Reply to Unpopular opinion: DCPS teachers are super well paid!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To all the teachers, thank you for what you do. There are many unique aspects of teaching as a profession, including how much impact a single teacher can have on a number of lives and how exhausting it is to have to be "on" without breaks for long periods.

Without a doubt, there are places in the US where teachers are paid low salaries. The salaries in this area tend to be decent and in line with other similarly educated professionals who work for government employers (at the state and local levels). As a parent (and child of two teachers), I find discussions about salary to be frustrating because everyone talks around each other, raising considerations and arguments that are either irrelevant or inconsistent.

The first reality, regardless of actual salaries or the challenge of the profession, is that public school teachers are public employees. Therefore, you can't compare their salaries or working conditions to the private sector. As a rule, state and local government employees make less than others in the private sector. In this region, if you compare teacher salaries to those of other government employees, the salaries are not out of line.

The second reality is that teachers get paid for 10 months, for better or worse. Teachers are always saying, "We don't have summers off - we only get paid for 10 months." Absolutely true, but then you can't really compare a 10-month salary to the 12-month salary of other professions to claim that teachers are underpaid. Having worked in state government, I can attest that 10-month teacher salaries are very similar to the 12-month salaries of similarly educated government employees.  If you get paid for 10 months and have more time off during those 10 months than many people have in a full twelve months, that's a benefit. It's also a benefit to have a block of time away from work (whether it's 8 or 6 weeks), even if it's unpaid. Few professionals, even those with generous leave, have the opportunity to take off for more than a month at a time.

Then there's the, "we don't really have off during the summer, we are forced to do unpaid training the whole summer." I don't know. I know many teachers (including some in my family), and none of them work all summer doing training. They go on vacation, hang out every day at the pool, and do other leisure activities that they have every right to enjoy during this unpaid time away from their professions. Again, that's an aspect of the profession that most professionals, even those with generous leave, don't have access to. On top of that, if you are a parent, in addition to summer, there are other long breaks (winter and spring) where teachers don't have to pay for childcare, unlike other professionals. I'm not saying that these breaks aren't necessary, given the "always on" aspect of teaching, but they are extended breaks at convenient times (holidays, summers).

Of course, in addition to the "we don't really have time off in the summer" teachers, there are the "we have to work full-time over the summer to make ends meet. These are inconsistent. I've never met a teacher who simultaneously works full-time and trains full-time (without any pay) for all the weeks of the summer.

I think that parents get frustrated when some benefits of teaching, including the nature of the time off and pensions, are not acknowledged or flat-out denied. It's difficult for families who don't have extensive outside help to fulfill professional demands while structuring their lives around the school calendar, with its many breaks and random days off. Denying that teaching has some unique benefits doesn't elicit support and understanding of the challenges teachers face.[/quote]

Bravo!  This is all very well said and exactly what many have been trying to convey.[/quote]

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