Comments about ‘Teachers underpaid? Some say they are overpaid’

The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute used to be respected think tanks. Now they are the PR wings of the Republican Party, and all of their research is done to advance the cause of their anti-tax, anti-government patrons.

One problem with the teaching profession is that instead of hiring math majors to teach, teachers have to major in math education where the requirements are lower. The same is true with physics.

When the Utah State math core was being improved a few years ago, a common comment from the math education people on the committee is that no change was needed. The mathematicians on the committee knew better. Children really do need to learn how to add subtract and multiply fractions by hand, using a calculator doesn't impart the needed math sense to allow children to do well in Algebra when they get older.

We need to provide better education to our teachers. Let them major in the actual fields that they will be teaching in. Not Math education, but math. Not Physics education, but physics, not History education, but actual history. Education departments at Universities have a history of mucking things up.

And yes, once we begin to provide our teachers with this better education, let us pay them more, let us pay them a comfortable living wage. Let us not be stingy with those who teach us. On the other hand let us demand excellence. Let us have high standards and decent pay.

Years ago, teachers were somewhat underpaid, perhaps. Dr James D. Croft who was a professor of statistics at the University of Utah, back in the late 1970's, often pointed out how, on average, those who enter into teaching, nationwide, have the lowest college entrance exam scores of all who attend college. In other words, they are at the bottom, intellectually, of all who attend college.

Someone else, years ago, said paying anyone off the street the salary of a neuro surgeon wouldn't give him a neuro surgeon's abilities. It is about TIME someone recognized this. Not a single Utah governor, Republican or Democrat has in my lifetime!

In many ways teachers are paid more than they should be paid, especially when the are also multitaskers for other non education duties forced on them that interfere with their primary purpose, open the mind of a child. Educators in the US are underrated and face discrimination and disrespect. Teachers should be paid more then doctors and revered for what they do. Formal primary education is not easy and challenged by all levels of government and business far beyond reason.

Primary eduction teachers should be paid more in benefits and pay than college professors who aren't even required to be educators or have degrees. They are specialist of one field passing knowledge and experience, a much less deserving retirement position.

Excellence in education is never dependent on quality of teachers and their training. Teachers are tutors to guide encourage and steer children to learn according to their likes and abilities. Education nowadays has assumed that all children of all ages are developed mentally and physically by age when in fact learning ability varies by the billions and individually.

Consider the position of the teacher (known from experience). You have 100 students to manage. Each one is an independent person making his/her own decisions. You have no effective control over your "product". Yet people think you should be held strictly accountable. Then there is the day-in, day-out reality of having dozens of unkind things said in your face, with no good way to respond. You can see why our most capable people choose careers that are anything other than education. Now conservatives want to cut their pay.

Re: ". . . their research is done to advance the cause of their anti-tax, anti-government patrons"

You say that like it's a bad thing.

When conservative researchers are illuminated or motivated by their beliefs, liberal heads explode and demand no one pay attention to otherwise valid results. But, when liberal "researchers" -- like the obviously pro-trade union professor cited in the article -- attack valid research with nothing more than dismissive invective, their biases are somehow ignored.

Note that the comment above doesn't even address the findings of the Heritage study.

Hmmmmmmm?!

It would be prudent for the state of Utah to try to match national averages in teacher pay. An excellent source of this would be the University of Utah athletic department. Currently, it is subsidized at a rate of $6 million per year in money that should be going to education.

Instead of education money flowing into a BCS athletic department, the state should be getting a dividend from its investment. This would be implemented similar to a research grant at the University where a third to a half of the funding goes to overhead. Take a third to a half of the money given to the athletic department by the BCS conference, and use it to increase the pay of schoolteachers.

This would be a big win for the state. It would improve the education system, and strike a blow against the BCS.

I didn't know that an IQ test rather than a college degree could be more valuable to me. All I needed to do was get tested and then I could be in whatever job I wanted and be paid the same? Wow, I was an idiot.

Some, some teachers are overpaid because they shouldn't have been in the profession to begin with. It's the same in every profession; everyone has had to work with that guy or that gal that we all know should be fired. We should take steps to reform the system to eliminate these poor teachers.

However, the great majority are severely underpaid. The benefits packages are a tired excuse that is losing merit every year as states cut from these packages before they touch anything else while trying to balance budgets, Utah is no exception. Right here in Utah Nebo School District is known as the lowest salary paying district in the nation. Do we need to pay them CEO levels? No, but we don't need to pay the principals that much either. Reduce principal salaries, increase the teacher salaries to a starting wage of 45-50 with a maximum potential of 85-90 and people would be a lot happier.

School administrators are definitely overpaid.
Some teachers are overpaid.
Many are underpaid.

"He argues that the model Richwine and Biggs use is rife with statistical problems which render their conclusions erroneous."

No kidding. This is a perfect example of letting personal bias dictate the research questions and analysis. No wonder they found the result they wanted; they constructed the entire research project to produce that answer from the beginning. They broke a cardinal rule of objective research, and this sort of study would never survive peer review. But unlike real scientists, analysts at politically skewed think tanks are paid to promote a viewpoint rather than truth, so I suppose peer review is a moot point.

Some teachers are underpaid, and based on their performance and abilities some are grossly overpaid.

There is nothing wrong with people on fixed incomes who believe our government should start living within its means.

Whatever their purpose in the past, and unions did great things, the result of unions now is to enforce seniority and protect the incompetent.

There is no point talking about merit pay as long as the unions have the control they do. The subject makes a difference, to be blunt math and science are more difficult than english, history, or social studies. Math and science graduates can make significantly more money outside education. Teacher's pay does not reflect those facts. The last paragraph is significant, poor teachers are paid too much, and good teachers may not be paid enough. It will be interesting to see the New York charter school's experiment.

This is dumb. Think of it this way - your children are spending 6 hours a day with their teacher. That's more time than you spend with them. Their lives will be heavily influenced by these teachers. Do you really want to turn away the really great ones because they can't make a decent living in this profession? Average beginning teacher salary *in Utah* is about $28,000. You get what you pay for.

I taught middle school math, and it was clear throughout my college experiece that many top tier people started out in education, looked at the pay, and said "No thanks". (I got out and now do real estate investing.)
Maybe we should let all the cognitive elites at the Heritage Foundation start up a charter school with lower pay for teachers and see how it works out.

Heritage Foundation?

Isn't that just another arm of the Koch/Republican propaganda machine?

Why is it so hard for so many Americans to realize that in their attempts to "protect" America, these people are actually dragging us all downward?

The difficulty with merit pay is that no one has come up with a good method for reviewing teacher performance. Standardized testing is only useful to a very limited degree. The only way to analyze a teacher's performance is through outside peer review. Even there, you have problems.

The best way to improve the level of teaching is to improve the level of those beginning in the profession. If it is a solid career choice, monetarily, you attract a wider pool of candidates. Just as in any other field, if you can get the top job candidates, you will do better. Just as universities do, different fields should pay different wages.

The Heritage Foundation is a scary group. They don't even really promote GOP ideals- they promote Fascist ideas. They are all about corporations. They place money as the sole reason humans should live or be motivated. I heard once that you can buy anything in this world for money and the Heritage Foundation promotes the mantra all the time.
As for teachers being paid too much, ridiculous notion. If it is such an easy and high paying job why is there more than 1/3 turnover in the first 3 years? Why is there more than 2/3 turnover in the first 10 years? Sounds like a nice easy cushy high paying job to me.

I think the telling piece of data, when you rake through all the poor writing here, is that those pursuing a degree in Education rank among the highest college GPAs. That doesn't mean they are the smartest, folks. Obviously the degree programs need to be beefed up to be more rigorous, to help weed out what I like to call "generic students". If you really want to teach, you should be heartily challenged and earn the right, like in other degree programs. Then I think salaries should be commensurate with performance academically and competitive with the public sector.

Mediocre academia begets mediocre academia.

Compensating someone based upon their IQ makes no sense. I know plenty of smart people who are not productive. Teachers, and everyone else, should be compensated for achievement and amount of time/effort invested. I agree that union-based compensation (negotiated on meaningless criteria such as longevityseniority -- especially meaningless when tenure is involved). And, anyone who believes English teachers are overcompensated has never been one. While many teachers use technology to score exams and assignments, English teachers must spend hours reviewing student writing assignments and providing coaching. Those that I know are skilled and dedicated. We constantly see communication skills rewarded in the marketplace. Why are we so stingy compensating those who work so hard to help students acquire these skills?

After six years on the Salt Lake City Board of Education several decades ago, the District never really faced up to the adequacy question of teacher compensation. Comparisons between public and private, between different industrial environment are precarious. For an individual to maneuver through the minefield of 25-40 youth individuals and deal with the unique human personalities and social interactions while also attempting to provide age appropriate human knowledge and experience is almost impossible to fathom. Perhaps mothers with five or more children might begin to understand the experience (additionally those fathers who decide to stay home), but few others can comprehend what an adequate compensation for a teacher should be. When adding the vital, essential component of what the teaching field really means to America's national and economic security, it is dangerous to make assumptions about how much we are paying teachers. It would be in the nation's interest to conduct the most experience, comprehensive, national scientific, evidence-based study on this one policy issue.