Are Canadian teachers grossly underpaid like they are in some of America?

[Lieneke]

Are there any special steps that teachers must complete in order to achieve permanent certification in the USA, or are degrees sufficient for permanent professional certification?

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by JohnSoCal

Teachers in many California districts are paid very well. Salaries for teachers where I live in Southern California run up to $100k in USD plus they get paid overtime on top of that. They also have a very generous pension plan.

You left out the part that this is a result of the federal redefinition of exempt a few years ago and that only teachers making less than $41600/year qualify for overtime.

Originally Posted by Lieneke

Are there any special steps that teachers must complete in order to achieve permanent certification in the USA, or are degrees sufficient for permanent professional certification?

There are 50+ sets of requirements in the US so specificity is difficult. As I mentioned in a now deleted post, I held certification in two states, both of which required a Master's degree, one within three years of initial employment while the other required "adequate progress" towards one, which was defined as 15 graduate credits every five years. Even after that is attained teachers are required to earn at least 6 graduate credits every five years for certificate renewal. That continued until the teacher reached a combination of 25 years in the classroom and age 55. You have to have both, only one does not count. You are then classified as a senior teacher.

I retired with a Master's plus 50 or 60 credits. I didn't keep count because there was no salary benefit, just a requirement to have them for certificate renewal. They were out of pocket with no reimbursement although I was able to receive many of them for free by doing various things like going to other school systems on an accreditation team.

[thedwightguy]

Canada's teachers Unions consider themselves a "professional organization", not a Union. But the paperwork demanded by Provincial legislatures can bury the teacher in data demanded by politicians. It's a particularly hostile US Against THEM program, especially in British Columbia. Every hour in the classroom is covered by half an hour of paperwork. I'm not kidding.

However, the Union Pension Fund for Teachers is one of the wealthiest in the country. It's in the news all the time buying malls, REIT"s, and overseas investments. US scenarios are sad by comparison, along with an all too common hostile attitude towards "larnin". There a new boom hiring curve and all Provinces are looking for good teachers.

I was BMOC on East L. A's campus back in the riot days, but you couldn't pay me to be in most American classrooms today. Are you nuts?? Along with a Utube attitude, everybody seems to be packing. What's your life worth?

Canada's two biggest provinces after WW2 pursued an aggressive program of delivering the same programs, books, and level of quality thoughout the province, whether you were in Toronto or Timmins. It worked well. In the last economic boom Ontario was sending out young "Red Seal" trades in their early twenties where the western Provinces hadn't even realized their was a damn trade shortage along with a recession.

In the US low population states have a problematic problem with education. The exception seems to be the Mormon belt, Oregon, and Massachusetts, two of the five "though leader" states. Americans would be well served to look long and hard at what it done well in other jurisdictions.