Teacher Pay in Perspective

[Kamaji]

Teacher Pay in Perspective

Should we pay teachers more? Depends.

By Larry Sand
March 4, 2023

Teacher pay has become the topic-du-jour of late. The subject has even worked its way into the U.S. Senate, where Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) recently held a town hall on the “teacher pay crisis.” The strident socialist invited Randi Weingarten and Becky Pringle, two national teacher union leaders, to join him for a slanted and hyperbole-riddled evening.

Just for starters, Pringle insisted that the “staffing crisis isn’t the warning light or the maintenance-required, indicator-on-your-car moment. No, this is the engine-is-on-fire, call-911-now moment that we are in.” And Weingarten absurdly claimed that “a teacher makes less than a bartender.”

The entire pearl-clutching event was simply a prelude to the “Pay Teachers Act,” which will, among other things, “ensure all starting teachers across the country are paid at least $60,000 a year. It will increase wages for teachers who have made teaching their profession—working on the job for, 10, 20, 30 years,” and would cost taxpayers some $450 billion over the next 10 years.

What do teachers actually earn?

According to Just Facts, in the 2020–21 school year, the average school teacher in the U.S. made $65,090 in salary, and received another $33,048 in benefits (such as health insurance, paid leave, and pensions) for $98,138 in total compensation.

Also, importantly, full-time public school teachers work an average of 1,490 hours per year, including time spent on lesson preparation, test construction, and grading, providing extra help to students, coaching, and other activities, while their counterparts in private industry work an average of 2,045 hours per year, or about 37 percent more than public school teachers.

All in all, with various perks included, a teacher makes on average $68.85 an hour, whereas a private sector worker makes about $36 per hour.

In the same vein, an earlier study by researchers Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine showed that when healthcare and pension packages are included, teachers are paid more than other workers. They found that workers who switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs “receive a wage increase of roughly 9 percent, while teachers who change to non-teaching jobs see their wages decrease by approximately 3 percent.”

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Source:  https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/04/teacher-pay-in-perspective/

[Kamaji]

Every teacher I know gripes non-stop about pay.  Now of course there is not enough money in the world to get me to teach in the public school system, with the total lack of discipline.

Teachers complaining about their pay reminds me of people with rent-controlled apartments in NYC complaining about the annual rent increase.  I once knew of someone who paid about $1,500 a month for a five bedroom apartment on Park Avenue, when the market rate for a two bedroom in Stuyvesant town was at least $3,500 a month. 

Teachers by and large have nothing to complain about.

[Wingnut]

Every teacher I ever knew had a 3 month summer off side hustle that made them about half their pay.  So either todays teachers are stupid as f@ck  or are lazy as f@ck.

[Kamaji]

Every teacher I ever knew had a 3 month summer off side hustle that made them about half their pay.  So either todays teachers are stupid as f@ck  or are lazy as f@ck.

They’re just liars.  The teachers in my daughter’s school all had side hustles during the school year - tutoring for the tests mostly - that made them tens of thousands of dollars a year.

[Kamaji]

I play tennis with a former Jr. High tennis coach.  He taught tennis after school was out for the day to the very same kids he was coaching earlier in the day.  I found that to be very questionable.  They are your students if it takes another hour to help them then do it, but don't be charging them for it....ughhh.

Some of the teachers in my daughter's school would tutor kids who were in their classes, which I felt was a conflict of interest.