Anonymous wrote:I taught at a Big Three for years and now work for MCPS. The pay and benefits are night and day - MCPS has it all over privates, including the "best" privates.

I am fortunate to teach a privileged public school population and have relatively few big issues to contend with day to day. I know that my job would be much harder in a different environment with a different population. In that respect, most privates can choose their student populations and therefore teaching at a private is "easier" in that sense.

In general, teachers in private schools are second-income workers. Virtually all of them have a spouse who makes a major breadwinner salary, affording the teacher the option to choose to work at a private school, where pay and benefits are not very competitive. To my knowledge, none of the private schools offers a pay and benefit package sufficient to enable a teacher to make a meaningful contribution to family income, health insurance, etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Diener 32,500 as an assistant teacher

Privates pay their teachers far less, but they pay their paras/assistants far more. While this is a depressingly low salary, it's substantially more than a para makes in the public school.

Anonymous wrote:Diener 32,500 as an assistant teacher

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good to know it's not really a pay problem in public school. If you're willing to move to private you obviously don't need the extra money.

Actually, it is a pay problem in public. That's where people are not connecting the dots. The closer that private school pay gets to public school pay, the more attractive privates become, then add in the much shorter school year schedule, the more agreeable parents, the better work-life balance and you have a winner. Ding, ding, ding!

At my school and many of my friends' schools there is a huge gap. Either teachers cycling in for one or two years OR the old-timers. There is no one in the middle except a couple of people who hung on by their fingertips to make it past probationary status but they should have not have been signed for a second year. This should be scaring the pants off of the school boards and all the central office folks but there is not a peep coming out of their mouths. I think they have no clue.

I can totally relate to this last statement of a lot of teachers with 1-6 years experience and then a handful of those with 25+ years...not a lot in the middle. I personally feel like this is going to end up very badly but this is the consequence of years of maligning teachers, cutting pension benefits and piling stupid requirements up too high. I have become one of the "old timers" at my school with not to many years left to retirement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good to know it's not really a pay problem in public school. If you're willing to move to private you obviously don't need the extra money.

Actually, it is a pay problem in public. That's where people are not connecting the dots. The closer that private school pay gets to public school pay, the more attractive privates become, then add in the much shorter school year schedule, the more agreeable parents, the better work-life balance and you have a winner. Ding, ding, ding!

At my school and many of my friends' schools there is a huge gap. Either teachers cycling in for one or two years OR the old-timers. There is no one in the middle except a couple of people who hung on by their fingertips to make it past probationary status but they should have not have been signed for a second year. This should be scaring the pants off of the school boards and all the central office folks but there is not a peep coming out of their mouths. I think they have no clue.