Across the country, teachers give up some of their earning power when they decide to enter their noble profession. Arizona tops the list in earning losses: 36.4 percent.
We’re Number 1! We’re Number 1! We’re Number . . . Oh wait, that’s not a good thing.
According to an analysis in the Money section of Time, on average, teachers earn 18.7 percent less than other college grads working full time, factoring in education, age and years of experience. If you consider teacher’s benefits, which are higher than in the private sector, the gap goes down to 11.1 percent.
But all pay gaps are not created equal, as we learn in the article’s “Teacher Pay Penalty, State-By-State” chart. Scroll way, way down to the bottom, past Oklahoma, past North Carolina, and you get to Arizona, where teachers earn 36.4 percent less than people of similar education, age and experience.
Do you teach in Arizona? If so, slash a-third-plus-3-percent off your earning power.
I don’t know the answer to this one, maybe a reader does: What are the average earnings of the members of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce who fought the Invest in Ed initiative all the way to the state Supreme Court and won, knocking it off the ballot?
This might help. If Invest for Ed passed, it wouldn’t cost a penny for an individual making less than $250,000 in taxable income — that’s more than five times the average Arizona teacher’s taxable income — or $500,000 for a couple filing jointly.
Something tells me, the moneyed interests that denied the tens of thousands of RedforEd supporters who walked across the state gathering signatures in the Arizona heat the right to have voters decide the fate of their initiative can afford a few extra tax dollars. To put it another way, the quarter-to-half-to-full-out millionaires can afford a small tax hike far better than teachers can afford to meet the cost of their basic needs like housing, food, clothing and child-related expenses at their current salaries.
I’ll lay odds that Arizona teachers spend more money to buy supplies so students can get something like the education they deserve than most $250,000-plus earners would have paid in added taxes if Invest in Ed passed.
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 5, 2018.
Your first statement is a broad brush assumption. There are some teachers earning far more than they are worth. We all know some of them.
It was pointed out to you earlier, David, that trying to turn RedforEd into a partisan cause was a bad idea. It was a bipartisan movement for improved teacher wages. I know Rs and Ds (and Independents and Greens) who supported it.
What is the best way to destroy the momentum and smash the unity? Try tying RedforEd to attempts to flip the governorship and push through a funding proposition that looks socialist to the Rs. Exactly what was done by you and some of your sadly strategically incompetent fellow travelers, who evidently did not have enough expertise (or was it honesty?) to come up with a non-partisan, broadly popular funding mechanism and to write the proposition in a way that would not get it thrown out.
Meanwhile, mum was the word among you about how TUSD applied its RedforEd funds, which had no hope of using the massive infusion of economic power to target the districts troubling teacher vacancy problems and actually improve the quality of EDUCATIONAL services to students in our largest local public school district.
Looks to me like your collective Southern Arizona Dem education policy agenda and strategy are bankrupt and jumping on one of your shoddy, ramshackle bandwagons (123, Invest in Ed, etc.) will never get us where we need to go.
And it looks to me like “Poor strategy produces poor results” is so smart that she or he should be writing those propositions and suggesting funding mechanisms instead of just being a critic on the education page.
That said, this is about the third time that I have heard broadly snarky comments implying never ending corruption about the way that the RedforEd funds were spent by TUSD. What exactly was wrong with the way those funds were spent? At the meeting teachers, bus drivers, social workers and others made a very strong argument that those funds should be spread to all of those who work with students. If the commenter doesn’t think that social workers, nurses and bus drivers, cafeteria workers and others don’t add to the quality of EDUCATIONAL services to students in our largest local public school district, they are sadly mistaken. I am certainly not unaware that Call to the Audience dog and pony shows are quite common, but was teacher commitment to this spending plan (which, after all, reduced their own benefits from the money) not authentic? Red forEd is a movement that benefits us all by benefiting all of the people who work with our kids. Perhaps more specifics and less broadside criticism would be helpful here?
“the gap goes down to 11.1 percent.” — factor in summers off, winter break, fall break, spring break, more paid holidays than the private sector, it starts to look even better.
Now I know teachers work hard and are underpaid and I’d personally support additional taxation to give them a raise because then we’d attract better teachers and I think that’s important and their job is incredibly important.
But in the end, taxpayers have nixed that idea with their votes. And the great thing about a free market is it’s free. Teachers are free to pursue recapturing that 11.1 percent pay gap by pursuing another profession if they want to. If they did so en mass, salaries would go up to cover the shortage.
Non-teachers are also free to get qualified and pursue the noble profession of teaching while giving up some dollars.
Personally I don’t find increased teacher pay worth the other things that would come with a Democratic governor like Garcia: open borders, high taxes, increased regulation and more socialism.
Ive stated the specifics elsewhere, Betts Putnam-Hidalgo, and Im not going to do so in detail again here, but in brief it goes something like this:
RedforEd said it was about improving TEACHER salaries. Frequently cited were TEACHER shortages and TEACHER vacancies. Were Step1 salaries in TUSD, the Step most relevant to recruiting newly qualified TEACHERS, increased to the level where they would be competitive with Step 1 salaries in a district like 16, where teaching conditions are in many ways less challenging? No. Were salaries other than teacher salaries increased in TUSD using RedforEd funds? Yes.
Q.E.D.
As for your question about whether the ideas of TUSD teachers about what to do with the funds mattered, the answer is no. The funds were pitched to the public and granted by state level governance with a specific target in mind. Most parents I know who supported the effort wanted the quality of CLASSROOM TEACHING improved. Duceys technique of granting the funds but letting districts do what they wanted with them so it could be pointed out that some districts would refuse to apply them in a way congruent with what was pitched to the public (higher TEACHER wages) was effective, and TUSD lamely fell right into the trap. Most people I know who follow local education issues have zero sympathy withTUSDs use of RedforEd funds and are re-confirmed in their resolution to keep their kids out of TUSD schools at all costs.
And as for another lame bandwagon Dems (including Foster, Juarez, and Dong) have cobbled together, the EDUCATION PROFESSOR FOR GOVERNOR bandwagon, I and most people I know will not be hopping on that. Many Independents and Dems will be voting for Ducey. Bad as he is, at least he acknowledges that when it comes to an ongoing educational disaster like TUSD, people do need to get out. By any means possible. Including vouchers.
It should be pointed out as a corollary to the above that for decades now TUSD has found ways to silence and marginalize people who ask decision makers to, in the words of one recenty defunct advocacy organization, put “kids first.” In Southern Arizona schools you run into them regularly: former TUSD parents who tried to raise funds, tried to found advocacy groups, tried to engage in constructive conversations with governance, tried to back candidates for governance who had competence and the right motives for serving. Sooner or later they will all retire from the field of battle and even the most public-spirited and public-school-supporting will put their kids in alternative schools in other school districts, in charters, or in privates. I ran into another one recently, who shook her head over the ongoing problems and noted that her parents had run into same and moved her to a Catholic school when she was in middle school. She is fifty.
Job number 1, Dems: use your great theoretical ideas about education policy to treat the massive diseased elephant farting in the middle of the room and crushing even the most determined advocates who get anywhere near it. Otherwise, you can continue to wave bye-bye to funds, as depicted in David’s cute graphic at the head of this piece. Because, unsurprisingly, it’s hard to get people to fund disease and dysfunction.
bslap, Arizona teachers have left the profession, or not joined it, in droves because of poor wages and underfunded schools. That’s exactly what you say should happen to increase wages. It hasn’t worked out so well. RedforEd is trying to change that.
It is a cold heart that can say we need to let the market forces work to the point that tens of thousands of our children are denied an education by a teacher with proper education and preparation, year after year after year, until finally someone says, “You know, this has been going on too long. Maybe we should look at putting more money into public education.” The children only have one shot at this.
“Maybe we should look at putting more money into” TEACHERS’ SALARIES, David.
Whatever the weaknesses of the Stephenson piece on teacher vacancies might have been, it did confirm that the vacancy rate in TUSD is much larger than in other districts. According to Stephenson, TUSD started the year with 84 vacancies. Amphi started the year with 18, and Sunnyside with 6.
https://tucson.com/news/local/despite-pay-raises-teacher-vacancies-remain-a-problem-for-tucson/article_cb81580c-8652-5c46-a419-d030be7cd8d7.html
When you start the year with a vacancy problem that large and with a large funding supplement that has been recruited specifically on the basis of the urgent need to improve TEACHERS’ SALARIES, please be so kind as to explain how spreading the money around to other areas can be justified to the parents of children who, as you point out, “only have one shot at this.” When school began this year, there were 84 classrooms in that district where no certified teacher could be secured to teach kids who “only have one shot at this.”
Where is the blog piece where you argued for 100% of RedforEd being applied strategically to improve teachers salaries, at levels where it would have the best chances of solving that vacancy problem?
Nowhere.
Just curious, “A+ on blaming the Republicans, F on holding TUSD accountable.” Are you also “Poor strategy produces poor results”? If not, forgive my mistake. If so, that’s a weird, deceptive form of trolling and sock puppetry, chiming in like two different people on the same comment stream, making it seem like your opinion is being aired by more than one person.
Getting irritated, David? Why don’t you just answer the question asked, instead of attacking the commenter?
It’s obvious that it’s the same person. Some of us use the headings as thematic titles of the comment, like little summaries of what will be said, not as names of the individual commenting. At various times and at different stages of my journey through the depressing little world created by local institutions and political factions I have used “A TUSD Parent,” “Supporting Public Ed Means Supporting Local Reform,” “Former Dem,” “How did we get here? Oh yeah, that’s how we got here” and literally scores of other headings for my comments. The intent is not to create the impression of more than one commenter. The intent is to identify the theme of the comment that will follow.
I have been tempted in recent months to drop reading your column and commenting on it because I feel like I’ve long since reached a point where there is nothing much new to learn about you and your fellow travelers and the depressing little propagandistic universe you inhabit. However, I still feel that communicating with the public about what goes on in local institutions like TUSD is important and every time someone loads dislikes onto my comments and every time you get snippy in your responses, I feel inclined to continue writing observations occasionally. The “pushback” you and your cohort provide seems to indicate that this kind of commentary does, in fact, need to be made.
The best way to reinforce my impression that it’s fine to leave off is for the massive dislikes to disappear and for you to respond civilly and reasonably as you did in the stream on this piece,
https://m.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2018/08/23/all-in-for-education-az-holds-news-conference-about-latino-representation-on-state-education-boards
When you try civil response and then lapse almost immediately into irritated potshots it does tend to interfere with the impression you try to create that your education policy theories originate from a civil, compassionate and courteous person.
“F as usual on holding TUSD accountable”: No, and I’m being serious here, it’s not obvious it’s the same commenter, not always to me, certainly not to readers of the comments. As I’ve said before, so long as you stay within the rules of the comments section, as you usually do, you’re free to use whatever handle you wish. However, by using different names for different posts, you are being dishonest — unintentionally so, I believe, but dishonest nonetheless. Posting under a variety of names creates the impression of a multitude, meaning lots of people are sharing similar views in the comments. Posting under the same name tells readers that one person is making a number of comments. And if you’re consistent within and across posts, that lets regular readers know who they’re dealing with, without your revealing your identity.
And you may continue to ask me all kinds of questions you want me to answer. I continue to reserve the right not to answer them, which, with you and others, is a right I exercise regularly.
I dont agree, David, but I understand that you and your peer group are nervous right now about the gubernatorial race and you are doing your level best, here and elsewhere, to quash messages that have the potential to dampen enthusiasm for your friend the education professor.
Too much to ask, no doubt, for Southern Arizona Dems to understand where the biggest obstacles to progressive leadership actually lay: not in the anonymous commenters on your blog, not in Republicans, not in the Koch brothers, not in DARK MONEY or THE PRIVATIZERS, not in Donald Trump, but in the behaviors of people surrounding public institutions in Southern AZ. The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. Only its not ambition that you are lacking, it is honesty and a genuine commitment to the public interest and the common good. Failing that, which you all REFUSE to hold yourselves responsible for cultivating, you have already lost. Even if you win in November you will lose, because the crowd you have positioned to take over does not have the right habits and the right beliefs to lead in a way that will serve the progressive cause or build a good reputation for the Democratic Party.