[quote]Originally posted by dar512

Pay for school teachers, especially grade school level, is abysmal. In any other profession, a college graduate working 50-60 hour weeks would be paid much more.


Not likely. (BTW, Even if they do work 50-60 hour a weeks, it's only for 3/4 year). You want low pay for high education, try masters-level therapist.


There are two problems. One is that most of the money for K-12 schools comes from the local level. Many (most?) people see school taxes as the only ones they have direct control over. If they vote down the school tax, that's at least one tax they can make sure doesn't go up.


School taxes are sky high and they keep raising them. The teachers in Perk Valley are like the second-highest paid in the state (after Council Rock, which went on strike for even MORE pay despite that). Pay isn't the problem. The problem is a system which fails to reward good performance and fails to discourage poor performance.

      I dunno, Russ. I'd say pay is certainly part of the problem in that nobody is going to go into the field if money is important to them. This in turn gives you a much smaller pool of people to draw from. Keeping this in mind how do you get rid of the incompetent teachers when you can't fill their job position?
      This is a nation wide condition. There is some variation due to specific location, but it's pretty well recognized as being a general problem.
      More importantly, that's got to be a tough job. You vs. 20+ kids? Screw that. Even more so when those "kids" are nearly full grown and have a history of violent behavior. Teacher don't get enough respect for the work they do.

RADAR has the answer to low paid teachers.....i dare you to ask him

      I've gone round with Radar before. He suggests he'd kill me. Definatley showed interest in beating me up. It was cute.
      Actually, I'd like to see more of the results of privatized schooling. Be curious to see how it turns out.

As a person who went to private school, I'm always interested in why people think privatizing schools would work. There are several reasons why they do:

They have a MUCH lower teacher to student ratio. there were never more than 15 kids to a teacher, and that was a LARGE class.

The parents and school 'community' are MUCH more involved. There are families that are literally on their fourth generation of students. Old students come back and teach, even if only for a couple of years. Kids go to football games and pep rallies.

The school has the option of making the child leave if they don't perform. Most of the kids that I went to school with were there because they wanted to be there. Yeah they bitched about it, but we all took entrance exams and all made the choice to continue going there because we liked going to school there.

So what we have is a multple-fold problem: underpaid, overworked teachers that can only care for so long until they are literally drowned by the horrible conditions created by socio-economics; kids that don't want to be in school because they can't see any reason that it is going to help them out; parents who don't have time to worry about what their kids are doing (or not doing) at school because they have to work three jobs to keep a roof over them and food on the table.
To fix the schools, you have to fix all of these problems and more. If we look back at the fifties (The Wonder Years, if you will), a huge percentage of the population was actively involved in making sure their kids had a better life than they did and had the resources (money AND time) to do it.
/rant

With the exception of Kindergarten, most public school classes average closer to 30 kids. It should be 15.

Hey! welcome back headsplicer!

headsplice: Are we talking private schools, or privatized schools? There's a big difference.

Also when you say, "a huge percentage of the population was actively involved in making sure their kids had a better life than they did," your meaning is that this is not true today... are you suggesting there's some kind of generational difference between the adults of today and those in the 50s?

You didn't read my earlier post. These days it's more like 10 & 1/2 months.

Starting salary for Masters level for public grade school teachers in the area are in the low 30's. And that's in an affluent suburb of Chicago.

For Catholic schools it's the mid 20s.

Ok, now you share.

I know two masters level grade school teachers around here that are making over $65k.

How many years experience? oh and where's here?

Teachers in the City of Philadelphia start off in the low $30s, IIRC.

30 years in Delaware County. If you note my previous post, I said the teachers I know were older and probably make more money. Then again, teachers should be passing on more than they learned in college, so they may be worth more.:)

That would be Delaware County, PA, part of the Philadelphia metro area.

(Damn Bruce...like the man is supposed to know where the fuck Delaware County is. :) )

Thanks Syc.

Sure they're worth more, if they're still learning new teaching skills and making kids excited about learning.

Let's assume they're good at what they do. What would a person with a Masters in business make after 30 years experience? I bet it's a lot more than 65k.

my friend's wife teaches 2nd grade in the west chester, pa( westtown schools?) area and makes 50K....i think she's been there about 3 yrs....she just got her masters, btw.