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Teachers make median income of around 57k[1] in the US and that is on par with other professions with similar educational requirements despite the fact that the

Teachers make median income of around 57k[1] in the US and that is on par with other professions with similar educational requirements despite the fact that they don't work nearly 1/4 of the year. [1]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/mobile/high-school-teachers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/mobil...

hdctambien 10y ago
Teachers don't work 1/4 of the year like football players only work 3 hours a week for 16 weeks. There's a lot that has to happen (work) when the students aren't in school so that teaching can happen.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  So they are required to be at school for 8 hour days year round?
  - jschwartzi 10y ago
    More like 12-hour days while school is in session.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      Not where I went to school, half an hour after the kids left the vast majority of teachers were gone.
      - Goronmon 10y ago
        I mean, a lot of comes down to the individual teachers. The good ones, who care about their students, will spend extra time running student groups (drama clubs, etc) and participate in teacher groups. Add in grading and planning on top of that and you can easily be working 12 hour days, easily. But you can still have plenty of teachers that don't care about making the extra effort.
        ticviking 10y ago
        Bluntly teachers who need to work much more than contract hours are not efficient or planning ahead well.
        squeaky-clean 10y ago
        Tell that to my programming teacher, who also ran the business club twice a week after school and the programming club once a week after school. In fact, it never really struck me until now how nice he was to stay late. The programming club would be about 2 hours long, and he'd stay another 2 hours after because we all wanted to continue coding together, we couldn't be in the computer lab without a teacher.
        jschwartzi 10y ago
        Let me tell you about how many hours a day I was working when I was student teaching.
      - ashark 10y ago
        They do hours and hours of planning and grading at home. Often their poor spouses end up helping. Source: am one of said poor spouses.
      - CocaKoala 10y ago
        Are you sure they weren't taking the tests and homework that they received that day home to be graded, after which they can prepare the lesson plan for the next day and write the next homework and test?
      - squeaky-clean 10y ago
        Did they never grade tests or homework? Did they waste time in class with the students to do their grading? Otherwise they were likely working from home.
ryandrake 10y ago
Sorry, but my parents were both teachers. Summers are spent planning for next year. This idea that teachers get 1/4 of the year off is total fantasy.
- Goronmon 10y ago
  It's the classic problem. If they are good teachers, they spend time planning for the next year, taking/leading seminars on teaching, and looking for ways to improve themselves as educators. If they are bad teachers, I'm sure many literally do take off the summer and do little/no work. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like salaries depend on whether you are the former or the latter.
  - VLM 10y ago
    One side effect of using real estate prices to segregate based on demographics is some districts are very pleasant to work in and high paying and some are very unpleasant and often not as high paying. The kind of kids where Dad make sure the homework is done vs the kind of kids where there is no Dad but you get to wear a bullet proof vest. Dumping money into a district results in administrators soaking it up and no change in results. The only thing that changes results is demographic changes. The teachers are segregated as much as the kids, such that the PHD in math with 30 yrs experience and a fat paycheck did a good job teaching my high school calculus class, and teachers of somewhat lesser quality are stuck wearing bullet proof vests and having their cars vandalized and stolen. Simultaneously, inside individual districts something akin to communism reigns where the union enforces strict salary discipline based on skill and experience. Its between districts where things get competitive. Schools are run locally but regulated at state level. My SiL can run her classroom as the locals and her agree, but to renew her state teaching license every couple years she needs X continuing education units per year and her coworkers run the entire range of ant and grasshopper mentality. Its a classic confusion of butts-in-seat with productivity or confusing panic'd last minute cramming with productive effort. If the license lasts five years between renewals, and career attrition is roughly 10% per year, then the tiny minority of teachers who retire as teachers will have renewed roughly 8 times, while simultaneously a huge fraction of people holding a teaching license are leaving the field or have left the field and are therefore not working very hard on CEU to renew. So its simultaneously true the teachers study and prep constantly and that teacher don't study and prep at all, because a very small fraction of survivors need to while a very large fraction will not survive. The supply of teachers is too high leading to intentional burnout by management, careers that are shorter than the time it takes to pay off the student loans, and unpleasant working conditions because they can and it reliably produces countable beans. There is no contradiction in stating very few entering the field will be successful, while all who are successful enjoy great rewards. Those who have a very long and well paid NBA career will be quite happy about it; simultaneously almost every kid wanting to be a pro basketball player will not have a long well paid career in the field; the situation is the same for teaching.

hdctambien 10y ago

Teachers don't work 1/4 of the year like football players only work 3 hours a week for 16 weeks. There's a lot that has to happen (work) when the students aren't in school so that teaching can happen.

cmdrfred 10y ago
So they are required to be at school for 8 hour days year round?
- jschwartzi 10y ago
  More like 12-hour days while school is in session.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    Not where I went to school, half an hour after the kids left the vast majority of teachers were gone.
    - Goronmon 10y ago
      I mean, a lot of comes down to the individual teachers. The good ones, who care about their students, will spend extra time running student groups (drama clubs, etc) and participate in teacher groups. Add in grading and planning on top of that and you can easily be working 12 hour days, easily. But you can still have plenty of teachers that don't care about making the extra effort.
      - ticviking 10y ago
        Bluntly teachers who need to work much more than contract hours are not efficient or planning ahead well.
        squeaky-clean 10y ago
        Tell that to my programming teacher, who also ran the business club twice a week after school and the programming club once a week after school. In fact, it never really struck me until now how nice he was to stay late. The programming club would be about 2 hours long, and he'd stay another 2 hours after because we all wanted to continue coding together, we couldn't be in the computer lab without a teacher.
        jschwartzi 10y ago
        Let me tell you about how many hours a day I was working when I was student teaching.
    - ashark 10y ago
      They do hours and hours of planning and grading at home. Often their poor spouses end up helping. Source: am one of said poor spouses.
    - CocaKoala 10y ago
      Are you sure they weren't taking the tests and homework that they received that day home to be graded, after which they can prepare the lesson plan for the next day and write the next homework and test?
    - squeaky-clean 10y ago
      Did they never grade tests or homework? Did they waste time in class with the students to do their grading? Otherwise they were likely working from home.

ryandrake 10y ago

Sorry, but my parents were both teachers. Summers are spent planning for next year. This idea that teachers get 1/4 of the year off is total fantasy.

Goronmon 10y ago
It's the classic problem. If they are good teachers, they spend time planning for the next year, taking/leading seminars on teaching, and looking for ways to improve themselves as educators. If they are bad teachers, I'm sure many literally do take off the summer and do little/no work. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like salaries depend on whether you are the former or the latter.
- VLM 10y ago
  One side effect of using real estate prices to segregate based on demographics is some districts are very pleasant to work in and high paying and some are very unpleasant and often not as high paying. The kind of kids where Dad make sure the homework is done vs the kind of kids where there is no Dad but you get to wear a bullet proof vest. Dumping money into a district results in administrators soaking it up and no change in results. The only thing that changes results is demographic changes. The teachers are segregated as much as the kids, such that the PHD in math with 30 yrs experience and a fat paycheck did a good job teaching my high school calculus class, and teachers of somewhat lesser quality are stuck wearing bullet proof vests and having their cars vandalized and stolen. Simultaneously, inside individual districts something akin to communism reigns where the union enforces strict salary discipline based on skill and experience. Its between districts where things get competitive. Schools are run locally but regulated at state level. My SiL can run her classroom as the locals and her agree, but to renew her state teaching license every couple years she needs X continuing education units per year and her coworkers run the entire range of ant and grasshopper mentality. Its a classic confusion of butts-in-seat with productivity or confusing panic'd last minute cramming with productive effort. If the license lasts five years between renewals, and career attrition is roughly 10% per year, then the tiny minority of teachers who retire as teachers will have renewed roughly 8 times, while simultaneously a huge fraction of people holding a teaching license are leaving the field or have left the field and are therefore not working very hard on CEU to renew. So its simultaneously true the teachers study and prep constantly and that teacher don't study and prep at all, because a very small fraction of survivors need to while a very large fraction will not survive. The supply of teachers is too high leading to intentional burnout by management, careers that are shorter than the time it takes to pay off the student loans, and unpleasant working conditions because they can and it reliably produces countable beans. There is no contradiction in stating very few entering the field will be successful, while all who are successful enjoy great rewards. Those who have a very long and well paid NBA career will be quite happy about it; simultaneously almost every kid wanting to be a pro basketball player will not have a long well paid career in the field; the situation is the same for teaching.