire, a teacher is paid the same no matter what they teach. So, a teacher teaching AP chemistry with three years experience, get's paid the same as a gym teacher of Phys Ed teacher with the same experience. Perfect example; A friend who is a teacher, who taught Chemistry, and calculus, decided to take a test to become a gym teacher. He did this after 30 years as the chemistry teacher. He get's the same pay, with no homework to grade!

Interesting. No wonder NH is so far behind in creating STEM students. I guess somebody has to drive the snowplow and mow the lawn.

I think beyond administrators, so-called guidance counselor s are a total waste of time and money.

Some good stuff and a lot of bad in this.

People are drastically over estimating what Teachers get paid or are in much better areas than I am in. Where I'm at in Michigan at decent schools teachers start around $28k and all of their raises and steps have been frozen for the last 6 years. They pay for much more of their own insurance than they did 8 years ago. School ends the middle of June and teachers are expected to report back in early August and school starts a week or two before Labor day. So it's about 6 weeks off, which is oh.... about half of the 3 months that most people assume. Despite that there are some great teachers and even great young ones starting their careers and they really don't complain much.

But I guarentee if Teachers were paid more and Administrators did a better job evaluating Teachers based off of how they Teach and not test scores it would be better for Students. Keep in mind Michigan has been run by Republicans for a while and they have gutted education.

They work 8-3pm. Then grade papers until bed + lesson plans etc. They do a lot of emailing at night to parents. Not to mention they basically have to discipline the kids day in and day out and be ready for anything. Its way more work than you would think. Im a civil engineer but my gf is a teacher and her life is way more stressful

DallasAlice wrote:

Funnyalice but.... wrote:

I had to laugh but as a 'gym teacher' I earn with side coaching $140k and I get 12 weeks off per year.

Where's zat?

Australia mate!

The United States spends more money educating its young people than any other nation, according to Education at a Glance 2017, the most recent study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which compiles educational data from nations across the globe each year. In 2014, the U.S. spent an average of $12,157 per student on elementary and secondary education, over 30% more than the OECD average of $9,419. College spending, including technical schools and universities, was nearly $30,000, 75% more than the average spending of other countries in the OECD. Total U.S. spending averaged $16,268 per student, 51% more than the average for all of the countries included in the OECD study.

Never saw a teacher give up a Saturday to go in and teach an extra class or two......teachers who coach track/xc are there on Saturdays on a regular basis.

Tristate wrote:

Here in New Hampshire, a teacher is paid the same no matter what they teach. So, a teacher teaching AP chemistry with three years experience, get's paid the same as a gym teacher of Phys Ed teacher with the same experience. Perfect example; A friend who is a teacher, who taught Chemistry, and calculus, decided to take a test to become a gym teacher. He did this after 30 years as the chemistry teacher. He get's the same pay, with no homework to grade!

I don't think that's the exception. Here in NYC it's the same thing. My brother-in-law had been teaching history for almost 20 years and last year became a gym teacher. I'm beginning to wonder why I don't do the same.

browski wrote:

Tristate wrote:

Here in New Hampshire, a teacher is paid the same no matter what they teach. So, a teacher teaching AP chemistry with three years experience, get's paid the same as a gym teacher of Phys Ed teacher with the same experience. Perfect example; A friend who is a teacher, who taught Chemistry, and calculus, decided to take a test to become a gym teacher. He did this after 30 years as the chemistry teacher. He get's the same pay, with no homework to grade!

I don't think that's the exception. Here in NYC it's the same thing. My brother-in-law had been teaching history for almost 20 years and last year became a gym teacher. I'm beginning to wonder why I don't do the same.

I left an MBA program to become a teacher. I chose to teach PE because I thought/knew it would be more fun and less stressful for the same pay. Most teachers do not complain about pay. And most non teachers do not understand what the job entails.

7yy wrote:

Never saw a teacher give up a Saturday to go in and teach an extra class or two......teachers who coach track/xc are there on Saturdays on a regular basis.

I did that for twenty years before retiring from coaching. Those were 80+ hour weeks for about forty weeks of the year. I topped out at $80k, which is a solid middle class salary in my area of the country. I have no issue with that salary for the job I performed.

I still teach, am down to 35-40 hours per week, and feel like I have a part-time job, all for $72k. I have no complaints about that.

My complaints all involve education policy—local, state, and national. We don’t really know what we want out of our public education system any more, so we do what I consider some pretty ignorant things. But that’s a different thread.

I teach English, by the way, not PE. In my area, PE teachers make the same as I do to roll out a ball every day.

UsedToBeKnowItAll wrote:

A nurse can easily triple or quadruple it in 10 years? Amazing. I must know a lot of underachieving nurses. I don't think I've ever met a nurse that has tripled her salary (if you adjust for inflation) over their entire careers.

Glassdoor says the average starting salary for a nurse is $57,201. With 10-14 years, the average "jumps" up to $73k.

Starting EE, $67k. 10-14 years EE, $91k. Accountants are $48k to $58k from new hires to 10 years.

So, it's "easy" to triple or quadruple your pay, yet the average nurse, accountant, or engineer can't even manage a 50% increase in pay over their first 10 years, let alone double it, triple it, or quadruple it.

It sounds to me like teachers are right in line with pretty much every other professional degree.

You ignored the part about moving into management. Accountants who are any good can get promoted to supervisor, then manager, then director, controller, CFO, etc. Most accountants I know in their 40’s are making at least 10x of what they started at, as senior managers and executives. I know plenty of nurses who likewise have moved into management or hospital administration. There pretty much isn’t any job where you don’t top out unless you get promoted by taking on more responsibilities. In teaching, however, it seems to happen far less often.

Mid career accountants earn less than mid career teachers. Your perception is about 10x off of reality.

For every accountant earning $300k, there are 10 earning only $30k. So you could say that the average Joe accountant earns only $30k.

All the statistics are from teachers. Not teachers that move into administration.

So, to compare apples to apples, I ignore accountants that move up. Dear Lord, how many accountants make it to CFO? I'd have to dig up some stats on the numbers of CFO's and the numbers of people that graduate with an accounting degree every year. My guess is it is a number that is so small, it should be excluded from this discussion.

Same with nurses. Same with engineers. Same with any profession. The teachers aren't "moving up" into other job roles. So they should be compared against people that aren't moving up into other job roles. And when you do that comparison, they get paid about what every other profession gets paid.

Police officers here in Suffolk County (NY) make an average of $162,000 annually. Teachers in Suffolk County make an average of $90,000/year.