In case you're really as bitter as you sound, this is because a large number of those teachers spend their personal income on classroom supplies and decorations to improve the lives of their students.
They feel like they are doing a net good for society by basically donating their free time and their money to our public education system.
Where I was a teacher, $60k was the highest you could earn without a PhD. And it took 10 years to work your way up to that level.
EDIT: This was 5 years ago. I doubt teachers are making thousands of dollars more these days. My point is, the argument "teachers make so much money! What are they complaining about" is at best misinformed.
If you're hurting for money, try substitute teaching for 1 or 2 days and see what the difference is between a teacher's workday and your own. You'll probably take your less than $60k job over their most-likely-also-less-than-$60k-more-like-$30k-job
When I taught, I was working 10-12 hour days (some of this was due to my own inefficiency, and some of it was due to the massive inefficiency of the school in which I taught) and pulled in about $30k/year. Our salary schedule was such that the most I could earn without a doctorate was about $38k (after 20 years of experience).
That said, there are plenty of grant programs within schools. At least two of the districts in the city in which I live now have foundations set aside for things like this.
I am a teacher in private practice. I agree that teaching well is hard work. I also agree with others here that many teaching positions offer good pay (without necessarily requiring good-quality work, I might add). The pay is adequate for paying list price for many useful software products, and it compares well with the pay from many other occupations.
Yes, teachers have an extremely stressful typical workday, particularly if they have a subject that involves grading papers or if they have to deal with parents. I don't think anyone is disputing that they should be making decent money. However, that gives them no right to automatic discounts just because they happen to work for an educational institution. Obviously patio11 would prefer his own job. What does that have to do with it?
I am well acquainted with those numbers. I am also well acquainted with the salary schedule at her district (public record), and since her guild is religiously opposed to merit pay, I can tell you she was making $60k with a fair degree of certainty.
Total compensation of teachers usually is a higher percentage above their nominal salary than it is for most other workers. They tend to have better family medical benefits, MUCH better pensions (rather dubiously funded, but lavishly guaranteed with state constitutional protections in many states), and other fringe benefits not common in private enterprise. This varies from state to state (especially) and from bargaining unit to bargaining unit, of course. Most school districts do not bargain vigorously on behalf of students and taxpayers, but most teacher negotiators bargain vigorously indeed.
I'm surprised at some of what's being said in this string of replies as well as what's being upvoted. Not you in particular, but I want this to be seen by people in multiple child-threads and am posting here.
1. $60k is pretty much a ceiling for earning potential for many if not most teachers. It can take a long, long time to get there with no hope of going beyond.
2. My teacher friends universally make under 40k.
3. They often have to spend their own money on supplies to subsidize the lack of funds in the system.
4. Many if not most teachers work more than 70 hours a week during the school year when factoring in grading, meetings, correspondence, athletics, extra-curriculars, and other events.
5. Many teachers clean up urine and vomit, are verbally assaulted by students as well as parents, are in a vacuum absent any meaningful feedback on the quality of their work, and deal with customers who almost never fully appreciate the service until ten or twenty years later.
I could go on, but I'm not sure I understand how $60k as an typical top-end for a difficult and essentially important profession is inordinate and even less so how one can fail to see the need for supplemental funds in many cases to allow the teacher to fully do his or her job.
1. $60k is pretty much a ceiling for earning potential for many if not most teachers. It can take a long, long time to get there with no hope of going beyond.
$60k may be a ceiling for wage potential in many areas. It's not remotely close to their compensation potential, since teachers get quite a bit of their comp in the form of gold plated pensions rather than pay. In NYC, the starting compensation of a teacher is $60k/9.5 months work ($45k pay, $15k worth of pension). I'll cite a previous discussion where I did the math:
4. Many if not most teachers work more than 70 hours a week during the school year when factoring in grading, meetings, correspondence, athletics, extra-curriculars, and other events.
No. The average is about 39 hours/week during the school year.
Even if #3 is correct, I'm not entirely sympathetic.
In many trades, e.g., auto mechanic, it's standard practice for the worker to provide his own tools. That can easily come to a few thousand dollars.
Even as a software engineer (where my main development environment is provided by my employer), I spend a not-inconsiderable sum on additional tools that allow me to work more efficiently.
So if it's true that sometimes teachers need to kick in a bit, that's far from an aberration across the universe of employment.
ADDED:
5. Many teachers ... are in a vacuum absent any meaningful feedback on the quality of their work
Isn't this their own doing, at least as much as the teachers' unions are working to prevent any merit-based compensation system?
Mechanics have to buy their own oil? They have to pay for customers' washer fluid?
Do you pay for the stapler you use at work?
As for the vacuum comment, you are speaking to the collective. I'm talking about individual teachers, many of the best of which are harmed by the teachers' unions.
1. Future pensions aren't relevant to a discussion of present income vs expenses. At issue here is whether or not a teacher might reasonably be cash-strapped.
4. Many teachers work over 70 hours a week. Your data includes preschool and middle school teachers. It includes P.E. teachers. It includes awful teachers.
I can promise you that there are many excellent teachers easily passing that number on a regular basis. My two closest teacher friends arrive at school before 7:30am and often don't leave until 6pm. They work through lunch. They often have days where they don't get home until 10pm due to athletics or arts activities they are involved in. They each make less than 40k a year.
I have seen it first hand. It's common knowledge among those who are close to teachers.
Future pensions are completely relevant. A person earning $60k/year needs to save at least $10k of that for retirement. A teacher earning $45k/year does not. Besides, if a teacher really feels cash strapped, he or she has 2-3 months in which to earn more money.
For every teacher working 70 hours/week, there must be 7.75 teachers working only 35 hours/week (or 15.5 teachers working 37 hours/week, or some similar combination). To see this, observe that the BLS data I cited is capped below at 35 [1] and do some basic arithmetic. So at best, for every teacher working 70 hours/week, there are 7.75 teachers working 35 hour weeks.
