Goodbye Mr. Chips, indeed
The average new teacher today makes just under $30,000 a year, which may not look too bad for a twentysomething with no mortgage and no kids. But soon enough the newbies realize that they can make more money and not work anywhere near as hard elsewhere. After a lifetime of hearing the old legends about cushy hours and summer vacations, they figure out that early mornings are for students who need extra help, evenings are for test corrections and lesson plans, and weekends and summers are for second and even third jobs to try to pay the bills.
According to the Department of Education, one in every five teachers leaves after the first year, and almost twice as many leave within three. If any business had that rate of turnover, someone would do something smart and strategic to fix it. This isn't any business. It's the most important business around, the gardeners of the landscape of the human race.
That comes from Anna Quindlen in Newsweek. It describes me 30 years ago as a first-year teacher in Salisbury. Two differences: I made $8,000 a year and I left to make less money and work just about as hard. I got $6,500 for my first reporter's job, and at one point that first year figured that I was making about $2 per hour. Weirder still, I loved it.
That decision to leave teaching and enter journalism is one of my personal Thanksgivings. I wasn't a good teacher and wasn't serving the 125 or so students in my classes. Anna's thesis is right: teaching is our most important profession and least valued. I wasn't cut out for it, but many, many special, selfless, life-altering people are. We don't pay them enough.
Comments (7)
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What's the turnover in private schools vs. public schools? Same? Less? More? If less, I'd say there may be factors other than salary at play. Seems like an easy place to start to settle the money question once and for all.
Posted on November 22, 2005 7:52 AM
David, this is just one study, but it found that more teachers from private schools leave for other jobs than do teachers from public schools. Does your hypothisis apply in reverse?
source: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2005/analysis/sa07.asp
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Posted on November 22, 2005 8:26 AM
Yeah Roch, I googled that after I commented. Very interesting. I saw quite a few studies that compared private schools to public schools and most concluded that turnover was quite a bit greater at private schools.
OK. New hypothesis. Since teacher turnover is higher at private schools than public schools, public schools are paying greater than market rates for teachers.
Posted on November 22, 2005 9:59 AM
I know six people who have graduated from UNC schools in the last four years and gone on to become teachers.
All but one of them quit in the first two years and are now at jobs where they make more, work fewer hours and are very rarely in any danger of being shot or stabbed while trying to explain basic grammar to kids twice their size.
The one who stayed in it is miserable but is working off her college loans.
Posted on November 22, 2005 12:35 PM
Joe Killian is right on this, before I retired I did interviews for a major company, hiring hourly workers. I was amazed at the number of teachers looking for hourly work. I always asked why they want these jobs. The answer was I have a family to support. After I retired, I tried sub teaching, I lasted one day. To tough for the dawg, Joe right the kids in the middle school were bigger than me. Hell when you have a policeman at the schools nuff said. And have you ever heard of these hand off kids??? If you can find a teacher that will talk about them,please listen.
Posted on November 22, 2005 1:24 PM
In the shameless plug department, my colleague, Jennifer Fernandez, is working on a major project on what it's like to be a public school teacher.
She's spent countless hours following around some local teachers these past few weeks and I can't wait to read it. The stories should run on the front page one Sunday in December.
Posted on November 22, 2005 1:54 PM
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Posted on January 23, 2007 1:57 PM