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Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)
The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
I have to chime in here. My DS had a science teacher in middle school that did not have a science degree or an education degree for that matter. It worried me silly that this teacher didn't seem to have the breadth of knowledge needed to properly teach the subject. Luckily, this teacher was under the wing of other more experienced teachers. A year later, DS said that this teacher X was the best science teacher he ever had. I just about choked on my dinner. He said that teacher X really enjoyed his subject matter and the students and that they loved going to his class and learning from him. DS said that teacher X made the subject matter interesting and relevant. DS is currently at a MoCo middle school. We had high hopes for his science class, this year. Unfortunately, it has been a disaster. The science teacher made a career change to go into teaching. He has PhD in a scientific field. This man cannot communicate to save his life. All of his handouts, powerpoints, notes, tests, etc. are hand written in illegible chicken scratch. He is deadly dull and has killed what little interest DS had in science. So I think it's fair to say that it is the individual personality of the teacher that is most important here. The educational background seems to be less so, in our experience. |
Anonymous
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Amen
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Anonymous
| My friend teaches for MCPS and makes nearly $90k. I'm a public interest lawyer and I make $69k. And I work 12 months a year, while she works 10 months a year. And I only get one day off for Christmas while she gets a week off for winter break (and another for spring break). And she has a pension and excellent health benefits. Granted, her job isn't easy, but I think she is well paid when you factor everything in. |
Anonymous
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How many years have you been working as a "public interest" lawyer? You teacher friend has 15+ years and 30 credits beyond a masters degree.
The pension you mention will allow your "friend" to live on canned cat food in retirement if she is not socking away the maximum allowed under the law in a taxed deferred annuity. The chances of putting away the maximum allowed are slim to none if she lives in MoCo and is not already eating cat food. Add to that, there is one lawyer for every 10 people in the DC Metro area. Saturation of this kind is not likely to elicit high salaries for "public interest" lawyers. Perhaps you should start an Angry Lawyer thread.
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Anonymous
Weep. Weep. |
AngryTeacher
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Did you really mean to use weep weep?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=weep%20weep
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AngryTeacher
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The letters below were written in response to the NY Times article "The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries": http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?scp=3&sq=why%20should%20teachers%20be%20blamed&st=Search
Why Should Teachers Be Blamed? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/opinion/l08teach.html?_r=1&ref=opinion Published: May 7, 2011 To the Editor: Re “The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries,” by Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari (Op-Ed, May 1): Ironically, the poor treatment teachers endure in America has to do with the high hopes we vest in them. We widely believe that, no matter what forces shape a child’s life outside school, teachers can level the playing field, neutralize the negative effects of poverty on learning, and raise every kid to proficiency in every standard. But this generally doesn’t happen. Yes, there are exceptions. Schools can transform some lives from hardship to health and happiness. As a public school principal, I devote my life to creating that possibility every day. But I still recognize that schools — as they are designed and financed now — generally reinforce social structures; we don’t undo them. This means that America’s hope for the schoolhouse is bound to be crushed, and the emotional consequence is anger and disdain — for teachers. Until we perceive child poverty as something to be fixed not by our schools but by wage, labor, taxation and health care policy, we will continue to place unrealistic expectations on teachers, and see them as to blame for dashed American dreams. We will hang scarlet-letter test scores around their necks, and publicly shame them for our collective failings. It’s one of the main means we have for handling our guilt about the suffering of children in our rich nation. Reforming this will require soul-searching and honesty — from President Obama, Congress and all of us. T. ELIJAH HAWKES Brooklyn, May 1, 2011 The writer is principal of the James Baldwin School in Manhattan. To the Editor: Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari have it right. For seven years in the late 1990s, I left my office every Wednesday to work with at-risk children at Venice High School in Los Angeles. I saw firsthand what happens to our youth when the message we send them is, “We don’t care.” Above all, we send that message when we put teachers into classrooms who are unable to wear a suit and tie, unable to afford a reasonable car, unable to bring the energy and commitment that are the core of creating an educated populace because the message we are sending our teachers is, “We don’t care about you either.” We get what we pay for. As the United States continues to graduate hundreds of thousands of children every year who cannot solve the problems of daily life and who cannot read and write at higher levels, we condemn our country to the second-place status it already occupies based on accepted educational standards worldwide. Today, when so many of these children have no significant religious base and when families are at work day and night, the last bastion of significant input, training and character is our schools. The pillar of rebuilding our educational system is teachers, and until we pay them a wage commensurate with their enormous responsibilities, everything else is window-dressing. IAN JARVIS New York, May 1, 2011 To the Editor: Dave Eggers’s and Nínive Clements Calegari’s article comes so close to dealing with the core issue of teacher professionalization, but it misses a key element: the need for all teachers to gain a graduate degree as their professional credential. We as a society have continuously educated our children on the cheap by maintaining the teaching credential at the undergraduate level and thereby justifying low salaries. A true professional degree in teaching would create a new class of teachers and require us as a society to put our money where our collective mouths are by paying teachers true professional salaries. This in turn would draw the kinds of top-tier students into teacher education programs we all want for our children. STANTON GREEN West Long Branch, N.J., May 1, 2011 The writer is dean of the McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Monmouth University. To the Editor: Paying teachers more will go a long way toward attracting star college graduates and keeping them in the profession. But without changes in the way we train teachers, higher salaries won’t keep good teachers in the schools that need them most. Right now, most of our education schools train teachers to work with middle-class kids and not to address the huge challenges of schools serving children growing up in poverty. A result is large numbers of teachers who aren’t effective in high-poverty schools and quit in frustration — or are fired. These high teacher turnover rates result in our highest need kids being served by a revolving cast of inexperienced — and demoralized — educators. In our work turning around high-poverty, low-performing schools, we have found that there are very effective methods for training and supporting teachers to succeed in these schools. And turnover in these schools ultimately plummets to near zero. If you were to ask them why they choose to stay, they’d tell you it’s because they finally feel successful, which is nearly as important a reward as a paycheck. PAMELA CANTOR New York, May 3, 2011 The writer is founder and chief executive of Turnaround for Children, a nonprofit organization working with high-poverty, low-performing public schools. To the Editor: Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari note that “the average ending salary [for teachers] — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000.” The average income of the top 25 hedge fund managers in 2009 was $1 billion. So, on average, one top hedge fund manager makes as much as 15,000 top teachers. Shame on us! MARTIN SCHIFFENBAUER Berkeley, Calif., May 1, 2011 A version of this letter appeared in print on May 8, 2011, on page WK7 of the New York edition with the headline: Why Should Teachers Be Blamed?. |
Anonymous
| In response to 21:56: I graduated from law school 11 years ago. Unlike teachers who have received raises and step raises each and every year until we hit the recession, public interest lawyers (like social workers, nonprofit workers, and other do-gooder types) typically don't get big raises each year (so you could be in the field for years and years and still not make a fat salary). So why do people go into this line of work? Because it is a calling --- it's a profession. You do it because the work is important to you and to society. And FWIW, public interest lawyers (like social workers, etc.) are treated with a great deal of respect. And a pension is a pension --- teachers should be THRILLED they have one (b/c no one else really has one anymore --- aside from government workers). |
Anonymous
That's a very low salary for a lawyer, though, isn't it? You are comparing a MOCO public school teacher ( salary among the highest in the country) with being a lawyer who works at the bottom of the pay scale. You only get one day off for Christmas -- ok, that's hard. What about other vacation days? Sick days? I'm sure as a lawyer it is hard to call in sick if you have a trial or deposition. Can you ever work from home? can you take a morning off to attend a child's school concert? Just want to get an idea of what you aer comparing. |
Anonymous
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State Aid for Education Should Be Spent on Education<http://mcealeads.blogspot.com/2011/05/state-aid-for-education-should-be-spent.html>
As reported in last week's Gazette newspaper<http://www.gazette.net/stories/05042011/montnew183931_32535.php>, the County Council appears determined to impose even deeper cuts in the MCPS budget. Here's the flaw in the County Council's thinking: the Montgomery County Council has already been spending a smaller percentage of its local tax revenue on schools. The only way one can claim that the MCPS budget accounts for "57%" of the county budget is to include federal and state aid for education. If you back out state and federal aid, and look at LOCAL TAX REVENUES, you see that MCPS' share of the county budget has been dropping for eight years.<http://www.mcea.nea.org/pdf/CountyFunding.pdf> Today, the MCPS budget accounts for just 44.7% of the local tax revenues. In FY2003, MCPS represented 52.5% of local tax revenues. It is the influx of increased state and federal aid for education that has been funding our schools since then. But next year, even though our legislative delegation just succeeded in getting a $65 million increase in state education aid for Montgomery County schools, it appears that the County Council is not going to use that money to increase the school budget by $65 million. Instead, the County Council is going to use that new state education funding to reduce the County's contribution to our schools so they can use the money on other priorities. I would have hoped we could all agree that state aid for education should be used for education. The Council's action will seriously undermine the county's credibility in Annapolis. It's not too late to influence the Council's decision-making. Contact Council members today<http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/csltmpl.asp?url=/content/council/contact.asp> to tell them that state aid for education should be spent on our schools. |
Anonymous
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That's a very low salary for a lawyer, though, isn't it? "You are comparing a MOCO public school teacher ( salary among the highest in the country) with being a lawyer who works at the bottom of the pay scale. You only get one day off for Christmas -- ok, that's hard. What about other vacation days? Sick days? I'm sure as a lawyer it is hard to call in sick if you have a trial or deposition. Can you ever work from home? can you take a morning off to attend a child's school concert? Just want to get an idea of what you aer comparing."
Um, public interest lawyers and social workers and folks working at nonprofits typically don't get well --- just like teachers --- except teachers get better health benefits and pensions. And teachers have sick days and other leave (my friend stayed home to watch the royal wedding!)(and my son's teacher has taken off a bunch of Fridays and Mondays this year for mini-vacations). I'm sorry, but $90k for 10 months of work (less than that really since they get off two weeks for Christmas and spring break) seems like an AWESOME salary (especially when you factor in the cadillac health benefits (um, $10 co-pays -- no deductible) and pension). |
Anonymous
You are really gross. Really. |
Anonymous
FYI, MC teachers get 10 sick days and 3 personal days each year. If your "friend" stayed home to watch the Royal Wedding, then she used a personal day. If your son's teacher has taken off "a bunch of Fridays and Mondays" this year, then she too is using her sick and personal leave. Is it possible your son's teacher was out because she was attending meetings or a training? Are you certain that she is going on regular "mini-vacations"? I have a hard time believing the administration would let this happen on a regular basis. $90k for 10 months of work (less than that really since they get off two weeks for Christmas and spring break) Do you work 8 hour days? I don't. It is not unusual for me to physically be in the school building for 10 hours each day...and then of course I have work to bring home and work to do on the weekends. If I clocked my working hours I would bet they compare to the 12 months you work at your job. Most people have absolutely no idea how many hours teachers actually spend working. |
Anonymous
Well, I have to agree with you. I'm a teacher but in Prince George's County. I have a Master's degree, 9 years' experience, and would earn a salary of about $60K were I working full time. Even with 20 years' experience, I don't think I'll hit 90K there. So no, I don't think 90K is a "low" teacher salary, at all. |