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This.
"Annualized" = anti-teacher spin. An absurd argument designed to convince the ignorant that teachers already make too much money.
I consider a teacher's income that which is earned for about 40 weeks per year. I do not consider this statement of fact anti-teacher. Nor am I trying to convince others that teachers make too much money. I am very supportive of year-round school and paying teachers accordingly. Perhaps they would join the rest of the work force and have vacations of 1,2 or 3 weeks a year rather than the 10 to 14 weeks (including holidays) which they are not on the job.
According to the University of Arizona the typical early career salary is about $50,000. Should an employee who works for approximately 40 weeks per year make the same annual salary as the employee who works for 50 weeks?
There is an argument the job of teaching is so important that the answer to the above question should be yes. I understand the burden we place on teachers and would like to see this important position expanded rather than limited to a three-quarter time responsibility.
If you want to play the "annualized" game, do it by hours. 12 hours a day x 180 days is a full time year round job. But then you are shorting them because they work more than 180 days a year. They start early and work after school ends, plus weekends. Worse than the starting pay, is where they will be in 5 and then 10 years. They might get an increase of a few thousand dollars while the rest of the world is moving up by fives and tens in the same duration. So, yes, for a professional position, they are underpaid.
If you want to play the "annualized" game, do it by hours. 12 hours a day x 180 days is a full time year round job. But then you are shorting them because they work more than 180 days a year. They start early and work after school ends, plus weekends. Worse than the starting pay, is where they will be in 5 and then 10 years. They might get an increase of a few thousand dollars while the rest of the world is moving up by fives and tens in the same duration. So, yes, for a professional position, they are underpaid.
Not playing any "game" here. I suggest many employees in many fields work the same long hours as teachers. Teachers working 12 hours a day for 180 days? I live and work in a top school district here in MN. I see teachers arrive for work at 7:30 in the morning and almost all depart by 4. There are some teachers (e.g.,coaches, music teachers, driver's ed) who might work some nights and weekends. They of course, are compensated for this "extra" time. To suggest that all, even most, no, even many work 12 hour days is a bit of a stretch.
As a young man starting out in journalism I worked those long hours (and more) 6 days a week with 1 week paid vacation. I used to 'cover' school board meetings when teacher contracts were being approved after completed negotiations. I remember teachers saying it was a struggle to live on the starting $19,000 a year salary which did not include the added worth of the benefit package (this was in the Monterey area in the mid 1970s). At that time I was making $500 a month and no benefits. I worked in those conditions for several years before even coming close to that starting salary of teachers. I worked for at least a decade before I got a job where the employer helped pay for my health insurance. My benefits were not worse than many of my peers in other professions in that area. And yes, we all had 4 year college degrees and many of us had graduate work also.
I understand some teachers work 12 hour days, some work less. However, the education industry is one of the few where employees are not required to show up for work several months of each year.
I consider a teacher's income that which is earned for about 40 weeks per year. I do not consider this statement of fact anti-teacher. Nor am I trying to convince others that teachers make too much money. I am very supportive of year-round school and paying teachers accordingly. Perhaps they would join the rest of the work force and have vacations of 1,2 or 3 weeks a year rather than the 10 to 14 weeks (including holidays) which they are not on the job.
According to the University of Arizona the typical early career salary is about $50,000. Should an employee who works for approximately 40 weeks per year make the same annual salary as the employee who works for 50 weeks?
There is an argument the job of teaching is so important that the answer to the above question should be yes. I understand the burden we place on teachers and would like to see this important position expanded rather than limited to a three-quarter time responsibility.
Your support of teachers working year round is admirable. That would put educators on the same playing field as other college educated workers. Then salaries could be equally justified. Seems reasonable. School buildings would need to be updated to accommodate the year round concept. Think air conditioning installation and increased costs in keeping the buildings open year round; electricity, janitorial and other support staff, physical maintenance, heating cooling, transportation, etc, etc. Taxpayers and the States will happily and adequately fund the increase in operations. Family vacations might be harder to schedule, but hey, if you can't get the same 1-3 weeks off as the kids, you can always swing a long weekend around the holidays. The longer school year will help the kids adjust to the real working world. Perhaps the actual school day will be shortened, say 4-5 hours a day so the kids won't get burned out. After all, they ARE just kids, right? Teachers would appreciate having less instruction hours per day, and will have that extra time to grade papers, return parent calls, schedule parent meetings, tutor kids, prepare the lessons, projects, and classroom for the next day, have staff and principal meetings, and other after school activities, sports and clubs.
This is an interesting thread. I know a bit about the issue even though I live in Michigan.
Arizona schools recruit heavily in Michigan. In fact, at Eastern Michigan University, the largest teaching college in Michigan and, I think in the United States, about half of the recruiters at the job fairs are from Arizona (with New Mexico and Texas right in there as well).
The students are informed this is because Michigan has excellent and very rigorous teaching universities and Arizona has comparatively poor teaching programs in their universities. I do not know if that is true, but they are told this. In addition, Michigan has a reputation for being a high paying state for teachers. As a result, experienced teachers flock here from other states and make it next to impossible for graduating students to get jobs here. On top of that, Eastern ticked off the local union and the unions have pressured some schools into tossing Eastern resumes into the bin. (They also have some difficulty finding student teaching positions because of this.) Thus, Arizona schools can come in and hire excellent, well trained young teachers for low pay and they will have considerable recruiting success, at least in the short term. It is almost part of the EMU teaching program – graduate, go to Arizona get a few years’ experience, come back and get a decent paying job in Michigan. Kind of like an internship really – pays about the same too.
That brings us to my daughter. She graduated from Eastern with triple honors in music education. She studied the science of teaching extensively. She also had to study vocal and instrumental music and learn how to do it as well as how to teach it. During school she had no time for normal college pleasures (partying, sports, dating, hanging out) she worked constantly at her studies. She had almost no friends who were not in music because the program required her to be in the classroom, library, or practice rooms every waking minute. She is a very gifted vocalist with a beautiful voice and a talented instrumentalist. She can play about a dozen instruments competently and two or three at a performance level. She can teach pretty much every instrument, even those she cannot play. It took her five years to complete the rigorous study due to lack of availability of required classes and due to some special honors requirements. She borrowed over $30,000 for her education despite healthy scholarships and considerable support from Mom and Dad and a place to live from Grandpa.
She had three job offers, all in Arizona. All three were for less than $34,000 per year. She accepted a job at $31,000. Her best friend from school also accepted a job as a music teacher in the same school district.
She teaches music to 900 elementary school kids. That was not a slip of the key – NINE HUNDRED KIDS. They had not had a certified music teacher in that school for several years, so there was no program; she had to create one from scratch. Because she is a “special” at least she does not have to go through as much of the auditing, testing and other non-teaching B.S. the other teachers go through, but she also does not get all of the support they do. There is no music curriculum to follow, she had to make one. She also has to take a class and pass a test on the Arizona constitution within the next couple of years. (Which she has to do on her own time and pay for with all her extra money). I think she also has to take an ESL teaching class.
School gets out about June, starts again in August. She needs to be there a week early for preparation. She needed to come home for a spell this summer, but she will need to work most summers in order to keep up with student loan payments and cost of living increases since there will not be any meaningful raises. During the school year, she works 12 hours a day. I do not know why exactly, but she leaves around 6 a.m. and gets home around 7 p.m. Plus she plans and organizes on weekends and at night.
She does not have a classroom, so she pushes an old A.V. cart with her equipment on it from room to room (she will supposedly get a classroom this year and possibly a reduction to 600 or so students). She has to hustle, so, although it leaves her exhausted at the end of the day, she has improved her fitness by pushing that cart in a rush to 6 different classrooms each day. She sees each class once a week, six classes a day, five days a week. Then she has recess duty where she stands outside in 110 degree heat and supervises hordes of children, plus she is supposed to have some planning/preparation time where she fills out reports, grades, etcetera. She also meets with parents, and parent groups, attends mandatory teacher meetings . . . . She often eats lunch while walking to somewhere she is required to be. In addition, she plans and produces puts on concerts (for 900 kids – a lot of concerts), and teaches band after school. I think she gets a few hundred dollars extra for teaching band, it might be as much as $1500. At some point she also has to figure out what music to get and how to get it, where and how her kids can get instruments, plan field trips, participate in parent teacher conferences and other such things. Oh and then there is developing lesson plans, and overall program plan, dealing with discipline issues, learning on her own to appropriately handle special education students, and of course deal with the petty internal politics the education system is so famous for.
Since she is not yet 26, she stayed on my health insurance because the offered insurance is too expensive when all the co-pays, deductibles etcetera are factored in. Without my insurance, she would not be able to go to a doctor if she got sick, because she does not make enough to be able to cover her costs and still pay the co-pay/deductibles. I am pretty sure the school did not give her anything for declining the costly insurance they would otherwise provide (most employers do, but not schools). At least she does not have to pay union dues.
She has some students who do not speak English and she does not speak Spanish much (other students translate). Since the elementary school does not teach history, she tries to work some history into her music program. When she taught the kids the history and meaning of the Star Spangled Banner, she had a discussion of the revolution and the war of 1812. They had no idea. They were amazed she knew so many cool facts from times before she was born. The school also does not teach one of the other basic courses (science maybe? I cannot remember), but she tries to work some of that in too. Music crosses over into most other subjects.
Most of the teachers in her district are very young and inexperienced. The experienced ones try to help the young ones along as best they can. However there are no other music teachers in her school, only at other schools in the district.
For the most part the school district tries to treat their teachers decently within the boundaries of their authority and within the limits of the awful school politics that all teachers have to deal with. However she has about 2000 bosses all telling her what she should be doing and how to teach (parents, board members, administrators, other teachers). Remember this is the triple honors graduate of one of the best teaching colleges in the USA- if anyone is up to date on the current teaching practices and theories – she is (that is my pride, not hers. She is very humble about it and takes all the advice thoughtfully). She stresses out constantly because there is not enough time to teach the kids what she knows they need to know about music, history, mathematics, culture and all the other things that come with learning about music.
When dealing with the State, teachers are not treated with respect. They are treated with suspicion and if anything disrespectfully by education administrative personnel (many of whom know nothing about education).
Teachers are pretty much on their own. Most of their time is spent with students only. They get no meaningful feedback, no ongoing instruction. They are just thrown in with only a semester of student teaching (what other profession does that? First year engineers are not left to design a bridge on their own). They get exposed to every illness and disease known to man, but they have no time (or money) to go to a doctor if they get sick. Then of course there is the ever present risk of being falsely accused of physical abuse or inappropriate contact with a student, assaulted by unhappy parents or even students, verbally abused by parents and/or school board members (not to mention students, other teachers administrators). I am not sure of all the laws, but pretty sure a DUI means you are done teaching forever. I know if someone sees you pee in the woods on a camping trip and reports you, you are done teaching anywhere forever (you become a criminal sexual offender). The risk is high and the pay is. . . . Oh do they pay teachers?
So it is not surprising Arizona cannot hold onto the teachers they recruit from Michigan and elsewhere. It is also not surprising they do not get all that many highly qualified teachers willing to move thousands of miles to the desert and work at sustenance pay under very difficult conditions what little hope for advancement and no respect. So, they get a few well qualified inexperienced teachers temporarily, a lot of poorly qualified poorly educated teachers, a lot of unfilled teaching positions, and a few exceptions that are both well qualified and stay to become experienced teachers.
Her best friend/roommate could not take it after a year and returned to Michigan even though she has no job here. One of the other music teachers in her district also did not re-sign (and instead resigned) and left the State. Several other non-music teachers also left after a year or two. My daughter loves her school and her kids, and she is dedicated, so she signed up for another year (no raise, at least not that she mentioned). She is committed to staying for at least 5 years so she can build up a music program where the kids have had a full course of music education through elementary school. Music education is critical to developing certain types of thinking needed for math, science, logic, etcetera. She wants to make sure are least one group of students has the opportunity for a full four years of Music Ed before junior high school. But it is difficult.
She lived in a rented trailer this past year. She shared with her best friend and with scorpions and other pests. The first trailer roof blew off and the landlord put a blue plastic tarp over it. Heat, sound and some rain poured in. She moved out and the landlord kept the security deposit for breaking the lease. There went all of her savings (while a lot to her, it was not enough to be worth suing over). The next trailer was nicer, but had scorpions in it. She turned off the AC during the day to save money and roasted until the trailer cooled down in the evening. She has no money for extras. She has no time to go out and is not a partier anyway. Mostly she does school work at home and sings a little with a local group and occasionally looks for free stuff to do on weekends.
By the way. There is now a big push to pay McDonalds workers at least $15 an hour. That is about the same as she is making right now for a high stress, high risk job that requires a rigorous and expensive college education.
But hey, just keep thinking teachers are lazy, dumb, and overpaid.
The turnover is amazing. She told me how many leave her district in the first three years and it is huge (I do not recall but the number 50% + I think). A huge number of first year teachers from Michigan wind up in Arizona. A huge number return in a year or two. Many of them take jobs at lower paying private schools, inner city schools, or leave the profession rather than stay and work for peanuts under nasty conditions. My daughter may stay. She is both stubborn and dedicated and not one to walk away from a challenge, plus she adores her students and sees a lot of potential in them. On the other hand she is already frustrated and concerned about paying her student loans. I hope she will come home eventually, but I suspect I had best start looking for a car that gets better than 14 mpg so I can drive to Arizona more often.
Arizona has a teacher shortage. Michigan has a glut of teachers. A district with an opening here gets as many as 1200 applications, mostly from highly qualified, experienced teachers. Most Arizona school districts have positions that go unfilled. One of the two pays teachers better than most places and one less than most places. The difference and the impact should be obvious.
This sums up my entire music teaching experience as well here in AZ. After 8 years I said goodbye to my teaching job. With a Masters degree and 9 years of teaching experience I finally made it to $39,000. No more.
Not playing any "game" here. I suggest many employees in many fields work the same long hours as teachers. Teachers working 12 hours a day for 180 days? I live and work in a top school district here in MN. I see teachers arrive for work at 7:30 in the morning and almost all depart by 4. There are some teachers (e.g.,coaches, music teachers, driver's ed) who might work some nights and weekends. They of course, are compensated for this "extra" time. To suggest that all, even most, no, even many work 12 hour days is a bit of a stretch.
As a young man starting out in journalism I worked those long hours (and more) 6 days a week with 1 week paid vacation. I used to 'cover' school board meetings when teacher contracts were being approved after completed negotiations. I remember teachers saying it was a struggle to live on the starting $19,000 a year salary which did not include the added worth of the benefit package (this was in the Monterey area in the mid 1970s). At that time I was making $500 a month and no benefits. I worked in those conditions for several years before even coming close to that starting salary of teachers. I worked for at least a decade before I got a job where the employer helped pay for my health insurance. My benefits were not worse than many of my peers in other professions in that area. And yes, we all had 4 year college degrees and many of us had graduate work also.
I understand some teachers work 12 hour days, some work less. However, the education industry is one of the few where employees are not required to show up for work several months of each year.
Some high school music teachers and directors might get a small stipend for concerts, but in the elementary schools you get absolutely nothing. When you calculate the small stipend it is literally 2 cents an hour.
Teachers do not make enough money, in my opinion. In the district where I live, the various PTO's provide a lot of supplemental funding for various things at the various schools, but that is not an option at a lot of schools, which probably places even more pressure on the teachers who are there. At least the districts have learned to push the annual Tax Credit pretty hard. I'd love to see that credit expanded, actually. All we can do is keep voting for the various overrides and do the best we can to support our kids' teachers.
This is an interesting thread. I know a bit about the issue even though I live in Michigan.
Arizona schools recruit heavily in Michigan. In fact, at Eastern Michigan University, the largest teaching college in Michigan and, I think in the United States, about half of the recruiters at the job fairs are from Arizona (with New Mexico and Texas right in there as well).
The students are informed this is because Michigan has excellent and very rigorous teaching universities and Arizona has comparatively poor teaching programs in their universities. I do not know if that is true, but they are told this. In addition, Michigan has a reputation for being a high paying state for teachers. As a result, experienced teachers flock here from other states and make it next to impossible for graduating students to get jobs here. On top of that, Eastern ticked off the local union and the unions have pressured some schools into tossing Eastern resumes into the bin. (They also have some difficulty finding student teaching positions because of this.) Thus, Arizona schools can come in and hire excellent, well trained young teachers for low pay and they will have considerable recruiting success, at least in the short term. It is almost part of the EMU teaching program – graduate, go to Arizona get a few years’ experience, come back and get a decent paying job in Michigan. Kind of like an internship really – pays about the same too.
That brings us to my daughter. She graduated from Eastern with triple honors in music education. She studied the science of teaching extensively. She also had to study vocal and instrumental music and learn how to do it as well as how to teach it. During school she had no time for normal college pleasures (partying, sports, dating, hanging out) she worked constantly at her studies. She had almost no friends who were not in music because the program required her to be in the classroom, library, or practice rooms every waking minute. She is a very gifted vocalist with a beautiful voice and a talented instrumentalist. She can play about a dozen instruments competently and two or three at a performance level. She can teach pretty much every instrument, even those she cannot play. It took her five years to complete the rigorous study due to lack of availability of required classes and due to some special honors requirements. She borrowed over $30,000 for her education despite healthy scholarships and considerable support from Mom and Dad and a place to live from Grandpa.
She had three job offers, all in Arizona. All three were for less than $34,000 per year. She accepted a job at $31,000. Her best friend from school also accepted a job as a music teacher in the same school district.
She teaches music to 900 elementary school kids. That was not a slip of the key – NINE HUNDRED KIDS. They had not had a certified music teacher in that school for several years, so there was no program; she had to create one from scratch. Because she is a “special” at least she does not have to go through as much of the auditing, testing and other non-teaching B.S. the other teachers go through, but she also does not get all of the support they do. There is no music curriculum to follow, she had to make one. She also has to take a class and pass a test on the Arizona constitution within the next couple of years. (Which she has to do on her own time and pay for with all her extra money). I think she also has to take an ESL teaching class.
School gets out about June, starts again in August. She needs to be there a week early for preparation. She needed to come home for a spell this summer, but she will need to work most summers in order to keep up with student loan payments and cost of living increases since there will not be any meaningful raises. During the school year, she works 12 hours a day. I do not know why exactly, but she leaves around 6 a.m. and gets home around 7 p.m. Plus she plans and organizes on weekends and at night.
She does not have a classroom, so she pushes an old A.V. cart with her equipment on it from room to room (she will supposedly get a classroom this year and possibly a reduction to 600 or so students). She has to hustle, so, although it leaves her exhausted at the end of the day, she has improved her fitness by pushing that cart in a rush to 6 different classrooms each day. She sees each class once a week, six classes a day, five days a week. Then she has recess duty where she stands outside in 110 degree heat and supervises hordes of children, plus she is supposed to have some planning/preparation time where she fills out reports, grades, etcetera. She also meets with parents, and parent groups, attends mandatory teacher meetings . . . . She often eats lunch while walking to somewhere she is required to be. In addition, she plans and produces puts on concerts (for 900 kids – a lot of concerts), and teaches band after school. I think she gets a few hundred dollars extra for teaching band, it might be as much as $1500. At some point she also has to figure out what music to get and how to get it, where and how her kids can get instruments, plan field trips, participate in parent teacher conferences and other such things. Oh and then there is developing lesson plans, and overall program plan, dealing with discipline issues, learning on her own to appropriately handle special education students, and of course deal with the petty internal politics the education system is so famous for.
Since she is not yet 26, she stayed on my health insurance because the offered insurance is too expensive when all the co-pays, deductibles etcetera are factored in. Without my insurance, she would not be able to go to a doctor if she got sick, because she does not make enough to be able to cover her costs and still pay the co-pay/deductibles. I am pretty sure the school did not give her anything for declining the costly insurance they would otherwise provide (most employers do, but not schools). At least she does not have to pay union dues.
She has some students who do not speak English and she does not speak Spanish much (other students translate). Since the elementary school does not teach history, she tries to work some history into her music program. When she taught the kids the history and meaning of the Star Spangled Banner, she had a discussion of the revolution and the war of 1812. They had no idea. They were amazed she knew so many cool facts from times before she was born. The school also does not teach one of the other basic courses (science maybe? I cannot remember), but she tries to work some of that in too. Music crosses over into most other subjects.
Most of the teachers in her district are very young and inexperienced. The experienced ones try to help the young ones along as best they can. However there are no other music teachers in her school, only at other schools in the district.
For the most part the school district tries to treat their teachers decently within the boundaries of their authority and within the limits of the awful school politics that all teachers have to deal with. However she has about 2000 bosses all telling her what she should be doing and how to teach (parents, board members, administrators, other teachers). Remember this is the triple honors graduate of one of the best teaching colleges in the USA- if anyone is up to date on the current teaching practices and theories – she is (that is my pride, not hers. She is very humble about it and takes all the advice thoughtfully). She stresses out constantly because there is not enough time to teach the kids what she knows they need to know about music, history, mathematics, culture and all the other things that come with learning about music.
When dealing with the State, teachers are not treated with respect. They are treated with suspicion and if anything disrespectfully by education administrative personnel (many of whom know nothing about education).
Teachers are pretty much on their own. Most of their time is spent with students only. They get no meaningful feedback, no ongoing instruction. They are just thrown in with only a semester of student teaching (what other profession does that? First year engineers are not left to design a bridge on their own). They get exposed to every illness and disease known to man, but they have no time (or money) to go to a doctor if they get sick. Then of course there is the ever present risk of being falsely accused of physical abuse or inappropriate contact with a student, assaulted by unhappy parents or even students, verbally abused by parents and/or school board members (not to mention students, other teachers administrators). I am not sure of all the laws, but pretty sure a DUI means you are done teaching forever. I know if someone sees you pee in the woods on a camping trip and reports you, you are done teaching anywhere forever (you become a criminal sexual offender). The risk is high and the pay is. . . . Oh do they pay teachers?
So it is not surprising Arizona cannot hold onto the teachers they recruit from Michigan and elsewhere. It is also not surprising they do not get all that many highly qualified teachers willing to move thousands of miles to the desert and work at sustenance pay under very difficult conditions what little hope for advancement and no respect. So, they get a few well qualified inexperienced teachers temporarily, a lot of poorly qualified poorly educated teachers, a lot of unfilled teaching positions, and a few exceptions that are both well qualified and stay to become experienced teachers.
Her best friend/roommate could not take it after a year and returned to Michigan even though she has no job here. One of the other music teachers in her district also did not re-sign (and instead resigned) and left the State. Several other non-music teachers also left after a year or two. My daughter loves her school and her kids, and she is dedicated, so she signed up for another year (no raise, at least not that she mentioned). She is committed to staying for at least 5 years so she can build up a music program where the kids have had a full course of music education through elementary school. Music education is critical to developing certain types of thinking needed for math, science, logic, etcetera. She wants to make sure are least one group of students has the opportunity for a full four years of Music Ed before junior high school. But it is difficult.
She lived in a rented trailer this past year. She shared with her best friend and with scorpions and other pests. The first trailer roof blew off and the landlord put a blue plastic tarp over it. Heat, sound and some rain poured in. She moved out and the landlord kept the security deposit for breaking the lease. There went all of her savings (while a lot to her, it was not enough to be worth suing over). The next trailer was nicer, but had scorpions in it. She turned off the AC during the day to save money and roasted until the trailer cooled down in the evening. She has no money for extras. She has no time to go out and is not a partier anyway. Mostly she does school work at home and sings a little with a local group and occasionally looks for free stuff to do on weekends.
By the way. There is now a big push to pay McDonalds workers at least $15 an hour. That is about the same as she is making right now for a high stress, high risk job that requires a rigorous and expensive college education.
But hey, just keep thinking teachers are lazy, dumb, and overpaid.
The turnover is amazing. She told me how many leave her district in the first three years and it is huge (I do not recall but the number 50% + I think). A huge number of first year teachers from Michigan wind up in Arizona. A huge number return in a year or two. Many of them take jobs at lower paying private schools, inner city schools, or leave the profession rather than stay and work for peanuts under nasty conditions. My daughter may stay. She is both stubborn and dedicated and not one to walk away from a challenge, plus she adores her students and sees a lot of potential in them. On the other hand she is already frustrated and concerned about paying her student loans. I hope she will come home eventually, but I suspect I had best start looking for a car that gets better than 14 mpg so I can drive to Arizona more often.
Arizona has a teacher shortage. Michigan has a glut of teachers. A district with an opening here gets as many as 1200 applications, mostly from highly qualified, experienced teachers. Most Arizona school districts have positions that go unfilled. One of the two pays teachers better than most places and one less than most places. The difference and the impact should be obvious.
I saw quite a bit of this in Arizona. There was one particular charter school affiliated with one of the big state universities in AZ that did heavy recruiting in other states - particularly the cold ones. If they were telling Michigan teachers that their programs were the best, they were telling teachers in Minnesota and Montana the same thing. So, teachers moved from all of these midwestern and colder states to Arizona in order to work for $38K / year to start. Most of these teachers were young, 1st year teachers. I always wondered why they would leave their states and move to AZ by themselves to teach for two peanuts and a banana. I guess they enticed them with "warm weather". I hear that the Detroit area has a severe teacher shortage. I wonder why they don't seek jobs there. They could get their student loans excused and not have to move to a place where they make $38K to start.
Are you sure that the Union in MI would toss out resumes from EMU? It's not unions that do the hiring... it's the administrators and they're part of a different union.
It seems counter productive to punish the students, by not paying enough salary to get good teachers, while blaming the teachers for having a short work year that they had no part in creating.
I saw quite a bit of this in Arizona. There was one particular charter school affiliated with one of the big state universities in AZ that did heavy recruiting in other states - particularly the cold ones. If they were telling Michigan teachers that their programs were the best, they were telling teachers in Minnesota and Montana the same thing. So, teachers moved from all of these midwestern and colder states to Arizona in order to work for $38K / year to start. Most of these teachers were young, 1st year teachers. I always wondered why they would leave their states and move to AZ by themselves to teach for two peanuts and a banana. I guess they enticed them with "warm weather". I hear that the Detroit area has a severe teacher shortage. I wonder why they don't seek jobs there. They could get their student loans excused and not have to move to a place where they make $38K to start.
Are you sure that the Union in MI would toss out resumes from EMU? It's not unions that do the hiring... it's the administrators and they're part of a different union.
These new teachers move to AZ for a job in their field. Any job is better than no permanent job or subbing with no benefits. But low paying salaries may not keep them teaching here. Many move on to other states to teach or give up and return home. Jobs in MI are at a premium, and awarded to experienced teachers. Detroit Public Schools may have a shortage, but layoffs and budget cuts do not make it a desireable district to work in. They face layoffs at the end of each school year and may not make the 5 years it takes to qualify them for the student loan payoff. The metro Detroit area does not have a teacher shortage.
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Revamp the school year to justify a living wage
