Quote:
Originally Posted by FatherSioux
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Start at 100k? No.
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In my area starting salary for a teacher with masters is just short of 90k (not including benefits package)...this is also the largest school district in the USA (New York City). If you include benefits the starting salary easily surpasses 100k...not considering that you have three months each year to pursue other income, if you desire (summers off).
The myth that teachers are poor is a lie...underpaid? maybe. But not poor by any objective standard of poverty.
The real cause of the unfair pay is, ironically, the marriage of teachers' unions to equal pay (on a schedule based on degree and experience --- and not outcomes). When everyone earns the exact same amount no matter how hard or how successful they are you breed apathy, inefficiency and incompetence (especially when teachers also, thanks to unions, have a property right to their job making it almost economically impossible to fire a teacher for poor performance).
I do believe that many
real teachers suffer from being paid less than the market value of their work --- based on comparable professions with similar levels of required education and ability. The reasons for this aren't that teachers are unimportant or that society doesn't value them. Every place I've ever worked has always treated teachers with professional and social respect for the job they do with our children...the cause of it lies elsewhere, in my opinion.
If teachers ever want to tap into the power of the free market to produce better education and higher pay (for successful teachers only) they need decouple the profession from one of the most powerful unions in our country. At the very least, the unions would need to understand that many of their long advocated demands are no longer as relevant in 2020 as they were 60 years ago. This change is slow, and made virtually no progress in the last 10 years.