With all the current hullabaloo in Wisconsin, just keep this in mind. (I don't know enough about the debate in WI to have an opinion at the moment, but I know this much: Teachers are some of the hardest-working, most underpaid employees in the United States.)
"Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.
That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours).
Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day...maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day.
However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.
LET'S SEE....
That's $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).
What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.
Wait a minute -- there's something wrong here! There sure is!
The average teacher's salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student--a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!"
by Anonymous, via facebook
image via weheartit.com
thinking about how little teachers are paid makes my heart hurt...especially when i consider how great some of my teachers have been. they could have done a lot less than they did for what they got paid. it's truly a labor of love.
ReplyDeleteNot only do they get a crappy salary, they also share EQUAL blame with parents when the kids are screwed up/not progressing/delinquent. Dumb.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the whole under payment of teachers in this country is something that drives me crazy. It won't fix all the problems but I promise making teaching salaries competitive will solve a lot. Over time.
ReplyDeleteWhen great teachers are being led to other jobs because of better salaries, we make teaching a bottom rung salary job. And that attracts bottom rung people. Not all. And probably not many. But enough.
Geh. It drives me bonkers. Maybe we could stop spending so much money on bomb.
James, the syntax of that last sentence makes me question your intended meaning of the word "bomb." Did you mean like explosives? Or things that are particularly awesome, as in "the bomb"? Because spending money on things that are bomb would include teachers.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I think that this is a sweet sentiment I dislike the fact that it makes it seem as though Special Education Teachers work significantly harder than regular classroom teachers which is not necissarily the case, especially when so many schools are going to inclusion schools where all students are kept in the classroom. ok, random but i needed to rant so there! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteGood call, though. I think I agree, based on what I know about it.
ReplyDeleteAll I know is on average I am at the school from 6:30 am to around 6 p.m. And that's the average, not to mention when a show is going on or all the weekends I spend coaching the kids or working on sets. Exhausting, but I didn't become a teacher for the money.
ReplyDeleteAlthough James had a great point, if they gave teachers a competitive salary, it would be such a huge incentive and I feel it would directly benefit the students.
Ah, education. Those in charge (the legislature) have no idea what they are doing... they need to become substitute teachers- then they could solve all the problems...
Oooh I like that idea, Kjerst...require all policy-makers to work at least 3 days as a substitute teacher. What a wake-up call that would be!
ReplyDeleteThis is a world-wide problem. I am in South Africa and know for a fact that teachers here also gets paid peanuts and bank employees even less.Our teachers goes on a strike every now and again and the ones who suffers is the kids.We can rant and rave all we want but seems as though things don't change. We have just had the budget speech and a few billion has been allocated to education. Just wondering what that entails because every year you hear education gets money but apparently not used for the educators or the books or the schools. There is a big bad monster that eats the money that gets allocated to education and health and tax relief and I wonder why we even have a budget speech.......
ReplyDeleteOh yes.. Thank you to Mrs Petersen,Ms Pieters,Mr Williams and Mrs Endley for my ability to read :-)
ReplyDeleteYou know, I constantly think of this problem when I think of how much money is being spent on the judicial system and how screwed up that is. If we would just put more money into education, we wouldn't NEED to spend so much on prisons. And teachers are awesome. I wish we could pay them in rainbows and unicorns, cause sometimes that's how they make me feel. And that rainbows and unicorns were legitimate forms of currency.
ReplyDelete(Can you tell it's finals week? I'm kind of losing my brain).
And my word verification is "etootlem". How happy that makes me. Like rainbows and unicorns. And star sprinkles.
That is a very interesting aspect to look at. What if the parent could not make payment? Would the child be kicked out of school. Who would pick up the bill? I'd like to see this done in other states to see if it'd work out.
ReplyDelete