A long time has passed since my first year of teaching. Fifty years ago this September I began my 30-plus year career as a high school teacher. (Yes, I’m that old.) I taught in a one-high-school district outside of Riverside, California. The district wasn’t my first choice, but it was the only job I was offered. Teaching jobs were scarce.
The next year I applied for a job in the Portland, Oregon, area. Again, only one district offered me a job, which I took. I stayed there until I retired in 2003.
I was an English teacher, which was a liability. Too many prospective English teachers were chasing too few jobs. But the jobs were there if you looked. By the time I had been teaching a few years, though, college education profs were warning their students, if you’re planning to get a credential in English or social studies, you could be in trouble. Openings in those areas were few and far between. It would be a good idea, students were told, to get a second credential in another area to hedge your bets. People who could teach math, science and special education were in demand, not English and social studies teachers.
Over the years, I may have had some colleagues who didn’t have traditional teaching credentials. If so, I don’t remember them, and I’m sure they weren’t in the English department. I can say with reasonable certainty, no classrooms in schools where I taught had full time substitutes. There were plenty of credentialed teachers to go around.
Today, too many Arizona teachers lack a teaching credential. Too many classes are being managed by full time substitutes. And Arizona is hardly alone. The same is true in other states.
Where have all the teachers gone?
I kept my 1969 contract, my version of taping the first dollar I made to the wall. My salary was $7,140. That’s in 1969 dollars, of course. A 1969 dollar would be worth a little more than seven dollars today. So figuring for inflation, my first year salary was the equivalent of $50,000 today.
Today’s average starting salary in Arizona is in the $35,000 range.
I remember scraping by during my first years of teaching. I watched my spending carefully. There was rarely much left at the end of the month. But I wasn’t struggling to pay rent ($100 a month for a modest two bedroom house), put food on the table (eggs were 62 cents a dozen) or gas up my car (32 cents a gallon). I got by without making any serious sacrifices.
If I had 10 years teaching experience and a few more graduate units, I would have made $10,365, That translates to $72,555 today. Not bad money.
Arizona’s $35,000 starting salaries are among the nation’s bottom three. The national average is closer to $40,000, which is still $10,000 less than what I made my first year. The Portland-area school district where I taught offers its first year teachers about $41,000. California’s starting salary today is nearly the equivalent of what I received, about $47,000, but California’s cost of living, especially if you factor in the astronomical housing costs, has grown faster than the national average.
My modest starting salary would be the envy of most teachers today.
Where have all the teachers gone? You shouldn’t have to ask. Look at what a teacher’s salary buys these days. Teachers don’t expect to live in luxury, but knowing they have to take a vow of poverty before they enter the profession is enough to discourage lots of prospective teachers, and encourage working teachers to leave if they think they can find better pay elsewhere.
I could go on. I might not have joined the profession in 1969 regardless of salary if I knew my job was to raise my students’ scores on high stakes tests which measure a fraction of what should be learned in the classroom. I might have left in a few years if, instead of being granted a reasonable level of respect by the outside world, I was treated with scorn and derision by the well funded education reform/privatization industry, whose negative views of teachers filtered down to a large segment of the population.
Then again, I loved teaching. I might have signed up and stayed, even with all the testing, even with the slings and arrows of outrageous insults. But compound the added pressures on today’s teachers with humiliatingly low wages, and I might have chosen another professional path. Teachers aren’t greedy, but it’s nice to earn a reasonable salary, like I did starting 50 years ago.
This article appears in Nov 28 – Dec 4, 2019.
redlands? Nobody in CA can survive today if they don’t earn 100K. And never own a home.
But in today’s dollars the health insurance and retirement benefits are the key to why teachers do what they do. Retirement benefits are fantastic. That’s where a large portion of TUSD budget ends up going, rather than the classroom. So in effect you are deriding the income of the newest generation of teachers.
403 and SS benefits make it pretty comfy.
Most people do not go into teaching with retirement in mind – at all. I would challenge anyone who resents a teacher’s retirement plan to consider the decades and decades required to get by someday far, far in the future. The challenges (not to mention all the credentials and time required) for this public service have grown dramatically. And despite the demands, the overwhelming majority of working class teachers are really good people who show up every day motivated to do a good job working with other people’s kids.
Yes, AZ does have a decent retirement system for county and state employees. It is not a gold mine, however, as some may try to make it out to be!!! I know, I am living on my teacher’s retirement right now and it’s not enough! I still work part time to make ends meet and pay for health care since I am not yet 65. The key is to a decent wage while working and a decent retirement when retired and neither is that decent. A balance should be found!!!!
I worked 12 months a year (for 50 years) to age 66 to qualify for a SS benefit of $1285 per month. I think it would help if everybody understood this benefit that you pay into for your entire working years. It would allow them to see the need for additional savings.
By the way what does the pension plan pay teachers after 25 years of service?
Not sure what to make of this article other than purchasing power and salaries have declined, housing costs have increased, for teachers ( as well as most blue collar jobs). It sucks , but are you a hero, a victim, or none of the above? How does having free will factor into it?
How much does it pay? Well some of the districts here have plans that allow you to pay more than a basic premium in to increase level of retirement benefits. So how much? It depends.
This issue is only important if we want quality teachers for Arizona students enough to spend some money.
Well…..I can tell you where two extremely competent, bright young teachers went. After scraping by for two years in Arizona, one young teacher received a $8,500.00 raise teaching kindergarten at a public school in New Mexico. The other young teacher received a $10,000.00 raise teaching third grade at a public school in Texas. Both of them shared with me (with amazement) that their schools get them whatever resources or materials they might need….within a week or two. They were so appreciative that they didn’t have to beg and plead or go to Donors Choose for funds. Let’s face it. Arizona state leaders have not supported public schools and public school teachers for a long, long time! In fact, until Arizona voters change the complexion of our state legislature…very little will change in the way they DON”T support public education and public education teachers.
Where have all the teachers gone is interesting, and worrisome. However, maybe the more relevant question is who or what will replace the human teachers. Will an AI robot teacher be less effective than most human teachers? In today’s world, and more so in the future, most students will be at ease with robots and computers and google. The public schools, like the society they serve, have changed significantly over the past century, and we ain’t seen nothing yet. Interesting times!