O'DonnellWeb Monthly Archives

My wife wants a raise

Given the source, I guess this article about teacher pay relative to other professions shouldn't be a surprise. However, I'm in the mood to fisk something, so here we go.

We love teachers, we think they're saints, but most of us consider unavoidable the fact that they are underpaid and often have to work two or three extra jobs to maintain a middle-class existence.

Who is this "we" that he speaks of? Don't you love it when authors throw out totally unsupported statements like it's gospel. As far as I know, the only people who think teachers are saints are teachers, and the democratic politicians that they have on a short leash. The rest of us see them as people doing a job that doesn't require a high level of intellectual rigor or extensive training, and in fact can be done by just about anyone.

The latest statistics put the average teacher's salary at about $46,000; some teachers earn a little more, some a little less (the average teacher's salary not the starting salary is $38,000 in Kansas, $36,000 in New Mexico, and $32,000 in South Dakota). Overall, that's about the same that we pay pile-driver operators ($45,980) and about $8,000 less than the average elevator repairman pulls down. Meanwhile, a San Francisco dock worker makes about $115,000, while the clerk who logs shipping records into the longshoreman's computer makes $136,000.

It's no surprise that a writer for Mother Jones would be completely unfamiliar with the concept of supply and demand. Also, don't you like how he picked three rural, sparsely populated, low cost of living states as his examples? I wonder what the average teacher makes in Boston ,or San Francisco? Ever wonder why elevators and escalators seem to sit broken for a week or two? It's because there is a shortage of trained repairmen. The longshoremen have a union that is even stronger than the NEA, thus their inflated wages. Of course, if the longshoremen were making 25K a year this same writer would be whining about living wages and how they can't support a family.

The first step to creating an education system full of the best teachers we can find is to pay them in line with their importance to their communities.

I think we are doing exactly that at current pay levels. Also, I guess this bozo has never even considered whether or not he wants his child raised by a government employee who is only in it for the money. When you look at educational achievement, the relationship between teacher pay and student achievement is inverted. Homeschoolers, who actually pay for the privilege of teaching at home, do best, followed by private school students, and in last place is the public school students, whose teachers are already the highest paid. If he really wants to improve education maybe we should be cutting teacher pay.

I vividly remember, while growing up in the Chicago suburbs in the '70s, knowing that my sixth-grade math teacher was also even during the school year a licensed and active travel agent, and I recall seeing a number of my high-school teachers, all with master's degrees or Ph.D.'s, painting houses and cutting lawns during the summer. This kind of thing still happens all over the country, and it's a disgrace.

Why is this a disgrace? Teachers are paid to work 9-10 months of the year. They can either take the summer off, or supplement their income. It's a choice, and personally I find the choice to produce something and add economic value to be the more noble choice.

When teachers are forced to tend the yards of students' homes, to clean houses, or to sell stereos on nights and weekends, the quality of education is diminished, the profession is disrespected, and we parody the notion that we hold our schools and teachers in the highest regard. Teachers with two and three jobs are tired, their families are frustrated, and the students they teach, who want to—and should—consider their instructors exalted figures, learn instead to think of teaching as a part-time gig, the day job for the guy who sells Game Boys at Circuit City.

I think I'm going to gag. Exalted figures? Please...Is he talking about teachers or priests? I guess we can never question a teacher either. That would not help their ability to teach, but it would greatly help their ability to indoctrinate. Ah...

Also, kids seeing their teachers hawking stereos at Circuit City in the summer would be a real boon to society. It would keep those kids from following in their teachers footsteps. Less teachers would also raise teacher pay - which is exactly what this idiot wants anyway.

He goes on to profile four teachers and their sob stories of having to take on second jobs. Boo hoo. Like I give a damn. The central theme in the profiles seem to be the moment when these teachers realize they can make more money in retail management or landscaping, but choose to continue teaching anyway. Again, our lefty writer is too dense to realize that he contradicting his argument that we need to pay teachers drastically more. The four he profiled continue to teach without the big paycheck. They are not teaching for money.

BTW, I worked 2 (and for a while 3) jobs in the first few years after we had kids. I've also done plenty of unpaid volunteer work that added 10+ hours to my week. Most of us have. I can't think of any logical reason why teachers (or anybody else) should be exempt from the laws of economics.

via Brian Micklewait