Business leaders: Boost teacher pay

[flashl]

Salaries not on par with private sector, group says

PIERRE - Without bold legislative action, low pay will drive good teachers into other professions, and South Dakota children will be the losers, Sioux Falls business leaders told lawmakers Thursday.

The Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce and individual business leaders said teachers used to be among the best-paid people in communities. Studies of buying power show teachers are losing ground to other professions, a trend that will prompt young people to choose another occupation at a time when more than one in five teachers is within five years of retirement eligibility, the group said.

"They are losing ground," Bob O'Connell of the chamber told the Senate Education Committee. "The long-term impact of this is that we are going to lose teachers."

He and others testified on a bill sponsored by Sen. David Knudson, R-Sioux Falls, that proposed 4.25 percent raises for teachers next year. If the bill were law, schools would gain about $80 per student if they raised the average salary and benefits of teachers by that percentage. If they didn't, they'd be held to a 2.5 percent state-aid increase, the level Gov. Mike Rounds proposed.

Better pay for teachers is essential to the state's future, O'Connell said. He said the growth in pay for teachers is failing to keep pace with growth in wages of other businesses and pay of teachers in other states. For example, in 1995, teacher pay in Sioux Falls was 117 percent of that in the finance and insurance industry and 123 percent of that in manufacturing, chamber charts showed. At present growth rates, teacher pay in 2015 will be 73 percent of that in finance and insurance and 89 percent of that in manufacturing.

Argus Leader

[Deja Q]

1. More important, provide incentives FOR people to study and improve themselves.

Jobs.

Otherwise they may as well collapse the economy, machine-gun the populace down now - for all the tinfoil bullshit some post on DU, of which there's no way anyone even remotely rational can believe!

x(

[LWolf]

5. Let's compromise on "also important," instead of

"more important."

It's hard to make it on a single teacher's salary where I live. I know, because I'm a single teacher. A highly qualified teacher with more than a decade's experience, and another 12 years in public education behind that before I moved into the classroom.

[southerncrone]

2. Not only is the pay low/eduation required, but it's become a hazardous job.

[comradebillyboy]

3. America gets exactly what it pays for.

What is truly amazing is that there are as many good teachers as there are. I took a 75% pay cut when I quit my management job in a big engineering company to teach math and physics in high school.

One major blight on American education are the colleges of education that we have to deal with to become teachers. Everything the education courses telling me how to teach math and science, that I took to be certified, were utter rubbish where we were taught to cater to the lowest common denominator, not to encourage excellence. The colleges of education at American university are unreal fantasy lands, characterized by the most shoddy and shallow academic programs imaginable.

My second big complaint is the public school systems pretend everyone is going to go to college and we just outright cheat the kids that want to (or have to) go to work when they graduate from high school. We should offer these kids many more real job skill courses that they could use if they do not choose college. I wold love to teach a math course like "Math for construction trades" or "basic electric circuits".

I will teach another 2-3 years before I retire and what I see is an aura of complete unreality and wishful thinking that dominates our public education system. It needs more than better teacher pay (which it desperately needs) it needs a radical reform from the ground up.

[southerncrone]

4. I followed the same path into teaching. Make 40% what the business sector paid me &

w/a Master's degree!

You are exactly correct about the colleges. I remember when I was getting my undergrad degree in business, it was a common joke on campus that if you couldn't cut it in any other major, just switch to education to attain a degree.

When I took the requisite grad classes to become a teacher, mine were also a joke & full of pipe-dream philosophies that are both unrealistic & unattainable in today's society.

Business & Congress keep putting the blame on the heads of the teachers, when we are now expected to take kids & "FIX" all of their problems stemming from dysfunctional home lives, exposure to inappropriate media & over indulgence. I keep saying this: "Most kids I encounter are raising themselves." Even if they are living w/both parents & are middle-class or affluent. BUT NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR THAT! It would require society to actually value kids & look out for their best interests.
:sarcasm:

There needs to be a REAL discussion about how the "families" have left these kids behind. We have so may kids that have emotional or psych problems, especially anger issues, that it is a miracle we are able to teach them anything.

Then throw in the "inclusion" slow learners & the retarded into the regular classroom, & EVERYONE loses. It is so unfair to those kids. We regular classroom teachers are not prepared to teach them, especially when you have 25-35 kids per class (allowed in our state--bottom line always prevails).

I love the kids, but I know teachers can only do so much.

I understand my peers who are long-time teachers who've lost their desire. We are defeated b/4 we even start. The avg life span of a new teacher, I've read is 3 yrs. Sometimes I wonder why I decided to do this.

Do you have some of these same problems?