Maybe this is naive, but aren’t teachers working on a 9-month work year? After time off around Christmas and spring break, etc. they compare the pay to nurses and 73k/yr. if you take 75% of that you are at around $54k, so the difference between the two isn’t as large as it looks at first glance.
10 months. Thing is, if you're earning $54K, it still spends like $54K ... not a comparably larger number.
@MrsPete: can you talk to us more about why teachers are leaving? What has changed so dramatically from the 90s?
Money is definitely one of the reasons -- a big reason. I have the impression (but no facts to prove) that my state is one of the worst. We were under a pay-freeze for 6-7 years, and we still are "behind", whereas other state employees have been "made whole". The state legislature is telling the public that they're giving teachers big raises, but the truth is that they keep raising starting teacher pay, and they're doing nothing for those of us at the top of the pay scale. Until two years ago -- because of cancellation of bonuses and increase in benefit costs -- I was actually making fewer dollars than I was 10-12 years ago.
Benefits are another reason. When I started teaching in the 90s, "the deal" was that teachers would never get a big paycheck, but we could count on good benefits and a pension. Well, the benefits have been cut and cut and cut -- and what we pay for them has gone up and up and up. That "deal" is gone, yet politicians still "sell it" to the public: Teachers are whining! Look at their benefits!
Reasons exist beyond compensation ...
Behavior and grades in schools are insane. I mean, we all hear about school shootings, but things are going downhill in other ways too. I've been punched -- and after a ten-day suspension, the student was sent
right back to my classroom. Disrespect for teachers is rampant; I mean, kids'll simply refuse to complete assignments ... walk out of class without permission ... and the things they say: Get away from me ... stop talking ... you ain't my mama ... you want me to ___? Nope, you're not getting what you want ... ##%#$%#$. Ask a student to put away his phone, and the answer'll be, "Bitch, this is my mama! I'll put the phone away when I'm good and fucking ready." Ask a student to put away the breakfast biscuit he's eating, and he'll say, "No. I'm hungry. Fuck off." Write him up, send that file to the office -- the kid gets a 10 minute conference with an administrator. Kids destroy things in the classroom, and I am held responsible for it; for example, I turned around one day recently and saw that a kid had pulled out a drawer
and was sitting it -- yeah, as if it were a chair. Grades are
not a motivator because essentially every student is promoted to the next grade, even if he or she has missed 40+ days of school /has an average of 40-something. We have actually "dropped" passing from 70 to 60 ... we are required to allow "test corrections" ... we are not allowed to give zeros.
Essentially we have NO authority any more. In an average week, I have 2-4 BAD interactions with students.
Note that MOST of our students do not behave like this. MOST of our students are nice kids -- but lazy. About 50% of our students come from "the projects" and are on free lunch. Those things are often correlated with such behaviors. I am in a school that's in decline, and it gets worse every year. Most of the schools surrounding us are not as severe.
Meetings, Professional Development workshops, and various other duties (for example, lunch duty and afternoon parking lot duty) take up much of our time. I'm putting in MANY, MANY, MANY more hours than I did when I started teaching, and it's not anything that helps in my classroom. I keep thinking, I've been in this job for years, and if I can't keep up comfortably, what are the new teachers doing?
Classroom sizes continue to increase. When I started teaching, my classes were 20-25ish ... now my smallest class is 31. Doesn't sound like a big deal? Extra desks mean students are crammed together -- more talking, more cheating, more hiding phones and food, less space for bookbags. Extra students mean more special needs, more grading.
About 15 years ago a study showed that for every five new teachers, three would leave within the first five years. The number is higher now, though it seems that the new teachers are dropping during student teaching ... they aren't making it to actual classrooms of their own. The university near us is requiring more observation hours early in the educational program, and that's a good thing -- for the people not cut out for teaching, it's good to find that out sooner rather than later. Some are going to other educational options, but more seem to be leaving the profession altogether.
It's just a mess.
Teaching is a pretty relaxed job. Grading isn’t complex in most cases. In most curricula, lesson plans require minor tweaking from year to year. You have lots of days off, summers off, and when they aren’t off, they have fairly normal hours for jobs that require a degree.
Teaching has its benefits: yes, predictable hours, holidays off -- and snow days! Teachers don't need summer care for their kids. I'm not
at all unappreciative of these perks.
But you're wrong about it being a relaxed job. You're wrong about grading; kids (and parents) frequently demand an explanation about why this paper is a B instead of an A. You're wrong about lesson plans too; the state frequently changes curriculum expectations /requirements -- and, even if they didn't, students are different from year to year.
If teachers have it hard, every profession also has it hard in its own way ... If there is a teacher shortage, salaries will absolutely have to go up to attract new ones. I guess the market will eventually tell us if they are under-compensated or not.
Oh, I totally agree that every profession has its pros and cons.
We are in the first stages of a BIG teacher shortage here. We don't have subs anymore -- all the teachers who want to work full time ARE working full time. What do we do when someone's out? Other teachers tag-team it to cover their classes ... as a result, we all try really, really hard NOT to be out because we know it punishes our co-workers. On the other hand, if you look at the Northeastern US, where wages are pretty high, they have loads of applicants for every job. Two differences exist between us: The Northeast has teacher unions -- most states don't. The Northeast has high salaries -- most states don't.