The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries
We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates.
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http://www.nytimes.com
But Don't Teachers Get the Summer Off?
Yes. But consider this scenario:
A public school teacher gets paid by the contract day, which technically begins at 8 am when students arrive and ends at 3 pm when students leave. That equates to 35 hours a week. In order to grade papers, plan lessons, and collaborate with colleagues (all things good teachers do!), that same teacher ends up working closer to 50 hours a week.
Let's now consider the average, 36 week school year. Over that time, a teacher would have racked up a total of 1800 hours worked. That averages out to about a 35 hour work week, all year long.
Yes, teachers get the summer off, but I promise you, they have put in the extra time throughout the school year.
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I could not agree more,but the Governor here in Ohio does not agree with me.
Unfortunately, there is a reason that many politicians, especially state politicians, don't support education. Most initiatives to support public education involve, you guessed it, tax increases. It is a public program that relies of public funding. Teachers won't get paid more until the general public thinks they deserve to get paid more.
The state politicians here have cut funding and the only way the schools can get anymore money is by local levies.There have been many in the last 4-6 years. The lawmakers in this state are now talking about increasing the amount of spending a little and making sure we all know this. No mention of the cuts though they previously made.
What if, instead of going to the police force, civil forfeitures went to the public education system? Crazy thought, but it would decrease the occurrence of it happening due to the being no direct reward for police to do it. The secondary plus is that the education system would get a slight padding to the meager funding they get in general. Sorry for the random crazy idea.
I posted this story today about the retirement numbers of Ohio teachers
Wow. It's really a shame that we aren't able to keep experienced and knowledgable teachers for as long as possible. That experience is invaluable. It's even more of a shame that they're leaving because of testing (which doesn't measure what it says it measures) and decreased benefits.