I heard a new right wing defense of paying teachers a low salary.

[county worker]

I heard this on wing nut radio last night. A study be some wing nut and the Heritage foundation finds that teachers make on the average 20% less then others with similar undergraduate and graduate college degrees. That item they don't dispute. But they justify it by saying that the degrees that teachers get are easier to get since what they study is not as difficult as other studies. Also teachers get lower grades and lower entrance exam scores. And there are more teachers available than there are openings. So therefore it makes sense that they are paid 20% less than others with similar levels of education.

What a crock of shit!

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Crock indeed

[Turbineguy]

2. Uhhhh.......

What about professional athletes then?

[sarcasmo]

3. Union bashing paid for by the billionaires.

[Sancho]

4. That is simply not true for most degrees today...

Maybe decades ago or in a few isolated cases, but teachers in most states today have to take content courses (math, English, whatever) AND pass a content test to be certified to teach that subject. Many other majors just graduate without having to prove their knowledge. Many college programs for teachers now have an extra accreditation beyond the one the college has in general, so there are other requirements and courses they have to do, and extra requirements for faculty quality. Some teacher programs now require more than a C average to be endorsed for a certificate. Some require a 2.5 or 3.0 especially in the subject you teach.

About half the certified teachers who graduate in Florida don't teach - they take better paying jobs outside of education. The biggest problem is low pay and teacher who can't afford to teach! The best and brightest may teach a year or two, but they are the first to leave for better jobs.

Of course, if you used GPA as the only logic for pay and positions, Bush, Cain, Perry, and Palin would be making less than anyone else you can think of...they all had really poor academic records.

[Angry Dragon]

5. The same study should apply to congress

look at all the people that want to be elected, no exam, no tests, no grades,
just my opinion

[asjr]

6. From what I can tell they all

are "D" students.

[formercia]

7. Who are "D" students? Please explain.

Your content is a bit thin.

[asjr]

11. Thin is right!! I was thinking at the

time that teachers were being put down while the people who go to Congress I considered "D" students. Forgot to put down the whole thing. That happens when you become old. I must need a keeper.

[formercia]

12. I know the feeling

:rofl: :hi:

[hfojvt]

8. I would make a different argument

and first of all, I don't buy the study.

Based on two pieces of anecdotal evidence. For one, I have two seemingly useless college degrees. Since graduating from college I have worked low-wage, part-time, no benefits jobs, and low status jobs. I would love to have a degree that qualified me to apply for a decent paying, high status job anywhere in the country.

Secondly, in 1983 when I sorta flunked out of my physics major, I switched to a math major. But then I thought, what does a math major do? Probably teach, was the only answer I could see (and one that turned out to be very accurate because after I quit the math education program, I majored in math and that has been a mostly useless degree). Well, it happened at that time that the media was running a story about a "shortage of math teachers". Because of those stories, the math education department at the University of Minnesota suddenly tripled in size. Many of the new people already had college degrees, but they were going back to school so they could get one of those "low paying jobs" teaching math.

Of course, that was only 20 students when CLA graduated about 800 a year (or more - there were 800+ at my graduation, and presumably some graduated without bothering to goto the ceremony).

The other point is, though, that those other college graduates are presumably working in the private sector. So here's a teacher making $40,000 a year and here's a non-teacher college grad making $48,000 a year. Well, the corporation that is paying Mr./Ms. college grad is MAKING A PROFIT off of them. That college graduate does $80,000 or $100,000 worth of work, for which they get paid the $48,000. In the public sector there is no profit to justify (and also pay for) the high salary. Instead that salary is being paid by tax-payers, and many of those taxpayers are themselves, making much less money than many of the teachers they are paying. Those people are allowed to vote too. You may want to tell a bunch of $8 an hour Wal-mart workers that the $50,000 a year teacher is not making enough money, but I spent too many years as that $8 an hour worker to take up that banner myself.

Just one more anecdote though. After I got my math major I was hired by the US Government, specificcally the US Air Force. So I was a GS-7 in the military industrial complex. The talk around my office was about how we were not paid enough and that a math major like myself could make more money in the private sector. Being young and foolish, I quit that job before I had another job lined up. What did I find in the private sector? Was it piles of beaucoup bucks? Nope. First, I found NO job from December 1985 until August 1988 at which point I went to graduate school for the awesome pay of $6,000 a year. I left with a worthless MS and got a part-time teaching job for $8,100 a year. Meanwhile if I had stuck with my supposedly low-paying government job, I would have been a GS-9 in 1986 ($10.45 an hour) a GS-11 in 1987 ($12? an hour), a GS-12 in 1988 ($14 an hour) a GS-12 step 2 in 1989 ($15 an hour) a GS-12 step 3 in 1990.

Yeah, the current pay for a GS-12 step 3 is $64,292 a year. I coulda been a contenda instead of a bum.

Ultimately, if teachers don't like their pay, if they don't get satisfaction from the fact that they are making a difference in the lives of young people, the door to the private sector is always open. They too can fill out hundreds of applications just like all the currently unemployed college graduates.

[1776Forever]

9. Say what? Who do they think are "teaching" their home schooled children? I bet some of them don't

have any degrees or are not trained in teaching anything! I know some home schooled kids are lucky to have dedicated people who really try hard to give a well rounded education but really how can they run down teachers who have Teaching Degrees and their predecessors who have been teaching in our schools ever since we became a country? This really makes me mad! They just don't want to pay them anything!

[immoderate]

10. A wingnut told me that teachers demanding smaller class size was "greed."

It's one of those situations where you know there's no answer, because there's nobody home to understand it. Teachers are greedy because they "want a lighter work load."

He then went on to tell me that Warren Buffet was greedy because his wanting to increase the tax on millionaires is actually a tactic to disadvantage his competition. (But he also says that availability of wealth is unlimited.)

The Koch Brothers though, are not greedy because they are "just doing business."

--imm

[Romulox]

13. There's a jobs crisis, and as a consequence more people qualified for the position than there are

positions to fill (or funding.)

That will always drive wages down.