Who should be paid more money?

[Darren]

catchacab wrote:

We would in a heartbeat spend $42K on a car. Isn't our children's education worth that if not more?

Sure, my son's teacher is great! Maybe she deserves $50k....60k? How much more are we talking about? Should she get $5M a year like a pro athlete? No way!

It's false logic. My son's education is worth infinity, that doesn't mean someone deserves that to do the job.

We live in a free market and salaries are based on supply and demand. Is it unfair that Bambi (for example, no one I actually know) the stripper makes more money than my son's teacher? Yeah of course -- what are we going to do? Throw morality and values into a system driven by supply and demand? Lets just let the communists take over and tell everyone their salary and what they can earn.

Or lets make it a new 3 dimensional supply/demand/value curve and rewrite economics.

[AMoore]

Wellardmac wrote:

I disagree that teachers should get paid more. I know that starting salaries are low, but that's not a reflection of the pay of experienced teachers. I don't have current figures, but a couple of years ago the wife of a colleague was seeking to move from industry into teaching and her assessment was that a science teacher in this area with 10 years of experience would be earning as much as a Ph.D in industry when prorated for school vacations. Personally, I think that's already a pretty good deal already.

To be honest hearing reports like that when I know that the quality of teachers and curriculum standards are low annoys me no end. Honestly, I'd love to have my current level of salary and all of the vacation time of a teacher - that's a pretty good deal and no reason for complaint.

I was leaving the gym last week and heard two teachers whining in the parking lot about their workload for marking and I wanted to tell them to get a life and join the real world. Sorry, but I have little patience. I know of several people who have left industry after getting burned out and gone into teaching and their reports are that it's an easy life compared to the workload and stress level that we in the productive world deal with on a daily basis.

The Phd (IN INDUSTRY?) you refer to must be grossly underpaid, or fresh out of school. Moreover, when was the last time a Phd, who was not a teacher, had to perform on stage for 6-7 hours and do paperwork for another 2 hours per day?

I taught middle school for twelve years. Now I am an attorney working 10-12 hours a day defending multimillion dollar legal malpractice claims. I can go to the bathroom and get a cup of coffee whenever I like. My stress level has decreased considerably since leaving the teaching profession. Fortunately, my salary has increased.

[AMoore]

catchacab wrote:

If you want to improve education

1. Eliminate tenure

2. Pay based on performance not seniority

3. Increase educational funding

Imagine a great teacher being recruited away by another school district offering him/her more money. Or being able to fire the teacher who has been in the district for 20 years that isn't able to connect with his/her students. Now we would have the free market economy working in the educational system.

Unfortunately, it is more difficult to measure a teacher's performance since each class of students is quite different - different size classes, different educational and socio-economic backgrounds, etc.

Additionally, do you really think a school district would rather pay $90,000 for an excellent teacher than $30,000 for an average teacher? The decision makers are bean counters who try to balance a budget in order to keep the taxpayers from whining. A charter school, trying to make a profit from the 5K per child they get from the government is certainly not going to pay extra for better teachers.

[AMoore]

Wellardmac wrote:

Darren wrote:

Oh and waah waah waah teachers don't make enough money. I don't make enough money because all of the tech jobs are going to India.

I found this link that shows PA teacher salaries (wow!! why is this public???)

http://php.app.com/PAteachers0607/search.php

My son's teacher made $42k in her first year in 2006-2007. That isn't an awful starting salary, and come on, they get 1.5-2 months off in the summer.

Thanks Darren - I love the link. I don't want to hear anyone complaining that teachers don't get paid enough. I'd love that salary with their vacation time!

You are full of shi*! You are telling me that you would love to make 42K per year if you got the same days off as a teacher. Good luck supporting your family keeping your Porsche on that salary. If you really felt this way, you would become a teacher. I know for a fact that the Phila. schoold district would hire you tomorrow because they are desparate for teachers. You don't even need to have a teaching degree.

According to Darren's link, my wife, who has a Masters degree, makes 55 k per year and she has been teaching for ten years. She comes home around 6 PM every night, thoroughly exhausted. She is grossly underpaid!

[LouZ]

Wellardmac wrote:

Now, if the education system was delivering a quality product, then that might not be a bad thing - but many with children in school recognize that the quality of education for our children is shameful. I'll repeat that, shameful. Just to make myself feel better I'll say it again - SHAMEFUL.

"It takes two to tango"....Oh, I just love analogies!

Just because you are presented with the opportunity, doesn't mean that you will do something with it!

So for my analogy...just because you own a Porsche, doesn't make you a good driver. - SHAMEFUL

[AMoore]

On the salary aspect you did not comprehend my point. What I said was that my colleague was looking to leave her position as an industrial Ph.D. level scientist and take a position in one of the local school districts. Her salary at the time was around 90K. When you prorate (for vacation) what her salary would have been as a teacher, then she would not have been losing out significantly. The wife of another colleague has also recently left industry and is now in CB school district. Her salary has taken a small hit, but not a significant one.

In both cases, their number of hours worked have gone down and their stress levels have gone down. Plain, simple and real examples of Ph.D scientists leaving industry and going for (in their words) the easy life of teaching. They are now happier people now that they are teaching.

These are people that have seen both sides of the fence. You have not seen both sides of the fence (neither have I), you are not an industrial scientist. I had to laugh when you talked about the hours above... worst case of a 9 hour day... oh boy, that's a hard life. Life is hard when you have a 9 hour day.

As a scientist, you should know that it is silly to view the salary and stress levels for a teacher in Central Bucks with that of the average teacher in other parts of the state.  If you do that, you might as well compare the average PhD to a top scientist at Merck or Exxon.

And like I said, you can't compare performing on stage for 6 hours a day (to an audience that, for the most part, has no interest in seeing the show), and then taking care of two hours of desk work, to any normal workday in industry.  I routinely have 12-14 hour days in my current profession.  As someone who has been on both sides of the fence, a tough day practicing law is easier than an easy day of teaching.

By the way, I think some European labs have some openings if your not happy here.

[dmano]

Now now boys this is not why I posted. I am pissed off about our poor education system and all these useless uneducated athletes making the kind of money that a hard working person deserves to get paid for WORKING not playing a game. I have never and will never go to a sporting event like basketball, baseball, football, soccer, tennis and so on. All a waist of money and time. The people of this country need to refocus our dollars and energy to get back on the right track. If we don't then we will surly go into a depression worse than the first one.

[STEVEMCMORN]

dmano wrote:

All a waist of money and time.

......I fully agree that more money should be spent on education, particularly spelling

[AMoore]

Wellardmac wrote:

AMoore wrote:

As a scientist, you should know that it is silly to view the salary and stress levels for a teacher in Central Bucks with that of the average teacher in other parts of the state. If you do that, you might as well compare the average PhD to a top scientist at Merck or Exxon.

And like I said, you can't compare performing on stage for 6 hours a day (to an audience that, for the most part, has no interest in seeing the show), and then taking care of two hours of desk work, to any normal workday in industry. I routinely have 12-14 hour days in my current profession. As someone who has been on both sides of the fence, a tough day practicing law is easier than an easy day of teaching.

By the way, I think some European labs have some openings if your not happy here.

Weak, pretty weak. If you comment about european labs is the best you can come up with, then you have problems.

If you were up on your reading you would find that on average naturalized americans are more patriotic, know US history better, and fulfill their civic duties more diligently than the average american that was born here - you really don't want to take a petty argument in that direction because you know you will not win that - to do so is just plain desperation because you can't do better on your main argument. I am so disappointed.

The reason this country is still a leader in technology is because of foreign born scientists coming here to work and study. The US has a problem generating their technologists, so the best and the brightest come here and make this country a better place and enrich the economy. Ponder that for a while while you take comfort in isolationism.

I certainly agree that naturalized citizens tend to be very patriotic. I did not attack naturalized citizens, and had no idea that was your status. I take issue with your personal position. Accordingly, my attack was not weak since you did not even respond to the substance of my post.

[AMoore]

Wellardmac wrote:

AMoore wrote:

I certainly agree that naturalized citizens tend to be very patriotic. I did not attack naturalized citizens, and had no idea that was your status. I take issue with your personal position. Accordingly, my attack was not weak since you did not even respond to the substance of my post.

Should my citizenship status make one ounce of a difference? No, it should not, it was low for you to stoop to such a petty snipe.

As for rebutting your comments, I had previously done so and you were just reiterating your position. I'm not big on repeating myself, so I chose to let it pass.

Would that be the "petty snipe" that I did not make regarding your citizenship status, of which I was not aware?