The Herritage Foundation thinks I'm overpaid.

According to this report, sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, et al., teachers are overpaid.

Here is an analysis from Time magazine via Yahoo News that summarizes the report. The claim that teachers are overpaid is based upon the following assumptions:
1) Teachers have lower cognitive ability-- or to put it another way, IQs.
Really? I'll put my IQ up against that of Joseph Coors (one of the original founders of the Heritage Foundation) any day. And I know plenty of mentally negligible people who work in the brewing industry.

2) Public school teachers get paid more than private school teachers.
Right, and private school teachers also are often not certified, or many of them would teach in the public schools.

3) People entering teaching from other fields get an average 9% raise over the pay from their previous job.
How does this prove anything other than the fact that people indeed usually try to move into a new profession in order to make more money than in the profession they are leaving behind?

Apparently, they also calculated "vacation" into the benefits that makes teachers over paid. There's always that misconception hanging out there. So let me try to explain this simply: Teachers get NO paid vacation. Part-time UPS drivers get more paid vacation than we do. We have unpaid summer breaks, during which times many teachers work second jobs or work for free on planning and preparation for the upcoming school year.

The whole thing is laughable.

One reason why I oppose merit pay plans

Last week I received my final evaluation of the year. My administrator saw me juggle a class with various learning disabilities, conduct a class discussion that encouraged participation-- even the young lady with social anxiety disorder spoke up once-- deal with two interruptions, and if I do say so, it all went very well.

This AP was very complementary as we discussed his visit. He highlighted specific strategies I used, noted the help I have given colleagues, committees upon which I have served and activities I have done with my students on my own time. It was really very nice, and I appreciated the fact that he had been paying attention and was very nice and collegial.

But....
When the written record was handed to me, it did not reflect any of those specifics of which he was aware and about which he had been so complementary. First of all, the highest level of evaluation for each specific behavior on our evaluation forms is "meets expectations." And I am fine with that, under our current system.

But the administrators have been warned to only use a canned list of comments for the individual comment section, and they are so bland they make pureed baby food seem as exotic Thai cuisine. "Ms. Cornelius helps her colleagues when it is needed...." "Ms. Cornelius has an orderly classroom...." "Ms. Cornelius engages her students using a variety of strategies...." Administrators are not supposed to put praise in writing, in case, at some later point, the administration should wish to fire me. Because, at least here in the Land Between the Coasts, the teacher unions are not that powerful.

And this is another reason why I oppose merit pay being implemented. Administrators would have even more pressure put on them not to put praiseworthy-- and raise-worthy-- evaluations in writing, because it would cost the district money. Meanwhile, I would be expected to give up my annual adjustments, and after reading some of my friends' blogs from California and New York, I am grateful that I even get those. Don't sit there and tell me because my principal acknowledges my hard work verbally that that would translate into any cold hard cash, especially in this tight and uncertain economic climate.

Now I'm not complaining about my evaluation-- at least not under this system. I get why it is the way it is. But I also understand that these evaluations do not literally reflect my efforts as a teacher. And given that I am not a snivelling sycophant to the higher ups, merit pay would be a big fat zero for me. I think I like my bird in the hand, thanks just the same.

The stagnation of teacher salaries

For a while there, the Cornelius household has been contemplating a return to the beloved home state. I began to surreptitiously investigate school districts back home.

Then I told my husband he'd better make a whole lot more money back there.

If I moved back to Oklahoma, EVEN ASSUMING that they gave me credit for all my years of experience, I would take nearly a thirty thousand dollar pay cut.

Thirty! Thousand! Dollars!

A year!

And probably more, since most districts do NOT give full credit for experience. I mean, that's an entire beginning teacher's salary, which, accoding to a report out from the American Federation of Teachers, averages $31,753.

Now look, I never thought that I would get rich at this gig, nor am I really interested in getting rich. I'd like to be able to afford to send my kids to college, though (let me assure you that teacher pay has not kept up with the rising price of college, either).

Here are a few interesting facts from the post at AFT's Let's Get It Right blog:

The average teacher pay in 2005 was $47,602. Beginning teacher pay was $31,753.

Average and Beginning wages didn’t keep pace with inflation in 2005.

Real salaries for experienced teachers in the largest cities rose by less than 1 percent in 2006. Average raises for beginning teachers were up by 1.3 percent.

Between 1995 and 2005 real pay in the private sector rose by 12.7 percent. Real beginning teacher pay rose by 3.3 percent. Average teacher pay rose by 1 percent.

When compared to professions requiring similar education, real teacher pay rose by less than 1 percent over the five years 2000-2005. Pay for other professions rose by more than 6 percent.

A beginning teacher with the average student loan burden could expect to spend almost 9 percent of her take home pay on loans in 2006.

In 15 of the 50 largest cities in America a mid-career teacher can’t afford the median priced home.

Let me point out a few facts. In this 2004 article from San Francisco,

... home ownership in San Francisco is almost completely out of reach for teachers in the city. According to the California Budget Project, it takes a monthly income of $10,308.08 to buy a median-priced home in the city, but a teacher makes just $4,160.75.

California school districts such as San Jose Unified, Santa Clara Unified, San Diego Unified already have programs to help teachers afford housing near where they teach. My sister taught in the San Diego area, and still could not afford a home, nor even rent.

Now, here in the vast Land Between the Coasts, the situation in not THAT dire, but salaries have certainly been stagnating in the last few years. And if you live in a so-called "Right to Work" state, chances are that teachers lack the ability to officially engage in collective bargaining. All it takes is one confrontational superintendent to be hired, and districts around here can change the terms of teachers' contracts at will.

It's not so much about me, either. I reached the top of our district's salary scale this year, and got a very lovely increase in salary from moving up a step (add in the fact that we no longer have to pay child care for the first time in thirteen years, and it seems like we've just become Enron execs, figuratively speaking. How wonderful that college is just around the corner!). But I worry about those teachers in the middle as well as those at the bottom.

There's a lot of noise made by a certain sector of the population about how teachers are lazy and overpaid-- John Stossel has been a prominent mouthpiece for this viewpoint. Here's the basic story: teachers don't work an 8 hour day, teachers get three months of vacation, and two weeks at Christmas, and Spring Break too.

Let me explain this gently: teachers spend 6.75 hours each day, with a 22 minute lunch, followed by an average of an hour to an hour and a half of unremunerated work spent planning lessons and grading papers, including time spent on weekends. Teachers do not even have the ability to go to the restroom when the need arises.

In the state in which I live, teachers are pretty much required to have a master's degree after teaching for six or so years. My school district did not pay for my master's degree-- I was expected to pay for it myself. My husband's company has paid for him to earn one master's degree and two graduate certificates, and they would pay for him to go to law school, if he should so desire.

Teachers do not get ANY paid vacation. We are paid over the summer with money we earned during the school year.

I am here because I love teaching and helping students. I enjoy their sense of humor, I enjoy watching the spark of understanding in their eyes. I know lots of teachers who feel the same way.

The least we can expect is to be able to have a hearth and home while we labor to educate young minds and often heal wounded souls as well.

Come on and take a free ride; Come on and take it by my side!

(Deep breath.) I must speak.

It's that time of year when many teachers' bargaining units and school district suits are engaged in a cagematch regarding next year's compensation for the teaching staff. In most parts of the country, we are seeing belt tightening, school districts crying penury, teachers trying to maintain decent health insurance, and the like. I keep hearing about the growing economy, but somehow it never trickles down to the working schmoes, especially those who, as Sir Elton would sing, "farmed in schools that were so worn and torn."

So the salary schedule for next year has been released. To cut to the chase: some of us are getting a raise next year, and some of us are not. But what ripped it for me was listening to a bunch of guys who are not members of our professional organization do nothing but yelp in the hallways over the proposed contract. Their angry and even petulant comments ran along the lines of this actual quote: "Look what the wonderful union did for us!" and swirled around that theme for a week now and counting.

I fully support anyone who doesn't want to join a teacher's professional organization. But since the gripers do not belong to the organization, how can they complain about what it did or did not do for them? I belong to my professional organization simply because I believe teachers need bargaining power. I do not agree with the national organization on several political points, nor do I agree with them on many professional issues. But if I leave, who will speak out against some of these positions I find ignorant, ridiculous, or just plain wrong? Our local organization is very moderate politically because like-minded people such as myself keep on pushing for that moderation.

Negotiation has won us the benefits we all enjoy-- some of us enjoy these benefits for free. Bargaining is the prime thing unions and professional organizations should do-- and yes, it would be great if the national honchos would stick to that without alienating a lot of my colleagues (and often, me) with their activities that have only a tenuous connection to the concerns of education. I have shared with you before about how I would probably be lacking a college education, much less graduate degrees, if it had not been for union-negotiated wages my daddy earned even though he was a high school drop-out.

Unions are all that have kept working people and even professional people like teachers from being treated as serfs. Don't believe me? Go back through history and look at some of the compensation and working conditions which were the norm when our parents or grandparents' generations taught. One of the most astoundingly ironic political magic tricks of the 20th century has been the bewitching of employees to believe that they don't need a bargaining unit.

Unions and professional organizations would be more powerful if they would stay focused on that task. Undoubtedly true.

Don't join the teachers' organization if you want. But then don't wonder at why our bargaining power is reduced. Consider the dues money you so smugly and cleverly "saved" to be your raise. Some of these kvetchers are proponents of the philosophy of "Vote or shut up," and they sat on their thumbs this election. The school district can count heads. Sit out the battle if you want, chicken-hawks.

But don't complain to me about that which you have not expended any treasure to receive, sirrah. I am an officer in our professional organization, and I am still working for you. For free.