So Much For The Myth of Poverty

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch provides a handy database that has teacher and school salaries for most of, if not all of, Missouri.

Back in the old Northwest R-1 district from which I graduated (and when answering the question of where I went to high school in the St. Louis area, I balled my fists and asked in return, "Is that a problem?"), it looks that teachers start out at $31,000 out of school and top out around $76,000 with a very nice spread of people earning above the national median salary for nine months of work.

Oh, yeah, I know how hard those teachers work in those nine months.  A little harder than many of the people I know work all year round to keep equivalent or lower salaries.

Review the tool and make your own judgments.  Refute me if I'm wrong.

Comments

[Chris]

The real "problem" with teacher salaries is that for the most talented college graduates, teaching doesn't pay very well.

Studies show that prior to the 80's about half of all women in the top quartile (25%) of IQs taught. Now it's only about 10%. About half of women in the bottom quartile of IQ with college degrees now teach.

Bright, talented people can make much more money in finance, medicine, law, engineering, why teach?

Teachers should teach all year. The off summer is destroying our educational competitiveness without reason now.

[Van]

"Teachers should teach all year. The off summer is destroying our educational competitiveness without reason now."

So teaching is now to be a business designed to provide better paying occupations for smart people who might prefer not to go into finance, etc, and would be willing to teach... if they could make a bundle?

You'd want that person as a teacher?

Aside from the fact that kids at one time did manage to get an excellent education with the summer off - without 20lb textbooks and endless PowerPoint presentations - for those who want to teach, they enjoy the current setup. One of my kids high school teachers makes high 70's and also cleans up with a Fireworks stand... and he's a very good teacher (which has a lot to do with his refusal to use his textbooks - other than as occasional sources of shallow and ignorant statements which give him a jumping off point to actually teach about what the subject really means).

My kids are not going to spend the entire year in class 'learning' what they should have learned in 3/4 of the time, in order to give less capable, but better paid 'teachers' an excuse to work there.