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The myth of the teacher pay gap?

nationalaffairs.com

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Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#121

Post by jschwartzi »

jedberg wrote: post #25

You'll notice a lot of people commenting here "my wife is a teacher" (myself included). I think these statistics are missing two very big factors. - In high cost areas like the Silicon Valley, almost every teacher is married to an engineer or is the child of an engineer. That is why they don't need a second job. Because they have a support network. - Teacher quits are low because most of the people who would be great…

> - In high cost areas like the Silicon Valley, almost every teacher is married to an engineer or is the child of an engineer. That is why they don't need a second job. Because they have a support network.

This reminds me of a girl in one of my teacher education classes(I have a certification that I've never used because software engineering pays way better and was easier to break into back in '09). We were talking about teacher pay and she mentioned that since she was going to have her husband support her she didn't see any reason to campaign for a higher salary, which was pretty inflammatory for just about the entire rest of the class.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#122

Post by femto113 »

mehhh wrote: post #105
filmgirlcw wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would note that at least based on the educators I know, private schools often tend to pay LESS than public. Obviously, this may be dependent on area, but in Georgia at least, teachers at private schools typically make less once you factor in things like 401k, retirement, and health insurance. A lot less. This is an anecdote but my cousin's wife quit her job at a public high school to work at a private school, alleg…

Private schools are a 10k to 15k pay haircut in Seattle, most require a morality clause that makes being LGBTQ+ a firable offence, and the vaccination rates are appallingly low compared to public schools. Seattle's Catholic Schools are single handedly bringing back Measles & Rubella as a latent disease, where it used to not exist. With Running Start being an option for the last 2 years of High School (if your in publ…

Seattle has hundreds of private schools, I doubt more than a handful have anything like the morality clause you cite, and most that I am aware of are explicit about their support of LGBTQ+. Do you have some source for your claim?

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#123

Post by mcguire »

tptacek wrote: post #75
julianapostate wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does she work summers too? winter break, spring break?

Does that matter? If we're talking in terms of annual salary, the fact that they "don't get paid" over the summer is irrelevant; it's just the same amount of money distributed on a weird schedule, isn't it? All things being equal, you'd rather have the $60k job that had "an unpaid summer off" than the $60k job where you got paid all summer, right?

At least the graph in the article is "adjusted" for the 10-month work year. Typically in such discussions, that would mean they multiplied teacher salaries by 12/10 to make them "comparable" to other professions.

Your $60k job is actually a $50k job with an unpaid summer off.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#124

Post by joe_the_user »

reaperducer wrote: post #104
joe_the_user wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose then people elsewhere are expected not to care what teachers at your local school make then? Isn't politics about seeing a larger picture?

Isn't politics about seeing a larger picture? No. In fact, there's a saying in politics: "All politics is local."

There may be the saying "all politics is local politics" but this is hardly a proof of the situation. If anything, the worst politics happens through a purely local lens - for example, the refusal of silicon valley cities build housing for workers in the companies around them based on "local concerns".

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#126

Post by droithomme »

marricks wrote: post #7

I’m not so sure, my mom has been a teacher for 6 years and makes around 40k. Similar story for her peers. And even a 20% raise wouldn’t allow her to afford a home, or to send her kids to college without a huge debt burden... To be honest, I don’t even really care if that ends up being “in line with industry” some how, that’s still way too damn low. At that point everyone should be paid more. EDIT: realize I mistyped…

> And even a 20% raise wouldn’t allow her to afford a home, or to send her kids to college without a huge debt burden.

For many state college systems in the US $40k and below is the magic cut off for family income where any kid accepted not only gets 100% of all tuition and fees paid for, but all room and boarding is paid for as well. So in your mom's case her cost of sending kids to college would be nothing. From $40k to $50k it doesn't cover room and board though, so families in that range will expect to pay $12,000 a year or so for that, minus the $6000 Pell Grant they'll get for being under $50k.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#127

Post by mcguire »

thrower123 wrote: post #96

The biggest thing with teacher salaries that people usually forget is that you have to multiply by 1.2 to 1.25 to get the equivalent for a 9-5 job that works year round, if you want to compare apples to pomegranates. My mother as a school teacher worked 190 days a year. I work 245 days a year. Granted, you're going to struggle to pull in the same kind of hourly rate during the summers working a seasonal job, unless i…

Unfortunately, those who you are buying things from rarely multiply their prices by 0.83 because you are a teacher. And you are indeed going to struggle to pull in the same kind of hourly rate for two months during the summer and one during the winter.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#128

Post by refurb »

floren wrote: post #77
jefft255 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's terrible, in Quebec median salary is 60K CAD, topping out at 80K at most schools ( https://neuvoo.ca/salaire/?job=Enseignant%20Primaire ), which is plenty to afford a house (of course not if monoparental). I don't even think that a lot considering the responsibilities they have.

60K CAD is 45K USD, so it's pretty damn close to the OP's cited figure.

Yeah, but everything you buy in Canada is in CAD, not USD, so they are in fact, better off.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#129

Post by malandrew »

jefft255 wrote: post #22
marricks wrote: post #7

I’m not so sure, my mom has been a teacher for 6 years and makes around 40k. Similar story for her peers. And even a 20% raise wouldn’t allow her to afford a home, or to send her kids to college without a huge debt burden... To be honest, I don’t even really care if that ends up being “in line with industry” some how, that’s still way too damn low. At that point everyone should be paid more. EDIT: realize I mistyped…

That's terrible, in Quebec median salary is 60K CAD, topping out at 80K at most schools ( https://neuvoo.ca/salaire/?job=Enseignant%20Primaire ), which is plenty to afford a house (of course not if monoparental). I don't even think that a lot considering the responsibilities they have.

Due to the two-income trap, it's hard for a single parent household to afford to buy a home in any housing supply constrained market.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#130

Post by tapland »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #114

> (2) Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by a "year-round, full-time" hours figure of 2,080 hours; for those occupations where there is not an hourly wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey data. See, this is where things go wrong. So they've got mean wage figures which are constructed both on a fact (hourly wage) and an assumption (work…

I used to work in fast food. I would gladly get paid less per hour for my current software development job than I was back then (as long as it was above making rent). It was a much more draining job and it's effects consumed every waking minute during work days and spending off-days just recovering.

That kind of job should have risk bonuses. Significant ones. Most people just can't do that and pursue anything else. Getting stuck is a real fear.

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