By trying to turn teachers into victims Teacher Unions have given the teaching profession a bum rap. No one who talks about how the teacher salary ceiling is around $50,000 and averages $41,000 mentions that many teachers become higher paid administrators. Thus many "teachers" are earning over $70,000 a year. I don't know of any other profession that averages the salaries of only its lower ranked professionals, except when done by a union stunt to claim poverty.

Many partners in laws firms practice little law (being rainmakers) but you'd better believe their salaries are averaged in with those of their new associates who are paid much less. This is true somewhat of all professions. The real average salary of "teachers" is probably close to or over $50,000 a year.

Also, despite what some classroom teachers claim, they have don’t put in the same hours of work of other professionals. They work about 50% of the days in each year, compared to over 80% by other professionals, leave work in the middle of the afternoon, and have a wonderful working environment. If teachers had to spend a year in sales, working in an office or on a production line, they would appreciate that their work is truly fun, rewarding and wonderful.

In fact there is little evidence that real teachers base their decision to continue in their profession or to quit based on compensation. In 1999 a TPPF survey found that teachers are most troubled by (a) student behavior [40 percent], poor treatment by administrators [32 percent], and compensation [14 percent].

Sadly, media coverage of education stresses the importance of teacher salaries as a major element of needed reform and all but ignores the much greater problems of school discipline and administrative harassment.

ARTICLE ARCHIVE
PREVIOUS ISSUES
HOME