This morning I was talking to my Dad about the pay that teachers receive in America. I keep hearing about the ridiculousness that is happening up in Wisconsin; way to go protesters, keep it up! I know this is probably a little dated for most netizens (by dated I mean 2 weeks), but my Dad hadn’t seen it so I thought it was worthy to share on zee blog (quoted from some dude on facebook):
Are you sick of high paid teachers? Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do – baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.
That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan — that equals 6 1/2 hours).
Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.
Now how many do they teach in day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.
LET’S SEE…. That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 peryear. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).
What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children
X 180 days = $280,800 per year.
Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is!
The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!)”
So I also decided to go out and check for some more information. First up and a mainstay for bashing ridiculous situation of news reporting in America. Here is a little bit of John Stewart on The Daily Show showing the contradiction between reporting about bailout money and Wall Street fat cat’s pay and reporting that teachers are being grossly over compensated.
I also found an infographic. I don’t know how I feel about infographics, because they are to actual research what soundbites are to real news reporting…just a lazy man’s way to consume basic information without understanding it. Although since I’m feeling lazy today I’m going to let myself fall into that trap.
Teachers Pay as a percentage of GDP - Go Korea!
Also just because I’m posting infographics might as well post this one that has been floating around the nets for awhile, even though it isn’t related to teachers pay I still felt it was important to disseminate this piece of knowledge. This infographic is about how much money stays in the pockets of the rich as a result of Continue reading →
