She got a job working in a corporate office for a big company. This is pretty typical of not-retail-worker-salary beating out public sector nine times out of ten.
Why would someone ever be a teacher for <50k? Anybody with an education background can move to Seattle, Washington (or other state close to big city pay) and be a corporate trainer and move up to a director level role and get paid many times what they would ever be paid as a teacher…
…except so many want to stay near family, not be near a big city, can’t move because of xyz, want a couple months off each year… etc etc etc.
To quote somebody: Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense.
Just isn’t that way today and there is a big political and economic mess in the way of getting there.
Educated young people overthrow governments. You do the math.
I would but there’s no teachers so I don’t know math
Mission accomplished
But maybe educated young people will join the govt a well, and make it better, so that we will not want to overthrow the govt.
That’s why we’re seeing the rise of private schools and an increase in cost. The forces that be want only the “right” people to be properly educated.
Uneducated people overthrow governments. Educated people involve themselves so they make a better, longer lasting, more stable and effective government in the long run.
There’s this consistent delusion that if we just burn everything down and start anew that this time it will all work out for the best.
It hasn’t worked for the past two millenia, it’s not going to magically work now. All it does is give rise to new fascist states.
The French revolution is far from the most well-regarded outcome, & yet, I think it was preferable to no revolution, at the time… I agree that having a knowledgeable populace is essential to social stability.
The French Revolution led to Napoleon.
It was nice to get rid of one set of autocrats… but it just led directly into another. Its not like they traded up.
It did lead to one, but he didn’t last forever, & again, I think it’s pretty hard to argue they were better off before than after.
Castro was a lawyer as was Lenin. Che was a medical doctor.
They also want children to learn, which is the biggest thing that draws them to the job and gets them to accept shitty pay.
Teachers should get paid way more than they do.
The mess is allowing decades of union-busting to be effective. Teachers in my state of Victoria are heavily unionised, so US$50k is the starting salary. You would absolutely be making what she is now, $64k, if you’d worked for 8yrs like she had.
Edit: And that’s just for public teaching jobs. Australia has way more private schools than the US and those pay even more. With 8yrs of experience it would be easy to get one of those positions and be making $70k.
Those salaries still sound far too low for a teacher, especially since, as I understand it, your dollar doesn’t buy you guys as much as our (US) dollar, or is that just in electronics and video games?
Either way, the vice principal in The Breakfast Club cites that he’s making $35,000 a year in 1985. I’ll assume that’s the higher end of the scale since he’s admin, and has been teaching for years at that point. The thing is that adjusted for inflation that $35,000 is closer to $87,000 today. It’s not just teachers either. No essential worker has had a raise since the early 1970s, in fact we’ve had pay cuts when you look at inflation, and expected productivity.
Edit: just noticed you specified US dollars, sorry.
It depends, some things are more expensive here. But for an example, Baldur’s Gate 3 retails at US$70 in the states, but US$57 (A$90) here. A brand new iPhone 15 Pro costs US$200 more here however.
The high end for a public school teacher is US$87k. But public school admin pays a lot more. The starting salary for an Assistant Principal is US$96k, and goes all the way up too US$147k on the high end for a Principal.
Finally, while we absolutely have a housing crisis going on, rent is still a lot cheaper here. I live in a three bedroom house in the suburbs of Melbourne. We have a backyard big enough for a few chooks, a dog and a cat. It’s a half hour’s train ride into the city centre. Our rental laws mean the landlord basically couldn’t say no to the animals. He also can’t terminate the lease without cause, and has limits on how much and how often the rent can be increased. We pay US$1260 (A$1955) a month. From what I’ve seen, it can cost $2000/month for a small apartment in a comparable city in the US.
Speaking of Unions actually, we have renter’s unions here that will help if you’re being fucked over and agitate for better rights. I pay A$12/year in dues and they’ve helped me out a few times when I’ve had a landlord trying to break the laws.
Sorry for the whole rant, I just have had people reply similarly before in a way that feels a bit dismissive. Thanks for the apology, and have a great day/night :)
Edit: Oh yeah, there’s also not having to spend money on essential medical care, that makes a big difference too.
Thanks for the breakdown. Sounds like you guys have it slightly better than we do, hopefully you can make some gains :)
I think I agree… but I’m sorry, I’m not used to using those items as a commodity value scale…
Can you express that as 18650 cells, please?
https://www.ausbatteries.com/product/1-x-panasonic-18650-lithium-battery
https://www.18650batterystore.com/en-au/products/panasonic-ncr18650b
For a set of 10 cells, you’re looking at A$150 (US$96) on the Aussie site, or US$89 on the American. Links are both for Panasonic NCR18650B cells.
Aw man, that’s just enough difference to make me notice.
Now I’ve got a weird question purely out of curiosity: Do you know of any makers of black denim cotton work jeans, in loose fit that isn’t stretch knit?
Wrangler & Levi seem to have decided that black jeans which fit over one’s thighs, are not important enough to make in all sizes anymore… ?
You: likes star trek enough to make it part of your identity
Also You: goes into a worker reform community to start shit, wastes people’s time as if you’re a Ferengi
Are you one of those Star Trek fans that hates how Queer they made Discovery too?
25 years ago in my suburban Chicago public high school district, my stats teacher brought out the teacher pay schedule for us to play with.
There were six columns:
Bachelors, bachelors+30, bachelors+60 Masters, masters+30, masters+60
The +30 or +60 refer to credit hours of additional college coursework
Each row showed the number of years of experience.
In 1998, the upper-left (fresh out of college, no experience) salary was around $38,500 or something.
The bottom right (masters+60 or doctorate, and 30 or 35 years of experience [I forget]) was $151,000. And they got a great pension (fatter than what teachers in IL starting now will get).
You also got a small multiplier for each extra curricular you ran.
We had mostly excellent teachers as a result. Couple of duds too, but that’s life. 70+% of graduating seniors went to college of some kind within two years. I believe I went to a good school.
But this is what happens when you fund schools through property taxes: the good neighborhoods get good schools, and it propels a virtuous cycle. The bad neighborhoods get bad schools, and they just spiral downward. It’s a dumb way to fund education.
Teaching needs to be a cushy, highly competitive job with entry pay starting at 100k a year. It needs to attract the very best and brightest.
I live in Oklahoma. I make $40k/year teaching. I can not afford the up front cost of moving to Seattle. Long term I’d love to end up in a corporate job, but because teaching is so shit and a lot of people are leaving, transitional jobs are difficult to find.
Seattle was just TFA’s literal job location.
You could move to Oklahoma City or Tulsa or something. If you can’t save a few grand to move anywhere whatsoever i’d suggest getting a second job a couple nights a week or over the summer during break to make enough to do so. It’s your livelihood anyway.
Today: What do you do when you need a new car to get to work and yours stops working from age? give up? walk many miles to work? assume the fetal position until death? I promise there is a possible way in this world to have enough to relocate, the only question is what you’re willing to sacrifice to get it done. My wife lived on rice and beans for months while she saved up enough to afford tuition which ultimately made her income go from a few hundred dollars a month in another country to a little over a thousand. She learned English on her own and got a job that was a two hour commute from her home and made even more money. Now she makes over double what you do. I’m not saying it’s easy, i’m not saying it’s fair, i’m just saying it’s possible.
The headline is really misleading. She now works for Costco corporate doing marketing training. The typical store employee is still around $18/hour.
This just in: Corporate jobs pay more than public school teaching jobs. Film at eleven!
The headline is really misleading. She now works for Costco corporate doing marketing training. The typical store employee is still around $18/hour.
Downvoting you, because you are mischaracterizing the article content.
The first half of it describes how she started there and the regular positions she had, before she moved up and into the teaching position she has at corporate office, which is similar to the teaching position she had before; both are of a teaching.
From the article…
At first, I made $18.50 an hour — a little less than what I earned as a teacher. I put in 40-hour workweeks, five days a week, and got a $1-per-hour raise when I hit 1,000 hours.
How TF am I mischaracterizing it? The teacher in this story got a pay bump by taking a marketing job with Costco corporate, not by working in the warehouse. The headline implies that she got a raise by working for her local Costco. That’s misleading.
Doing training in the corporate offices of a for-profit company is going to pay more than a school teacher. This shouldn’t be news to anyone.
Just because a person is “teaching” doesn’t mean it’s the same job for the same pay. Someone teaching scrum to a bunch of software engineers at Google is going to make a hell of a lot more than someone teaching kids about geography. The corporate teacher can frame themselves as leading to the company making more money and cutting costs, while the geography teacher is an expense to the tax payers and has to argue for the long-term good of an educated population, which is a much harder sell to people with short term thinking and limited resources.
School teachers often get physically and verbally abused by both parents and students, with the abusers getting little to no reprocussions. In a corporate environment that would get you fired or arrested.
Yes. But that’s not how salaries are determined. Based on that teachers and front-facing retail workers would be the highest paid jobs
Except that we have education requirements for teachers, and retail will hire just about anyone.
The reason teachers aren’t paid well is because we have a culture of funding public services like absolute shit. So despite low supply and high demand for teachers, we just keep adding more and more kids to each teacher, and giving them less and less supplies to work with. While letting wages stagnate.
People need to stop applying free-market thinking to our public services.
My school district is one of the few that pays a competitive wage to be private industry to their teachers in the U.S. The local teacher unions are extremely strong and have had numerous strikes over the years.
They unionized the non-certificated staff and they have gone on strike as well.
This past summer they were getting 100+ applicants for every open teacher position. Every open position is filled easily.
I assume not a conservative state, and in an area with affluent people?
Just because its obvious doesn’t mean its not also bullshit.
Education is the single most important thing affecting a societies longevity and well-being. If the people responsible for that education aren’t able to support themselves, it erodes the very foundation of the country.
Whether or not it affects the bottom line of an investment firm may be an important metric to you but it doesn’t necessarily mean what’s best for everyone.
I didn’t say it’s what’s most important to me, I’m just following the money.
Thats what most capitalists do, and is how we got into this mess in the first place.
Maybe stop looking at what makes the greatest fiscal value and you might start seeing why people are complaining about.
I get why people complain about it. I’m explaining it for people who complain who don’t understand why things are the way they are.
I agree that teachers are underpaid. You can stop acting like we’re enemies on this. Not everything has to be an argument.
Doing training in the corporate offices of a for-profit company is going to pay more than a school teacher. This shouldn’t be news to anyone.
And the first half of the article? When you keep describing again and again is the latter half.
The whole article is about somebody’s career profession change and advancement, not just change.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make with this distinction.
The important thing to remember is that she’s still a teacher. She’s just not teaching children anymore, since it doesn’t pay enough. This should be a wake up call to most people…
You are why downvotes should be more common on Lemmy. You’re grossly misrepresenting the article and story.
“Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce; they should be making six figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to it citizens, just like national defense.”
I hate how a 23 year old quote from the West Wing is still so relevant…
Next line that you left off speaks to that…still.
“That’s my position. We just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.”
That hits hard. Will we ever figure out how to do it here?
This might be the most memorable quote from the entire run of the West Wing for me. Our teachers are doing their job out of good will and our society is taking advantage of them because their value far outstrips what they are paid.
We’re several generations deep into a manufactured apathy meant to fragment and dilute any workers rights reforms
We stumbled into work from home due to the pandemic, but that genie will be put back in the bottle within 2 generations.
Robber barons never left, they just got smarter.
All of this is true,
instead of happening in schools for the advancement of knowledge,
it is happening in corporations for profits and egotistical power trips.
When I got sick Costco graciously moved me to a food prep and service position!
<_< That’s so great…
This is becoming more and more common overall.
An acquaintance of mine I met while working a help desk job: He was in process of getting his degrees to become a teacher, did so and taught high school math for 5 years. As much as he loved, and took pride in, the work he did with teens and making a difference, the continued stress of a bullshit administration (at 2 different schools and districts) took its toll. He left, becoming a corporate training (see, still teaching) and I’ve seen a marked difference in his attitude and life. He has less stress and a fatter paycheck.
Teachers shouldn’t be put though the wringer and not be expected to react. “There’s no workers shortage, just a shortage of slave labor” is more evident in their profession than any other (outside possibly food service).
You’re 100% right. My wife has a masters degree in education and spent 7 years as an English teacher with 3 very different types of schools in different districts. She left to be an instructional designer (with zero experience in that field) and nearly doubled her salary overnight.
If America wants to take education seriously they need to stop screwing over teachers.
America* does not take education seriously. This is evident from 50 years of Republican policy.
*legislators
No, America doesn’t take it seriously, not just legislators. There’s a significant chunk of the population that thinks public schools are evil and liberal factories to send kids to hell because they teach sex education and science.
If you don’t mind telling, how did she find an instructional design job? My wife is looking to make a similar transition. Any tips for trying to make the switch?
Honestly, it was a bit of luck.
We live in a larger city in the the Midwest. Looked on indeed frequently and applied for a position at a privately owned - medium/large sized company that is headquartered in our city.
In terms of experience they were looking for 3 years of design and course curriculum. My wife had more of that, just in a different industry. Also required a bachelor’s degree and she had a masters in education. A lot of overlap skills but different titles.
It also helped that her hiring manager and two peers on the team were former teachers as well. Luck was definitely involved.
They did request sample work before one of her interviews. She YouTubed a walkthrough on how to use a free instructional design platform and threw something together. A lot of the skills and platform knowledge she has now was self taught through Google and YouTube.
Good luck to you and your wife. Teaching is a challenging career.
Far-right media and muslim extremist are going hand in hand, blaming school of turning kids transgender. I cant believe I just wrote that sentence. Here in Canada and Québec, no one wants to work in school anymore because of those brainwashed idiots, and I dont blame them. You think school teachers have a agenda because they try to teach kids about having basic human decency? Then fucking school your kids at home and let’s see how that goes. I am fed up will all those idiots who chose to boycott their brain.
“Then fucking school your kids at home and let’s see how that goes.”
They are, and not well.
Not sure why you made a distinction between far-right and musilm (or any religion really) extremists. Those venn diagrams are practically circles.
Gotta shut them down.
This is less of a news report and more of an ad for Costco.
Bullshit jobs are paying better than shit jobs. Might be a sign corporations are sitting on most of the money.
Teacher in school makes half of what teacher in Costco makes sounds like endgame for scociety.
Actually, 2/3rds. If she’s earning 50% more, that means the previous wage was 100 and now is 150. 100 / 150 is 0.6666… or 66.66%, 2/3rds.
Sorry for the pedantism, but it’s the kind of math that needs to be correct to avoid misunderstandings.
Still an awfully sad thing, tho. Teachers should be paid the same as doctors, IMHO.
Aaaand the fact that a correction on this was even relevant… Oof
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Not sure this comment deserves downvoting. As a teacher (UK) I get 13 weeks off a year, which is pretty much all time off (no expectation to prep/mark). Private sector friends tend to get around 4-5 weeks max. Similarly, the pension is far better than private sector pensions.
Whilst I might be able to change career for more money, I’m not sure it would be a net benefit, even for 50% more.
That said, the “work time” as a teacher is fairly full on, at around 55-60 hours a week for me, so that’s some form of trade-off. You do have to like doing it!
Though the trade off with all that holiday is that… Going on holiday during that time is like 4x more expensive! 😭
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You are not paid for summers. This is a very common misconception. You essentially agree to give them an interest free loan every paycheck and they give you that money back during the summer as a “service” to you. And usually you are spending that time doing professional development or a second job.
If anyone here lives in California, please express your support for AB-938. It increases teacher pay and attempts to maintain it at an inflation adjusted level.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB938
Let you assembly person know we need this now.
c/aboringdystopia
This reads like a bad ad.
Because it’s basically right wing propaganda very subtly pushing the message that we should privatize education and that corporations are good
Then it failed, because it made me want to nationalise education completely and make it free of charge, and to give teachers immense salaries
welcome to costco, i love you
Good thing us Lemmings read more than just the headline, right? Right??
Top comment says NOOOOOOO
An inspiration, all teachers should do this!
Not only that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more job satisfaction in retail than teaching. Teaching in the US is a dog, and I’m frankly amazed they haven’t already run out of teachers.
You also didn’t read the article, at all - clearly
Yeah, you got me
Not just the US.
If enough teacher leave, maybe we’ll start to pay them more
Some states? Maybe. Georgia (as mentioned in the article), likely not. There has been a continual war on education in the US and we see it on display every election cycle.
Despite their best efforts (including paying teachers in red states poverty wages), those who would keep us dumb and scared are frustrated to find a new generation that doesn’t give a fuck about division along arbitrary demographic lines and is increasingly aware of class warfare.
This drives further education cuts and cries from extremist/hate motivated groups to further crack down on our schools because these parents are so weak willed as to be offended by diversity and critical thinking.
I hope these are the last dying wails of this kind of hatred and ignorance, but I’m not taking that for granted. Vote, educate, and promote solidarity and unity at every opportunity because the shitheels who are on the other side will fight tooth and nail to destroy education funding and cut down our teaching corps.
Edit: How a teacher of eight years experience is making $47k a year is a travesty.
Florida’s approach was just to give anyone with a police or military background a teaching license.
They won’t up teacher pay. They’ll just hire shittier teachers because the primary highlight of public education is that it is free daycare for their exhausted, working parents.
Oklahoma is doing the same. My first year I was teaching the other “teachers” the material they were expected to teach students.
Nah, the only people that will still be teaching will be ideological extremists and people that want to hang out with children for other reasons.
Oof…you’re probably right to a degree. And that will make culture war polarization even worse when it comes to what is taught in public schools. It will be a sad state of things, when the majority of teachers are mere activists.
As I understand it, the problem with teacher pay is with corruption in the school system, not the schools themselves not getting enough money. They have plenty of money, but they’re still not paying their teachers well.
They’ll just shut down the schools
Well thats depressing
