Public School Teachers Aren't Underpaid (WSJ)

[RogerR]

Originally Posted by Basel A

My primary dissent to the article's argument is that while public school teachers appear to be overpaid (compared to similarly educated private-sector jobs), this straightforward comparison ignores the idea that public school teaching or even teaching in general should be incentivised to attract better-qualified candidates.

If nothing else, I mainly get the idea that public school teachers should be better educated, even if it's suggested that they should receive lower wages.

Both of the above stem from my view that education is a priority. I would find it hardly believable that anyone who sees FIRST's mission as important would disagree.

P.S. I love the hocus-pocus reasoning. "If we compare teachers and non-teachers with similar AFQT scores, the teacher salary penalty disappears." First, I'd like to get a source for that data. Second, who said the AFQT is a good measure of education and why? Who said it should be used to determine salary and why?

This

While the article begins with admission that teachers make 20% less than similarly educated peers, it goes on to argue that this is apparently deserved because teachers are dumber than everybody else.

If we start with the assumption that teaching is a profession worthy only of the mediocre, and pay as much, what sort of candidates will you attract? A better comparison might be between teacher pay of the countries ahead of us in education...


I'm in the same situation as sandrag; I have a BS in engineering, and am getting my Masters in Ed. Including salary and benefits, even with my masters, I will never make more in education than I did in engineering. On top of this, I have weeks (months?) of unpaid overtime, that is never acknowledged. I also spend significant amounts of my own money to supply my classroom, as the classroom budget is meager enough to begin with. Finally, as sandrag mentioned, there is little in the way of support for earning masters; while a private company may pay for you to further your education, no such opportunity exists (that I know of) in education.

Pay aside, teaching is a much more difficult job than engineering (to me at least). I don't know any teachers who came into the field looking for easy money. We do what we do for the students, and often in spite of the long hours, frequent political scapegoating, and overwhelming level of paperwork. We don't do our jobs because of our mediocre pay. We do our jobs in spite of it.