$45,276. Average teacher pay in OK

180 number of days of required instruction per year

$251.33 Average pay per day

260. Number of days you work if you work a 40 hour week all year long

$65,345.80. Salary a teacher in OK would make if he/she worked 260 days.

Seems like a reasonable salary to me.

Teaching outside of the union strongholds has always been a lower paying job. Don't bitch to me if you aren't happy with your career choice. Change jobs and do something else. Go to night school and change careers.

In most school systems if you go to school and get the next higher degree you automatically get a raise. It doesn't matter if it made you a better teacher, you get the raise. The biggest scam is the pension. Most are calculated on the average of the last 3-5 years pay rate. That is why you see so many career teachers suddenly profess an interest in being a principal. The pay raise is usually substantial.

And, who decided it was necessary for a kindergarten or elementary school teacher to have a college degree or especially a master's? Another treat brought to you by the unions.

It is all a crock of shit and the end product is crap.

Mark

quote:

School system tests well on standardized tests so they rank fine, but they teach to the tests and kids don't really learn. Soon as standardized testing is done its movie time.

How does "teaching to the test" work? Am I supposed to have SAT answers somewhere that I should be handing out to the students? Where do I get them?

What I DO have are state-mandated competencies, such as being able to factor a polynomial with a leading coefficient of 1 (e.g. x^2 + x - 72). That's what I teach. Are you suggesting I teach something different? If so, what?

As to "movie time", I will admit to showing a single 5-10 minute Khan Academy video every couple of months to emphasize a concept, but my projector usually stays off in favor of the white board.

I'm new to this gig, so I welcome your constructive suggestions.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
As suspected, the NEA grabbed misleading data. Oklahoma is #6 most affordable state (#5 cost of living and #6 housing cost) so it makes sense that their salary is below the median.

Danmit! Don't you dare bring common sense to bear in this topic! Liberals equality and all that...

quote:

Originally posted by Herknav:

quote:

School system tests well on standardized tests so they rank fine, but they teach to the tests and kids don't really learn. Soon as standardized testing is done its movie time.

How does "teaching to the test" work? Am I supposed to have SAT answers somewhere that I should be handing out to the students? Where do I get them?

What I DO have are state-mandated competencies, such as being able to factor a polynomial with a leading coefficient of 1 (e.g. x^2 + x - 72). That's what I teach. Are you suggesting I teach something different? If so, what?

As to "movie time", I will admit to showing a single 5-10 minute Khan Academy video every couple of months to emphasize a concept, but my projector usually stays off in favor of the white board.

I'm new to this gig, so I welcome your constructive suggestions.

Have no idea how the school system where you are works (or doesn't), but here in Florida, children as a majority must pass a set of standardized tests or the school they attend does not received full funding in the coming year. Numerous times during my son's high school career, classes were dropped all together from the curriculum (he was one of the last to be able to take Calculus) because students couldn't pass certain sections of the math test, so the local school board simply revised the test(s) to exclude that information and related classes. Voila, instant passing grades and full funding for the schools.

JALLEN is on the right track, as is this article, in that public education has far outlived its usefulness or value. Its way past time to try something completely new.

^^^^^^ Its closer to a 4 day work week.

Factor in holidays, fall break, Christmas break, spring break.

Most of the teachers are back to work in the classroom. What you're seeing in the news,in my observation and opinion, are the super liberal socialist rabble rouser troubles makers. There are rumors that some of those you see are not Oklahoma credentialed teachers, they are rumored to be out of state for hire protesters.

quote:

Originally posted by mark_a:
Don't bitch to me if you aren't happy with your career choice. Change jobs and do something else. Go to night school and change careers.

They won't get any sympathy from me either. There isn't one of them who didn't know the salary they'd be earning when they chose it as a career. Yet they chose it as a career anyway. You don't like it? Do something else for a living.

I'm curious where they get the "average salary" of $46K. If you go buy the minimums (and our district pays at the minimum), the "average" teacher would have to have a PhD and 25 years of experience. (There are no raises after 25 years.) I'm told that average includes administrator's salaries, but I can't confirm it.

You can talk all day long about what teachers do/do not deserve to make. One fact I did not see mentioned is that Oklahoma will graduate right at 300 teachers this year. Balance that with the fact that ~350 are leaving the profession each month, and you can see that teacher pay is below market value. There's a lot of gray hair in my building. Old teachers are staying until retirement, but new teachers are not plentiful.

Nobody wants their own taxes raised, and almost nobody cares enough to do anything to find and remove the waste in the system. Thus, we are at a stalemate. We are already struggling to attract qualified teachers, and that problem isn't forecast to get better.

As OKCGene said, a lot of the schools are back in session. Some never walked out. A lot of the big schools are still out.

Don't assume that because someone is a teacher, they are a Communist.

Thought question--The article offers food for thought, and I'm all for the free market. However, if tatortodd gets his way, what do you do about the kids whose families can't/won't pay for their education? We already have families who don't feed their kids.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:

quote:

Originally posted by Herknav:

quote:

School system tests well on standardized tests so they rank fine, but they teach to the tests and kids don't really learn. Soon as standardized testing is done its movie time.

How does "teaching to the test" work? Am I supposed to have SAT answers somewhere that I should be handing out to the students? Where do I get them?

What I DO have are state-mandated competencies, such as being able to factor a polynomial with a leading coefficient of 1 (e.g. x^2 + x - 72). That's what I teach. Are you suggesting I teach something different? If so, what?

As to "movie time", I will admit to showing a single 5-10 minute Khan Academy video every couple of months to emphasize a concept, but my projector usually stays off in favor of the white board.

I'm new to this gig, so I welcome your constructive suggestions.

Have no idea how the school system where you are works (or doesn't), but here in Florida, children as a majority must pass a set of standardized tests or the school they attend does not received full funding in the coming year. Numerous times during my son's high school career, classes were dropped all together from the curriculum (he was one of the last to be able to take Calculus) because students couldn't pass certain sections of the math test, so the local school board simply revised the test(s) to exclude that information and related classes. Voila, instant passing grades and full funding for the schools.

JALLEN is on the right track, as is this article, in that public education has far outlived its usefulness or value. Its way past time to try something completely new.

Herknav, I live in Texas and it clearly says so at the bottom of every post but you don't state where you live.

I have dozens of teacher friends. Texas has standardized tests (affects school funding and moving to the next grade), and the curriculum teaches to the standardized tests. At the end of the school year, there are still school days left and in most classrooms it becomes movie time since the curriculum is over. One of my friends teaches high school chemistry and she tries to get friends who are engineers such as myself to come in or call in and talk about interesting applications of chemistry in the real world. I've called into her class room from Alaska before to talk about some of the applications of chemistry in oil & gas (e.g. using the periodic table for galvanic series corrosion).

quote:

Originally posted by Herknav:
Nobody wants their own taxes raised, and almost nobody cares enough to do anything to find and remove the waste in the system. Thus, we are at a stalemate. We are already struggling to attract qualified teachers, and that problem isn't forecast to get better.

The point of people with school age children paying for schools is they would have more of a vested interest in getting rid of the waste since it'd hit them more.

quote:

Originally posted by Herknav:
Thought question--The article offers food for thought, and I'm all for the free market. However, if tatortodd gets his way, what do you do about the kids whose families can't/won't pay for their education? We already have families who don't feed their kids.

They would still go to a taxpayer funded school just like they do now (their parents aren't paying property taxes now) but the only people paying for the schools would be people with school age children. Just like your feed your kids example, there are more feed the poor programs than you can shake a stick at. The challenge won't be paying for the indigent's education, but like feeding the poor the challenge will be keeping the local, state, and federal government from creating dozens and dozens of overlapping, inefficient, corrupt programs run by multiple agencies.

It is not expensive to teach children, but it's ridiculously expensive to have a large education bureaucracy. It takes a room, some supplies, an educator, involved parents, and an education standard to teach children. I'm not against teachers, and I'm not against students. I'm against the education bureaucracy and teachers unions that have been living off the teat of the taxpayer.

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:

quote:

Originally posted by ASKSmith:
This is what is happening locally.

We have a HUGE influx of refugees into our community. The majority don't work. They drive nicer cars than I can afford. They are buying houses at an alarming rate. Most aren't even on the market for a day. They move 3-4 families into "single family dwellings", yet send all their kids to public schools, but only pay school taxes based on one dwelling. Some of these kids can't speak English, and most of the parents don't. From what I am seeing, the few that do work, work for families, and get paid cash. No taxes like the rest of us.

How do we fix this?

find that house, report them and deport them

Refugees can’t be deported very easily if at all.

I never put my location because it changes a lot. Right now, I'm in OK.

I guess what I'm hearing you say is that teachers are teaching the curriculum they are given (i.e. doing what their boss(es) told them to do). This gets to the crux of the problem in JALLEN's article--too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

What I DO have a problem with in your story is the ceasing of teaching after the test. My school doesn't do that. OK got rid of end-of-year tests a few years back, and we measure ourselves on the ACT or SAT. Good on your friend for geting outside speakers, but I don't know why you wouldn't try to teach them something (the other examples you mentioned).

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
The point of people with school age children paying for schools is they would have more of a vested interest in getting rid of the waste since it'd hit them more.

You'd think, but the vast majority of outrage seems to spent on social media rather than making anyone find waste. DHS lost $30M last year, and everybody just shrugs.

I based my thought question on your statment:

quote:

Better yet, send their paychecks to those of us without school age children who are fleeced out of thousands every year for zero benefit.

I thought you were saying "privatize it all" and walk away. You seemed to be saying you didn't see a community benefit to having educated people--at least not one worth contributing to. I wasn't sure if your universal private schools would be mandatory or not. As there seems to be a not insignificant number of parents that can't/won't take care care of their kids, that prompted the question.

quote:

(their parents aren't paying property taxes now)

Actually, they are--unless their landlord is not smart enough to pass that on in the rent charge. Having rented in Texas, I can assure you that mine were smart enough to do so.

quote:

I'm not against teachers, and I'm not against students.

I never said you were.

quote:

I'm against the education bureaucracy and teachers unions that have been living off the teat of the taxpayer.

On that, we can agree. Thanks for the dialogue.

quote:

Originally posted by Herknav:

quote:

(their parents aren't paying property taxes now)

Actually, they are--unless their landlord is not smart enough to pass that on in the rent charge. Having rented in Texas, I can assure you that mine were smart enough to do so.

You keep thinking like a responsible adult that pays his own way (it's a good thing and I'm not criticizing). However, when you're trying to fix something where the government has gotten involved you have to realize that they've been dis-incentivizing personal responsibility since the 1960s and they have a legion of followers voters to show for it. Your rent going to your landlord who pays property taxes is a great example. Who do you think pays property taxes for a section 8 apartment complex? Section 8 is just 1 federal program and there are more state and federal programs (i.e. the swamp is deep and wide).

I find it amazing that no matter where I live, the teachers and schools always need more money, no matter how good or poorly the job they are doing.

It's almost like there is no relation between the money spent and the performance of the schools.

Also, half of any population will ALWAYS be below average in pay, performance, funding, etc.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:

Home values are imaginary until you sell.

Well, sort of. But if I may make a bit of a stretch... A community with higher home values are usually much nicer places to live, less poverty, less scumbags, cleaner overall. So while the monetary benefit of your home value isn't really the issue (buying and selling is more money) the overall quality of life is better in places with good schools. As far as teaching to the tests etc, well people flock to places with higher rank. They likely don't pay attention to the actual learning.

I love how the teacher's unions will be the first to cry out about the "NRA buying politicians". the NRA donated about one million to all levels of political candidates.

Yet the teacher's union spent over 32 million going to almost exclusivly Democratic candidates.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/r...h-dues/#60d9b1c94de2

So who is buying the politicians? the school systems in the country continue to falter. In my town, my tax bill is 80 percent towards the school system and enrollment hasn't climbed but dropped,