We got an email from the Washington Policy Center about a new study on the Seattle School District a while back, our minds were boggled, then we all forgot about it.
The boggling part:
• Teachers in Seattle receive an average of $70,850 for a ten-month year, plus $9,855 in benefits. Teachers can earn up to $88,463, or $98,318 including benefits.
• The ten-month work year includes nine paid holidays, and a total of four paid weeks off (not counting summers). District employees receive ten days of paid sick leave and two days of personal leave.
The point of the study did not seem to be who the hell knew teachers made that much money, but this:
• Seniority rules govern most displacements and lay-offs. Younger teachers are let go first.
• Teacher evaluations do not include measures of student progress. District employees can remove a poor annual performance report from their file after four years.
The WPC recommended that the Seattle Public Schools dump seniority as the means of determining layoffs, allow performance pay, etc. Liv Finne, who authored the study, says, “The poor academic showing in Seattle public schools makes it clear that it’s time to look at workplace reforms that reward performance and create incentives for teaching excellence.” Um, YES. Especially if they’re making $70K for nine months of work a year.
UPDATE: The WPC’s Director for Education Liv Finne confirms:
In response to your question about average teacher pay in Seattle being $70,850, this is a true fact. You can verify this fact with Joy Stevens, Sr. Legal Assistant/Public Records Officer at the Seattle School District…
Median pay for Seattle teachers is around $62,000. The average is skewed upwards to $70,850 because such a large percentage of teachers (I don’t have the exact proportion) are older teachers earning well over $80,000, up to the maximum of $88,463.
To respond to some of the comments, everyone in the office was surprised at this average (and the median is higher than you’d think, too), but! Obviously! Good, experienced teachers who work their asses off should be well compensated. That being the case, the school district should be attracting good people—and holding them to high standards. And not having to keep the creaky ones around if they’re no good.
We here at The Stranger are way more church-mousey than teachers, come to find out. Then again, you know what they say: Those who can, teach; those who can’t, make a damn newspaper every week.
Would performance pay actually make them perform better? Doubtful. The studies show that paying for performance doesn’t work in jobs that take mental skill.
Measuring performance by standardized tests is beyond stupid and has conclusively made generations of students dumber. Teachers are forced to only teach the test, and woefully unprepared young people are bitch-slapped upon reaching University.
Furthermore, if you think teachers only work 9 months a year, you sir are fucking stupid.
Compared to what, Bethany? Seems about in line with what you’d expect.
I come from several generations of teachers, and yes, they only work 9 months a year. Why would you think otherwise?
Really? You’re going after teachers?
A correction: *Newer* teachers, not younger teachers, are let go first.
Really? You’re going after teachers? This is the battle you’ve chosen?
A correction: *Newer* teachers, not younger teachers, are let go first.
But, during that 9 – 10 months, how much extra work do they put in outside the classroom? Things like coaching sports programs, supervising extra-curricular activities, attending parent-teacher conferences, grading assignments, creating lesson plans & prepping for daily classes, etc., etc. – almost none of which can be done during the time constraints of the normal school day?
Plus, teachers are expected to maintain certification in their specialty subjects – at their own expense, mind you – which of course is generally done during the summer, when they aren’t doing all those other things listed above.
So, yeah. What @2 said.
I agree with a lot of this, and can sympathize with the frustrations a faculty can feel over long-time, poorly performing teachers. But remember, much of that $70k/10 month year is 12+ hour work days, sometimes 6 days a week, depending on the teacher and subject. Hourly, most teachers, especially beginning teachers, aren’t pulling much in.
They need to raise the starting salary, and like most any workplace, seniority should not rule.
You can always tell who has taught and who hasn’t.
If you think it’s all that easy and that teachers have tons of time off etc etc, then why aren’t you doing it???
It’s a good job with lots of perks, but it is rarely what the non-teaching population thinks it is.
i have an actual question that i don’t know the answer to. for teachers in maths and sciences and languages and history and pretty much everything that isn’t current or changed every year, do they update their lesson plan every year? i would think that they figure out what works and just do the same thing over and over. is that incorrect?
Concur with @2 and @7. And it’s hard, hard work.
@1 – performance pay may or may not cause teachers to perform better (there are studies that profile situations where it has, and situations where it hasn’t). But, it sure would be more fair, at least in my opinion (if it was designed well, of course). My mom taught across the hall from a teacher who probably hadn’t written a new lesson plan in 20 years and showed videos 3 days out of 5. Is it fair that my mother (an excellent, committed teacher) made the same as him? My aunt was a national teacher of the year in her subject area. Is it fair that she makes the same as someone who has been just an okay teacher for the same number of years? Would you be irritated if you did the same job as someone else — and you knew you were an excellent performer and the other person just phoned it in, and yet you made the exact same amount?
I also think it would be a better use of our resources. Most studies show that experience (beyond the first 5 years or so) does not make a teacher better, and neither does academic degree (unless it’s matched to the subject taught). And yet, that is exact how we pay teachers today, based solely on those two factors.
Anyways, it’s not easy to design a different system (and I wouldn’t be in favor of something based solely on test scores… and if test scores are used it should be based on student growth throughout the year, not proficiency)… but, it definitely can be done.
Teachers should be paid top dollar. We should not bitch about this. They are doing the hard task of educatingh our children, and therefore they should make a competitive wage.
The fact that you would go against them for working “only” 9 months a year, is ridiculous. As stated above, teachers tend to work 12+ or 16+ hour days. I agree that there should be a better system to rate them, perhaps peer-reviewed year end ratings rather than the kids taking tests? But to cry out against their salaries (oh noes, 70k a year!) is pretty BS.
@10 – If they are any good they do. Beyond the fact that textbooks and curricula change frequently – sometimes annually – a good teacher will try to bring some of what is happening in the “real world,” the world outside the doors of the school, into the classroom, even if that is just incorporating current events in to grammar exercises. Plus, every class is unique, and what one class responds to might not work at all for another one.
Not to mention that, at least on th secondary level, doing the same thing year after year encourages cheating (copied papers, copies of tests passed around, etc.).
When I was teaching, in addition to my classroom time and my extracurricular time (which was probably right around or just over the 40 hour mark every week), I probably spent about 20-30 hours outside the classroom grading papers, preparing lessons, talking with parents, etc. It’s not an easy profession.
Oh, and I was teaching at a private school and made under $20K a year, about 9 years ago. It truly wasn’t enough to live on.
I should also say that I agree with @8. Raise starting salaries. Significantly. That will, hopefully, attract more (and better) talent to the profession. And, if I had my way, have a truly significant performance review after 3-4 years (not the “almost everyone makes it” tenure-based reviews that most districts have now). If you make it past that review, get another significant increase in pay. But, after that, increases should be based on performance, not just adding another year of experience.
@7: Sorry, but that’s mostly accounted for. Teachers unions are pretty badass about getting them paid for everything they do. Coaches get extra pay for their afterschool work, and teachers are given daily prep periods during which, if they’re organized, they get most of their grading and lesson plans done. And there’s a ton of funding available from the district and foundations for continuing education and travel, so that’s rarely an out-of-pocket expense.
@8: 12-hour day? like 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.? I’ve never known a non-coaching teacher that worked those hours. And public school teachers in most other wealthy nations have more class-hours per year, which is one of many reasons why children in those nations learn more than in ours.
@9: Teachers, of course, work very hard and deserve our undying gratitude. That doesn’t mean their working arrangements are invulnerable to criticism.
If you’re curious, here’s the salary schedule for Seattle public schools.
*UP TO* $70K. I don’t know any teachers who make $70K! New teachers definitely do NOT make $70K right off the bat, which is what you’re implying. New teachers make closer to half that sum.
And, as 7, 8, and 9 said, teaching is hardly an easy, 8-hour a day, 5-day/week job. It’s more like 10-12 hours/day, 6-7 days/week, being on your feet constantly, repeating the same thing over and over, often to a bunch of kids who could care less about what you have to say, then getting yelled at by parents and/or administration if someone’s unhappy with your methods. And teachers constantly work loads of unpaid overtime, which includes creating lesson plans, grading papers, finding new materials, attending parent/teacher conferences and various after-school meetings, committee meetings, plus improving their own subject knowledge on their own time, etc, etc.
If you think teaching is an easy job with high pay, you are sorely mistaken. Why don’t you try it sometime?
@16 then you came from generations of bad teachers. Every teacher I know is up at 5 and goes to sleep at 10. They work every weekend and every summer take weeks if not months of certification, seminars, and classes, so that when they return to work they can actually get on about doing the thing they loved to do and for which they consistently receive endless amounts of shit for. And let’s not forget the fact that the current generation of Helicopter Parents can make a teacher’s life a living fucking hell. Instead of castigating the people who are stupid or naive enough to teach our dumbass kids, we should be giving them hazard pay.
Let me get this straight–public school teachers in Seattle average the same pay as garbage collectors? Outstanding!
“10-12 hours/day, 6-7 days/week”? Luxury!
“I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing ‘Hallelujah.'”
“But you try and tell the young people today that… and they won’t believe ya’.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxT…
So how much do you think teachers should get paid? Is there some magic number that’s ok? Or is it that it looks so easy from the outside, so you think they shouldn’t make more than writers for alternative papers?
It’s a hard job, and those extra hours are the ones spent at home grading papers, calling parents, devising teaching materials and so on. My family didn’t go on a trip without Mom’s bag of papers from 1968 to 2002. There was rarely a summer that Mom didn’t take some course or other on how to improve her teaching or knowledge of her materials.
And if you work for a corporation you get paid pretty much what the salary scale says you should, just like the jerk in the next cubicle down. Same on the assembly line. (if there are any of those left in America)
It’s hard to blame the teachers for only working nine months a year-that’s when the schools are open. Some teachers teach summer school, if that’s an option, others get summer jobs to keep paying the rent.
I love the way teachers get reviled for making a moderately big salary for a lot of necessary work, and ball players are treated better the more they get paid to play a game. How many games of baseball or football does a pro athlete play? Wasn’t Michael Jordan making 70 grand every minute he was on a court at the end of his career? Now that’s making way more than necessary.
my momz never worked a 12 hour day as a teacher. if you do, you’re doing it wrong.
and 70k is fine. WTF with this post.
I just wanted to clarify that most teachers work some portion of the summer as well. Preparing nine months of lesson plans cannot be done entirely during the school year. I am a college teacher and I find that folks make the same error about my job: “How great to have summers off!” they say. In fact, what’s great is having a flexible work schedule, but I (and everyone else I know) still work during the summer.
And you don’t think the $70k factors into that? I could make $70k if I worked 80 hours a week too.
My folks were always working. During the summer, my mother was often living in another city, working on her certifications at college.
We struggled, a lot, when I was a kid, on two teachers’ salaries.
As far as “performance” goes, it all depends on who you ask. If it’s based on government tests, you get kids who haven’t really learned anything. If it’s based on popularity, you sometimes get kids who learn some things, but not always. If it’s based on learning–well, nobody in the system cares about actual learning. The teachers and students are afterthoughts in a world of parents, administration and political interest groups. Teachers are not backed up. Parents often act like lousy retail customers who want precisely what the administration wants. Numbers. Nobody gives a crap if the kid learns anything, as long as kids get churned out of the Mediocrity Factory.
70K my ass.
We should find some way to reward good teachers and prevent the harm done by bad teachers.
I don’t know what that system looks like. I’m pretty sure senority rackets and weak performance tests are not a part of that system.
Good teachers deserve a living wage. 70k is not too high. 90k is not too high for great teachers who work lots of overtime.
Between Publicola pointlessly playing up Republican talking points about unions and Metro salaries, and you guys here, wtf?
When did you all go Tea Bagger?
Basically what everyone else in this thread is saying – starting teachers get paid shit and have the *highest* expectations placed upon them often without knowing what they are getting into, which is a recipe for failure. Senior teachers feel their survival inside the system means they are entitled to high salaries and large benefits (I wonder how many TERS 1 teachers are actually left on the payroll in Washington?). These are bad ways to motivate teachers and make them valued employees.
Why don’t we spend a few moments talking about the horrid parents who regard the school system (and the library and the parks department and the malls, etc, etc, etc) as free babysitting services? Why is it no one ever wants to go there?
Is this total compensation, or take home pay?
Cause last time I checked, teachers had to pay into health care for themselves and dependents, dental coverage, retirement accounts, and they sure as heck don’t end up with paychecks that are $70k after that – more like $45k.
@30: oh, mrs. solomon and i go there all the time. you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. babies makin babies makin babies makes fucking dumb students with no hope of help at home.
Teaching is a tough, stressful, and often thankless job and teachers should be paid more, not less. It’s not merely repeating the same thing day after day, year after year. No two students are alike, no two classes are alike, teachers need to be quick and able to think fast and handle difficult and unpredictable situations. They need to be able to consistently motivate a bunch of people to do stuff they don’t want to do and don’t get paid for.
As for updating materials from @10’s comment, yes, even standard stuff like math needs continual updating. The more complicated and difficult it is to learn, the more effort teachers need to put into making it understandable to the students. Often, the best way to get students to learn is by relating it to things in their life, tough to do with math, chemistry, etc., but good teachers will use examples from current events and their students’ personalities to make useful demonstrations and assignments.
Uh, teachers work almost year round. They don’t stop and do nothing from June to Sept and they certainly don’t stop working after 3:30.
I’m a Seattle Public Schools teacher with five years of experience, and I make just over 40k plus benefits. Few teachers make 70-80k/year, at least how most people understand thier paychecks.
Almost all teachers work more than they are paid for, but I would be surprised if more than a small percentage work 12-hour-days.
And I don’t think performance based pay will ever work. Too complicated and problematic in the real world. I do, however, think that administrators should have more power over who they hire and fire, just like they would in any business.
@12: Would you be irritated if you did the same job as someone else — and you knew you were an excellent performer and the other person just phoned it in, and yet you made the exact same amount?
You’re not really suggesting this doesn’t go on in businesses all over the country, are you?
@36 – Of course it goes on. But, for the type of knowledge-based professionals that teachers are comparable to (or should be comparable to — I’m thinking accountants, consultants, engineers, etc.), differentiating pay based on performance is pretty commonplace.
if you look at the pay schedule, you’ll see that the higher salaries are for those with advanced degrees — to get into the 70K range, you have to have a master’s degree or a Ph.D. In what other area would that level of education earn?
@38 someone with a PHD in some other industries can earn a shit ton more than $70k. This entire post (and some of the attitudes here) are baffling.
If my kid’s teacher spent 4 years on her BA, 2 on her MA, and 3-4 on her PHD, and I’d have zero problem with her making $100k, let alone $70k. One of my friends back home is a teacher with a BA, two MAs, one PhD, and working on her next PhD. This is a PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL teacher.
Many school districts require ongoing education out of pocket — you have to get so many credits every so often. Does Seattle do that? If so, then everyone here bitching is under a mandatory STFU.
Just FYI, while Masters degrees are pretty common (I would argue because of the high value the salary scales tend to place on them — e.g., $8k a year in Seattle — they’re a pretty good investment for a teacher in the long-run), teachers with PhDs are rare.
I don’t know what the rules are in Washington about ongoing certification — some states (like New York) require that you get a masters by a certain time (I think 5 years?) to remain certified. But, many districts also offer at least partial tuition reimbursement (Seattle does not, as far as I can tell).
the 70k “average” is bullshit. please refer to the salary schedule and keep in mind the years put in and advanced degrees required to earn that kind of money.
(fun facts: did you know that seattle principals START at around 100K and their salary increases don’t rely on student achievement either? did you know that dr. maria goodloe-johnson’s salary is higher than our govener’s?)
you can talk to me about performance pay and how the union is killing education and running schools like a corporate business when you take all the english language learning, learning disabled, special ed, drug addicted, mentally ill, homeless, neglected, emotionally/physically/sexually abused kids out of my classroom. oh, and give me more than 200 bucks (my actual budget for the last few years) a year to supply and stock 3 different, 5 total, lab science courses. then, maybe, just maybe, i’ll listen to you.
people love to beat up on the most visible aspect of school systems, the teachers and ignore everyone and everything else. fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
(though thanks to all the supporters here. this shit makes me nuts, obviously.)
@39 yes, you have to pay to get your “professional certification” (5 years after your “residency certification”) and take 15 credits every 3 or 5 years (i forget which). all out of pocket.
Bethany, I cannot believe some of what you posted here. Faux-outrage over teachers’ salaries? The old canard that that they only put in nine months of work in a year? Girl, please. Most professions requiring post-graduate education cap out FAR higher than $98k. That’s peanuts over a 30-year career.
@42 in that case everyone, the Stranger included, has to STFU about frontline teacher salaries. I’m sure some of the Sound Politics people are reading this and frothing at the mouth but fuck them too and their anti-teacher union jihads. If Seattle started paying for that education out of everyone’s pocket, I’d consider the argument the other way.
But if teachers are paying out of pocket for this–which even PRIVATE EMPLOYERS rarely require–then STFU. Pay them MORE.
That having been said, the old-school union “seniority rules” and sliding scale benefit cycle mindset is stale and needs serious overhaul, as with most union policies in any profession.
@ 41
Maybe principals start at 100k, but nobody starts straight out of college as a principal. Maybe you should remark about the starting pay of general administrators? Maybe.
K12 teachers and the irrational persecution complex–methinks they doth protest too much. I don’t have a problem with the salaries stated, and I don’t think that teachers ‘don’t do any work’. And of course they have to do unpleasant things on the job, and go under-appreciated, as do many people who get paid even less and treated even worse. However, this does not in any way make one of the largest professions that touches every person in this nation exempt from criticism or analysis just like every other industry/profession. We all know that teaching is a ‘decent’ paying job (could be better, especially at entry) with benefits and more time off than other jobs. All of the ‘grading/preps/extracurriculars/continuing education in the world don’t negate these facts. Many, many professional, exempt employees spend more than 40 hours per week working across a *12* month contract, and have to attend conferences and participate in continuing education, etc., etc.
There are so many teachers in this country… we all know them in our roles as students as well as friends and family and fellow community members. These claims of ‘I make nothing for the hardest job in the universe and haven’t had a vacation ever and work 12 hour days’ is as laughable as the damned English professors (talk about underpaid, by the way… most would make more teaching high school) who proclaim they work 90 hours a week. Spare us. Own up to the reality of your profession or you lose all credibility in any analytical discussion of it. Many of these defensive comments are veering into ‘waiter/waitress’ and ‘mother’ land in their hysteria and insistence on the.hardest.job.on.earth. You’d think our schools were sweatshops… or law firms.
K12 teachers and the irrational persecution complex–methinks they doth protest too much. I don’t have a problem with the salaries stated, and I don’t think that teachers ‘don’t do any work’. And of course they have to do unpleasant things on the job, and go under-appreciated, as do many people who get paid even less and treated even worse. However, this does not in any way make one of the largest professions that touches every person in this nation exempt from criticism or analysis just like every other industry/profession. We all know that teaching is a ‘decent’ paying job (could be better, especially at entry) with benefits and more time off than other jobs. All of the ‘grading/preps/extracurriculars/continuing education in the world don’t negate these facts. Many, many professional, exempt employees spend more than 40 hours per week working across a *12* month contract, and have to attend conferences and participate in continuing education, etc., etc.
There are so many teachers in this country… we all know them in our roles as students as well as friends and family and fellow community members. These claims of ‘I make nothing for the hardest job in the universe and haven’t had a vacation ever and work 12 hour days’ is as laughable as the damned English professors (talk about underpaid, by the way… most would make more teaching high school) who proclaim they work 90 hours a week. Spare us. Own up to the reality of your profession or you lose all credibility in any analytical discussion of it. Many of these defensive comments are veering into ‘waiter/waitress’ and ‘mother’ land in their hysteria and insistence on the.hardest.job.on.earth. You’d think our schools were sweatshops… or law firms.
The real question is how much does Charles Mudede’s favorite “racist” teacher make? Maybe that’s why he got a lawyer instead of a clue.
@41 my point was not about the salary per se, but the hypocrisy of performance pay for teachers but not for those supposedly running the show. not well stated on my part.