teachers, should they have higher pay? Options

[rnrn897]

well theres so many.. itd make economy go bad..

[sadolakced acid]

yes, for if there are not teachers, who will teach the presidents, the Picassos, the Sulks? where will the geniuses of tommorrow learn?

we need good teachers. we need to pay them more, to ensure only the best are teaching.

[islandkiss]

I'll have to agree with you on this one.

QUOTE- rnrn897 " there's too many.. it'll make the economy go bad"

that's a bit over exaggerated. even if it did happen, so what? they helped the society..

[kantoaznboi]

well theres so many.. itd make economy go bad..

exactly how would it make the economy go down? cause i do not understand ur thinking

[JlIaTMK]

u no wat.... i agree with u.... they r underpaid.... but it would make the economy go down in the sense that extra money is being used to be given to them

[redsoxbaby87]

i will just say that teachers arent poor. okay, they arent usually living in mcmansions but still. they own homes or very nice apartments and they dont go without food. i think that people over exagerate the fact that they are so called underpaid when they are really getting a fair salary.

[SasukeNaru]

not neccesarily, teachers sometimes get decent pay more than u know.. But mostly yea u correct.. with the whole enron thingy.. its not lookin to good for my school.. since they invested highly in it.. >.< o well

[toria66622]

yea I think they should get paid more cause kids these dayz are horrible

[WHOngos144]

nah, they get paid a fair wage and they have good hours like 8-2 5 days a week

[piney]

teaching must be a hard job. theres always students who dont like you, dont listen, dont pay attention, theres so much grading to do, and you have to plan all those lessons, so yeah, i think they should get higher pay.

[*mipadi*]

nah, they get paid a fair wage and they have good hours like 8-2 5 days a week

Teachers work far more than just school hours. They come in 1-2 hours early, and often stay many hours into the evening. Some even do work until 8 or 9 at night. Their day doesn't end when the final bell rings, nor does it begin when the starting bell rings.

[KissMe2408]

Teachers get paid a decent amount. My best friend's mom is a kindergarden teacher and still manages to be a single mom owning a house and supporting two crazy teenagers.
However, Teaching is hard. You get paid when you are at the school during classroom hours, but they aren't paid for the times they stay late or come in early, they aren't paid for the hours and hours of grading they have to do at home, or the time they spend on the computer answering their students emails about a certain assignement. They have to plan their lessons and re-plan their lessons because something went wrong. With all this said, I think teachers should get payed a higher salary, they certainly deserve it.

[The_AZN_Godfathe...]

I do think teachers are underpaid.
In fact, I think many jobs are underpaid.
I also think a lot of jobs are overpaid.

I think the salery of jobs needs to be reorganized.

...But I don't think this place would be exactly the place to talk about it.

Anywayz:

Yeah, I think teachers are underpaid. Think about what they do for you. They have to memorize everyones name, and be responsible for them, at a certain extent.
And obviously they educate you. Educate you for your dream job, or whatever job, which may even pay better than they're job.

And if the teacher sucks? Then you are probably a pain to the teacher. Just another thing teachers have to go through. Heck, the teachers that "suck" might even deserve get paid more, having to put up with misbehaving kids. (or... maybe not... if they're not good at educating you, and making you learn.)

If paying the teachers more would lower the economy... then that goes back to my point of some jobs being overpaid, and maybe lowering the salary of some jobs.

Voila, my opinion.

[sharpandcuddly]

Teachers should be paid more. Without the, there would be no doctors, lawyers, politicians, surgeons, priests..
I mean, they are the basis of every other career, almost.

[innovation]

Ha, yes, teachers should definitely get higher pay. There's been a sort of American mindset that places teaching as "a last resort," which creates poorer schools. I also believe that teachers should be offered stipends to actively sponsor teams, such as high school debate teams and academic teams, since my sponsors often sit in the back grading papers while we practice on our own.

[jEllyBeaNs]

well i say it really depends, because some of the teachers i have they do not help any of the students that do not understand what is being taught. they are too busy trying to go through their lesson soo quickly. to me it seems like now a days teachers dont really care about a child's grade, they just teach. i think that teachers should be paid based on how students are doing academically in the class.

but the only bad side to that is that kids could fail on purpose so that it would affect the teachers pay. and i think that teachers should get a higher pay because some of them really work their butts off trying to help students even tho they aren't gettin paid a good price and two, well im think about being a teacher, so i would really like to see teachers ger paid a lil bit more lol :-D

[Chii]

i thought about this awile ago. i think it should be based on a rating system. like the students rate the teacher and their pay depends on the rating. sure some students will probably rate low because they failed but if the teacher truly is good, high ratings could cancel the low ratings out. it's not really fool proof but it seems like a good idea...

some teachers just teach because that's what they're stuck with it or something. some barely teach and just give us the answers so their day goes by faster.

one of my teachers basically has no life. all she does is think about what to do to us and stress us out. she yelled at us for stupid sh*t and for our final, we had to write 3 actual essays, 2 outlines, answer short answer questions, and answer multiple choice questions. and by the way, this is one period and she's an art teacher!

[emazing]

I DO think some teachers deserve a higher salary, especially if the teacher is a good one who puts a lot of time and effort into what they do. The least they could get is a higher pay, you know? It honestly depends on the quality of the teacher before they get the higher paycheck. It's definitely not fair if the teachers work hard & there's barely anything left for them at the end.

[omgah_itsmaggiex]

yes..isnt it teachers who teach us EVERYTHING?

[ComradeRed]

Teachers are probably underpaid.

This is because the government acts as a monopoly hirer (not really, but close enough since there aren't that many private schools). In a market with a monopoly employer the wages of employees will be lower than where they should be. They did a study about this with nurses--nurses in cities with only one major hospital only made 50-70% of what nurses in cities with ten major hospitals made and it makes sense in theory because a monopoly seller results in higher prices, so a monopoly buyer ought to result in lower prices (the "price" of labor is the wage rate).

The teachers have a union in the form of the AFT, and in many cases, a strong enough union is enough to increase the wage in a monopoly to where it should be, but the AFT is weak due to their lack of striking power, the ease with which substitutes can be brought in, and the fact that the government, unlike a monopoly business, is always on a stronger field than a union because the government gets its revenue no matter what, whereas the manager of a monopoly firm might have to negotiate to protect some of his own profits.

http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos069.htm

"The estimated average salary of all public elementary and secondary school teachers in the 2003–04 school year was $46,597. Private school teachers generally earn less than public school teachers, but may be given other benefits, such as free or subsidized housing."

The net pay (including benefits) of teachers at private schools (excluding Catholic schools, where religion and not wages are the main influence) is probably about the same as teachers at public schools--that's because the government puts downward pressure on wages... if private school wages were a lot higher than public school wages, too many qualified teachers would want to teach at private schools, thus allowing the private schools to lower their wages in turn.

Teachers should be paid what they would be paid if the US had no public schools and all independent private schools which set prices and wages independent of each other. That would result in the optimal number and quality of teachers. Sadly, our current near-monopoly system doesn't offer that.

[abstracted]

I think teachers should be paid more.

I kept reading this question: what about the bad teachers?
Well, come on. You get people in every profession who are horrible. Just today I had to deal with a orthodontist who screwed up several of her patients' crowns (including mine). You can't avoid this. It sucks, but there'll be bad teachers, and I had/have my fair share of them.

There's the simple argument: without teachers, there's no one to build a better labor force.

My mom is a teacher. Her working hours go beyond the literal 8 to 4 each day. There's grading, school meetings, and planning--LOTS of planning. And stress. Plus, it's practically a high school drama among her coworkers at her elementary school. There's one teacher who randomly yelled at my mom for ten minutes, putting her to tears, about something she had nothing to do with. You get the bad bosses too. Or, worse, your team leader requires you to put in extra hours that you don't need, spend some of your salary on silly little gifts that cost more than they should for all teachers of one grade who don't give a damn about you, or make up OCD systems...anything.
My point--teaching is NOT an easy job. Yet, they get paid comparatively little.

About the athletes and singers...I agree that they get paid more than they should. Yes, they worked very hard to get to their level of skill, but they're job is to entertain! Without them, society would still function, even if it ends up being boring. They play games, they sing, they dance, whatever--isn't that what you do for fun? Because they're especially good at it, they get paid a lot. They use that money to look the way they want, buy the clothes they want, etc., so that more people like them. Then, when they're rich, they have the excess money to give to charities and such, and then the media goes on to say how they're wonderful people who helped so much.
Um, not to say that they aren't wonderful or that they don't deserve the fame, but they had the money to do it. I bet it didn't pinch their pockets. I give, but it costs me more to give the same amount of money or time than it costs that rich singer.

Teachers do wonderful deeds of giving as well, but just because it doesn't involve donating half a million to some major fundraiser, they don't get the appreciation. They teach us. They could suck like those teachers who are horrible, and they could just put on educational videos and hand out busywork. But for those teachers who really do teach--and I've had my fair share of brilliant teachers--they deserve more. But they don't get it.

[acid_high]

Teachers put up with shit form badass kids and low pay the should get more than just a raise. They should get thanks foor trying to save me and teach me things that'll need in the real world that's what they need

[The_AZN_Godfathe...]

Raising the salary of every teacher would lower the economy huh...

I keep finding people saying that, and I have few comments on that.

Teachers educate people. Educated people make money. If more people were educated, perhaps there would be more money... or something like that. Either way, the more people educated, the better.

In a sense, the world has plenty of money... it's just not distributed very well.

[vash1530]

teachers need to suck it up. they make a good amount of money and they know it.they decided to go into that profession knowing the salaries that they would be earning.

[ComradeRed]

Well the point is, if teacher's salaries went up, there would be MORE teachers and as it is right now the economy has a shortage of teachers thanks to the government's virtual monopoly on education.