Per 247: Michigan Performance Director Arrested for DUI

It all depends on your definition of 'good money,' of course. Certainly for a lot of teachers, we know that we could be making a lot more money in another field. But actually there are a fair number of teachers and communities who consider the job to be good money.

When I first came to upstate NY and I was talking with my students about jobs that pay well, I listed investment banker, surgeon, etc. and my students interjected "TEACHER!" I said "Yeah right," as if they were joking, and continued on with my list - and then I realized they weren't joking. This was in a small, rural, depressed (>50% reduced or free lunch) school community. To them, teacher really was a high-paying job.

Also about public vs private schools. The most lucrative teaching jobs are top-end public school ones, not private schools. For example, consider the Chappaqua school district here in NY. You can find the data here: http://seethroughny.net/teacher_pay The most senior teachers in Chappaqua are making about $150k. 

Now, that is about what I'd be making if I had stayed in the NYC independent (private) schools, but only because I was at a top school, also held an administrative role, and beyond that, despite what some on this board will tell you, I am a damn fine teacher. Most in the independent schools earn far less. At my small upstate rural job, I earn way way less than I would somewhere else - but the best-paying teaching jobs are undoubtedly the fancy public schools.

And not just for the salary. The biggest reason that the top-end public schools are financially better than the top-end private schools is the benefits. At the independent schools, teachers have to contribute to retirement plans (usually a 403b 5%/5% match), and the health insurance is expensive and mediocre at best. But at almost all public schools, at least in NY, the health insurance is ridiculously good. My policy is about a $25k policy that I get for "free" with no contributions, and in Buffalo, for example, at least as of a couple years ago, public school teachers had a rider for elective plastic surgery, and no, I am not making that up. And the retirement plans at public schools, at least in NY, are good (for the relatively small amounts of money that teachers make). The state has been gradually scaling back benefits - different 'tiers' for the retirement plan depend on when you started teaching - but at my tier, I had to contribute 2% of my salary for the first 5 years of teaching - and then when I retire, I get health insurance and a pension equal to 1.67*(number of years teaching to a max. of 30)*(final year's salary)/100. Small absolute numbers, but if you consider those numbers good to begin with, as many up here do, then the benefits are pretty good.

All of which is somewhat immaterial to me, as my amazing wife's income dwarfs my own. But hey, I had a lunch period and felt like providing that info, so there you go. :)

Hmmmm, so I'm a gleaming example of what's wrong with our culture? Because I have a different opinion, one that you ASSUME was formulated in a few hours? Why would you make such an assumption? I've been concerned about our K-12 system, and have been paying attention, reading, talking to teachers, administrators and parents, and forming my opinions and conclusions for at least 15 years [so warning, this will be long]. But you want to assume I don't know what I'm talking about so that it's easier to dismiss my statements that conflict with your presuppositions. Maybe that approach that you've opted to employ is one of today's problems.

In your attempt to counter my numbers you go for the old trope about how much teachers have to work outside the classroom, as if people don't know that teachers, like most salaried white-collar professionals, take work home, work outside "normal" work hours, and keep up with their field of work on their own time via professional development opportunities. Who doesn't do that? Yet when teachers do it we're expected to be amazed at their sacrifice and ability to work beyond 7 hours per day.

Continuing education and earning credits? Common in many professions. Teachers have summers off during which they can opt to take specially tailored teaching master's degree programs to get their automatic pay bump. They're not required or rewarded to go to a rigorous program, they just need the Master's diploma from Davenport or Baker or such. On the other hand, many other professionals have to choose between going at night after work for years (like my dad did for his UM MSEE degree), or quitting work and going full-time at significant cost (like I did for two years for my MBA).

Grading papers? Team and district meetings? School events? Is that really any different than other professionals who have to answer emails early mornings or late evenings and on weekends, be on Asian conference calls that start at midnight, or fly out on Sundays or return Saturdays from far away business trips? Or work portions of vacations?

The common theme here is what you said you generally didn't want to ascribe to any profession -- a sense of martyrdom. Things that are commonplace in private industry are considered "above and beyond" in teaching. Perhaps it's because so many teachers are married to to other teachers, or come from teaching families, that they don't have that much exposure to what professional corporate salaried employees or entrepreneurs do regularly. Seems wierd to me, but this isn't the first time I've heard people act as if the time teachers work outside the classroom is somehow outside the norm for others.

This disconnect from greater society extends to things like historically how little teachers paid toward premiums, co-pays, deductibles, office visit charges and prescriptions compared to private industry. K-12 administrators and educators still, for no good reason other than bargaining power, have defined-benefit pension plans and retiree health coverage that has proven way too expensive for private industry to sustain. Even some governmental subunits like Oakland County have moved away defined-benefit pensions and toward defined contributions plans (403b, aka 401k).

And who else gets to retire at age 51, after 30 years of work, and collect their pension for perhaps more years than they worked, and utilize pre-Medicare health insurance for a decade and a half? If you bemoan the "lack of funding" for K-12, the enormous cost of their archaic legacy benefit programs are a key culprit. Haven't you read how increases in per-pupil funding typically get swallowed up by employee comp and benefits, even as class sizes increase to contractual maxes?

Education is vitally important. That doesn't mean whatever is being done now is being done right. Yet the attitude from administrators and teachers seems to be a self-reinforcing, self-congratulatory one of dare I say it, martyrdom. Highly skilled and educated professionals forced to do heroic things for minimal compensation. What howeever did I just read about Michigan's 3rd Grade reading proficiency scores slipping from 50% to 44%, the worst of any states using that test? And Brookings analysis last year found Michigan students made the least progress of any state in NAEP scores since 2003.

Yet NEA data on teacher salaries ranks Michigan at 11th highest nationally. More importantly, adjusted for cost of living, we rank 1st in the nation! Highest pay and worst performance make odd bedfellows.

It's been this way for years, yet we're continally subjected to complaints from self-interested parties that teachers in Michigan are underpaid and schools are underfunded. Simply not factual.

And while I hesitate to bring this up because it can be taken with the wrong intent, the average teacher is not someone that was a top achiever academically. While education is very important and we should be recruiting excellent teachers, the incumbent teacher cohort is not cream skimmed from the top.

Research over the years has indicated that education majors, who enter college with the lowest average SAT scores, leave with the highest grades. Some of academic evidence documenting easy A's for future teachers goes back more than 50 years!

The latest damning report on the ease of majoring in education comes from research at the University of Missouri, my alma mater. The study, conducted by economist Cory Koedel shows that education majors receive "substantially higher" grades than students in every other department.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/heres-the-nations-easiest-college-major/

So, perhaps it's not surprising that within the K-12 establishment, there's a self-reinforcing belief that for lack of a better description, "We're damn good". College students with the lowest average SATs major in Education, get wildly inflated grades, 

Koedel examined the grades earned by undergraduates during the 2007-2008 school year at three large state universities that include sizable education programs -- University of Missouri, Miami (OH) University and Indiana University. The researcher compared the grades earned by education majors with the grades earned by students in 12 other majors including biology, economics, English, history, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, psychology and sociology.

Education majors enjoyed grade point averages that were .5 to .8 grade points higher than students in the other college majors. At the University of Missouri, for instance, the average education major has a 3.80 GPA versus 2.99 GPA (science, math, econ majors), 3.12 GPA (social science majors) and 3.16 GPA (humanities majors).

and understandably leave college thinking that they're hot shit. Entering the self-reinforcing "we're underappreciated and underpaid" bubble where they work for the next 30-40 years, it's not surprising that there's such a disconnect between how parents of school-aged children view K-12 teacher quality and how the K-12 establishment considers itself. 

Now, I'm not even going to get into the difficulty in getting rid of underperforming teachers or the frustrating "dance of the lemons" where a bad teacher gets foisted off on some poor unsuspecting parents at another school. That this practice continues to this day in my local school district deserves entirely separate treatment.

TrueblueinTexas, I don't expect you to agree, but next time you encounter opinions contrary to your own don't be so rash in your condesending dismissal of them.