Public (state) school teachers' salaries in BA

[bigbadwolf]

Public school teaching is NOT low paid in many school districts of the East Coast US. I know of suburban school districts in major metropolitan areas where salaries reach $100,000. I have a friend who earns a little over that amount.

Sergio, once upon a time $100,000 could buy a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. I'm not sure it goes that far anymore. The starting salary for new associates at the best law firms is $160,000 and fresh MBAs have often been starting at well over $100,000. Granted, these are the exception rather than the rule but I would up the ante to $200,000 before I called anyone well-paid in the USA.

To be fair to you, it's also true that lots of lawyers (say) have not been getting jobs at all; see this blog for some horrifying stories.

 

[criswkh]

I was a scientist before I became a high school teacher; therefore I had to go back for “teacher-training” classes, which I viewed as a joke. I had more science classes than any chemistry education major took in the States. I have taught in the inner city schools and Argentina private schools. The teaching profession is not respect. In fact, most people view the profession as an “easy” gig. If you are a good teacher the gig is not easy at all. You have to deal with violence, gangs, academic performance, incompetent administration, emotional children and adults, paper work for legal documentations, lesson planning, exam preparation, lack of supplies, lack of building code violations, etc. For the last 6 years I have worked from 7 a.m. until 9 p.m. M-F and that doesn’t account for the phone calls or weekend duties. The pay for teachers is pathetic. I made $72K in Chicago, but I could not afford to live there, I made $4,000 pesos here full-time which meant 45 contact hours of students and other duties. Both the US and Argentina’s school systems are lacking compared to the Japanese systems. Here the teachers seem to protest as the first answer to conflict; in the US they bargain before protesting. Protesting just negatively affects the students. Most of the curriculum being taught in schools keeps getting recycled. Today’s students are not the same as students in the 70s. I think what is needed is a reevaluation of not only teacher training programs, but also the goals of education. Countries need to have more globalization with education and create a patchwork of ways for students to learn, this has to be specific for that schools clientele. Here are some interesting facts on teacher: Teachers make more decisions than air traffic controllers and they have the third highest rank for alcoholism.

 

[Davidglen77]

Right before moving to Buenos Aires, I lived in Westchester county, right outside of New York City. There are great public schools in several towns in Westchester, Scarsdale and Bronxville to name a few. However property taxes on an average house in those towns are approximately $25,000 per year. Of course the public schools are going to be well funded and teachers well paid, however how many people can afford something like that? The government here and in a lot of other places in the world need to fix their education system if there is going to be any future for ANY of us in ANY country. When I was growing up in New York City, I remember in 5th grade (public school) we got an influx of immigrant children from Vietnam and Bangladesh. These kids laughed when they saw we were learning addition and subtraction of fractions and they had already learned basic algebra and calculus. These kids came from what are considered very poor countries but they were way ahead of us in math and science as well, and I assure you nobody in Vietnam or Bangladesh is paying $25,000 in property taxes.......that goes to show you that things can get done if society and the government are committed to the future. That of course seems to have fallen by the wayside.

 

[RWS]

Pegging onto David's cogent point: teaching in early colonial English America quickly achieved a very high level, without high taxes. Teaching was a respected career for a man (at the outset, almost no women taught), but, at least as importantly, two additional factors increased the level of actual, received education: strong support (including ancillary teaching) from the typical student's family and community, and a strong desire by the student himself to learn. No surprise, then, that a seventeenth-century farmer in those colonies with but three years of formal education should have been more literate, knowledgeable, and (best of all) genuinely thoughtful than many a present-day American who's sat in classrooms for sixteen years.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Most of the curriculum being taught in schools keeps getting recycled. Today’s students are not the same as students in the 70s. I think what is needed is a reevaluation of not only teacher training programs, but also the goals of education. Countries need to have more globalization with education and create a patchwork of ways for students to learn, this has to be specific for that schools clientele. Here are some interesting facts on teacher: Teachers make more decisions than air traffic controllers and they have the third highest rank for alcoholism.

Who would reevaluate? There are so many competing objectives for education today -- many of them at odds with one another. In the old days, teachers just had to teach the three Rs. I even dislike the word "education"; I prefer "teaching." Distractions were few. The textbooks were honest and straightforward. And the children came from a more homogeneous ethnic background (North European), where a teacher could make assumptions with regard to conduct, language proficiency, and academic performance.

 

[gouchobob]

Public education and teacher salaries are both very poor throughout Latin America with very few exceptions. Comparing the dismal systems you have in place here with other developed countries doesn't seem relevant to me.

It would be more relevant to look at countries in Asia that 40 years ago were basically in the same state as Latin America and Argentina are in today. Those same countries with very limited resources turned the situation completely around since and have enjoyed much higher living standards and economic growth as a result. Perhaps lessons learned in those countries could be applied here.

Unfortunately, the people in power don't seem very interested. My guess is that a lot of the politicians here don't want an highly educated population. It's easier to get re-elected promising all kinds of nonsense if the voters don't have critical thinking skills. Just look around the region and how many of these people would be elected elsewhere? A lot of these people would be awaiting trial or serving their sentences in other parts of the world.

 

[mini]

Pegging onto David's cogent point: teaching in early colonial English America quickly achieved a very high level, without high taxes. Teaching was a respected career for a man (at the outset, almost no women taught), but, at least as importantly, two additional factors increased the level of actual, received education: strong support (including ancillary teaching) from the typical student's family and community, and a strong desire by the student himself to learn. No surprise, then, that a seventeenth-century farmer in those colonies with but three years of formal education should have been more literate, knowledgeable, and (best of all) genuinely thoughtful than many a present-day American who's sat in classrooms for sixteen years.

Well, like, to be fair, those people really didn't have nothing else to do. I mean, just think, they didn't even have any malls or anything. Can you imagine? That ain't no joke. It's serious s#!t.