I hate when teachers compare their salaries to athletes. There are many more people in this world who can be good teachers than can play basketball like LeBron James. Sorry, but it’s true. (And I say this as someone who used to be a teacher.)

Gotta agree with Amanda. No one is getting into teaching for the big payday so stop whining about it.

Yeah, they had me til the last comment. It’s a free market. Deal with it and be glad you make 51K.

Comments
Great Article! Great job RD!

The day I meet someone who changed their major from education to engineering because they couldn’t cut it in education, I’ll cheer for higher teacher salaries.

I’m a graphic designer and would loooove to make 51k a year. When the hell did that kind of money become something to whine about? If teachers made minimum wage, I’d get it, but 51k for 9 months a year? Seriously? And while I agree that education should be more important than basketball, I’m also aware that the millions of dollars that are paid to professional athletes are a FRACTION of the amount of money that people pay to go to games, get merchandise, etc. Even though I think the paychecks are kind of ridiculous, I would expect a decent cut if someone was making billions from my talent.

So…none of you have any respect for teachers, because “anyone can do it”. And if they were actually smart or talented, they would be doing something else that society DOES value, and the $51K (that one teacher makes somewhere, likely in an affluent suburb with additional education and experience under his/her belt) should be more than enough to satisfy an idiot that would go into a profession such as teaching. Or, if they *are* smart and talented, they should be altruists, and shut up about how they are overworked and underpaid. If
I had to deal with 24-32 of your offspring (not to mention you) for 9 months a year, I’d need much more than $51k.

So what you’re saying is, low property taxes are more important than having the smartest people possible teach your kids, and therefore teach them well.

I sure hope you don’t complain about how crappy your public school is. Priorities, lady! get some! your kid’s education should be more important to you than your freaking property taxes. You SHOULD be willing to pay through the nose for your child’s future, but you’re incapable of thinking that far ahead.

Bunny, by your logic we should all be willing (at least those of us who pay taxes) to pay $500 each time we or our neighbors go to the doctor, right? After all, an education is pretty meaningless if you’re dead, so we NEED to see only the docs who graduated in the top 5% of their class. From Harvard. Right?

I actually do know people who have quit teaching because they couldn’t hack it. And I wouldn’t say that any rational person with a degree can do it – the job requires a lot for someone to do it well. Until some of you work as a teacher, please don’t judge.

Of course my child’s education is important, but you’re not getting how economics work. Teacher salary isn’t $51K because we don’t care enough about teachers, it’s $51K because there are many many many many people who have teaching degrees and are willing to work for $51K. Are some of them incompetent? YES. Will the incompetent ones flee the hiring pool if the average is suddenly $75K? NO. More people would apply to become teachers, maybe, but how would that ensure that those people were more talented? Well, it wouldn’t. The people who were willing to teach at $51K would still be there, but if you don’t change the requirements for teachers, like requiring a masters degree instead of a bachelors, they wouldn’t be any “smarter” than the current batch. If you think a masters would help my kids teacher be more patient and innovative, more power to you. But, honestly, it seems like paying the best teachers more and the worst teachers less (like they do in most fields) would make more sense. You still don’t seem to grasp the water vs. diamonds analogy and how it relates to the teachers vs. atheletes issue.

BTW, private schools pay their teachers, on average, less than public schools and yet have better results….

“BTW, private schools pay their teachers, on average, less than public schools and yet have better results….”

Here’s a hint- private schools are usually the places where children with stable home lives and affluent parents are sent. So your conclusion in that part if false.

For the general discussion:

Teachers need to be paid more, but the safety net of tenure that allows poor teachers to stay needs to be cut. Look into some merit-based pay changes taking place in D.C. A teacher is infinitely more important than a basketball player. More common, sure, but infinitely more important.

We underpay our teachers when compared with other nations with equivalent economies and governments. Its just time for us to catch up with the rest of the world.

Finally, stop the teacher bashing. It only reflects badly on yourself.

Why does no one understand economics? Water is infinitely more important than diamonds, but its plentiful, so it costs less. In places where diamonds are plentiful and clean water is not, the water costs more than the diamonds. Good Teachers, I AGREE, are infinitely more important than good basketball players. More people can become good teachers than can become good basketball players, though, so the market price for a teacher is lower than the market price for a NBA player. For pity’s sake, some of our best basketball players are brought in from other countries, doesn’t that tell you how rare they are? If we paid for water, or heating oil, or pennicillin or teachers by the actual value added to our lives, rather than market principals, the price would be astronomical and no one could afford it. I AGREE, institute merit pay, like the NBA does, so that we are actually paying more for good teachers and driving the bad ones to another line of work. The main reason my mom stopped teaching in public school wasn’t the kids from unstable homes–it was the fact that she hated seeing incompetent teachers get paid the same as she for doing less and lower quality work.

“BTW, private schools pay their teachers, on average, less than public schools and yet have better results…”

I’m a teacher and I must say that the reason private schools have better results has nothing to do with them having better teachers or a better curriculum. Unlike public schools, private schools have entrance exams and in short, get to select/choose their pupils by their own standards. In public schools, we cannot choose our students.