Of the major issues confronting most concerned Americans in the country today is education. It is almost unavoidable topic of concern for parents, a hot topic for debate, and a cause for nearly abject terror among teachers and faculty. One of the most interesting topics of this debate is the pay for teachers especially in North Carolina which rates among the lowest in teacher’s salaries in the nation. On top of this recent legislation has removed tenure as a perk of being a teacher. So how do we evaluate a teacher and what they are worth on a dollar per hour wage? You have to compare them to other jobs, and see where they stand against the poverty line. You also have to evaluate where they stand in comparison to the skill required to do a job, the required special training, and the danger involved in doing that job. How do teacher rate when compared to other white collar jobs requiring a Bachelor’s degree, with low trade value, and no real danger in the work place. Now the accepted wisdom of the quality of teachers can have and almost magical effect on the overall education of a student, so what does it say about the quality of the teachers we want educating our children when we are only willing to pay them like fast food workers. But that’s not really what teachers make, despite all the griping and complaining about how low a teacher’s salary is according to the North Carolina Department of Public instruction the starting salary of a teacher with no experience and only a Batchlores Degree and no experience is $30,800 dollars for a ten month “year”. If the teacher is certified through the National Board for Professional Teacher Standards the Salary increases to $34,500 dollars in that same ten month “year”. Now North Carolina has one of the lowest starting salaries in the country, but it is still a low hazard, low entry, high responsibility career path. The important part of figuring out if teachers really make a fair wage is to look at the profession itself. High pay for jobs is usually offered based on certain factors important to doing a job. For instance jobs that have a high risk level, a high inherent responsibility, or a high entry challenge. Medical doctors, for example, have a high risk associated with properly treating patients, a high inherent responsibility in that the lives of patients are on the line, and a high entry challenge with 8 years of expensive schooling required that is then coupled with a lengthy internship. On the flip side making burgers at your local fast food restaurant has none of the responsibility, risk, or entry challenge to doing that job so most workers there make minimum wage initially. Teaching as a profession tends to fall somewhere in between the two. It has a fairly common initial entry requirement of a bachelor’s in the education field. Realistically it is not the kind of initial entry barrier to drive the wage of a teacher up as it’s an expected requirement in many professions in modern day America. At best this sets the price that a teacher commands slightly higher than minimum wage because it is not the entry barrier we would see in many other skilled job professions. Also teaching has a very low comparative risk level. There have been some extremely isolated incidents of school shootings which could be argued to make for a dangerous work environment but on the whole the likelihood of a teacher’s life being on the line is such a low statistical probability it is almost nonexistent. In comparison to a police officer, a construction worker, or even a truck driver the risk of being a teacher isn’t even worth mentioning, which means again we see another area where teachers who frequently complain about low salaries, actual rate a lower salary then many of the other possible jobs that you could compare them too. The one area where teachers can make a very valid argument about their salaries being too low is when you look at the responsibility of the job. Any parent will tell you the most important thing in their lives are their children. Teachers are the most trusted individuals in a childes life between the ages of five and eighteen, with responsibilities of educating, guiding, and mentoring children entering their formative years. With this very large responsibility a good wage is absolutely fair to the teachers today, and based on the low relative entry, the low job risk, and the high responsibility teachers should be squarely in the middle class of American wages. Now the middle class is a muddied and unclear definition but usually it seems to mean those fifty percent of working Americans that earn between $35,000 and $100,000 a year and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the median income nationally for teachers in 2012 was $55,050, and again that is for a 10 month work year. It’s hard to imagine that a profession that makes fifty-five thousand dollars a year as being considered an impoverished demographic but this is the popular wisdom in our society today. Another way to look at it is too compare it to another job that has similar entrance criteria and see what their comparative starting salaries would be. Job one is that of a teacher and assumes that this job is in a lower salaried state. Again a starting teacher’s salary, for a ten month year, in NC is almost thirty-one thousand dollars and possibly almost thirty-four thousand dollars if the person did the proper certifications in college. The job is as we mentioned low risk, relatively low entrance, and high responsibility. A military junior officer on entrance to the United States Armed forces makes thirty-five thousand dollars a year for a high risk, high responsibility, and relatively low entrance career field. Essentially both jobs make approximately the same amount of money and they are not equal the risk. The other major issue in the debate about higher teacher salaries is the question of why
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:55:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015