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Terry Woster covered the coming teacher pay crisis in that Sioux Falls paper yesterday. He drew the usual commenters who say that everything is fine, because (1) South Dakota has a lower cost of living and (2) we underpay everybody. I sighed and repeated the stats that show that teachers in the rest of the country come out ahead of teachers here even after factoring in cost of living and taxes. If South Dakota's low teacher pay reflected only the cost of living, the average teacher salary would be $45,545, not $34,709.
And again, while roofers, secretaries, and many other South Dakota workers get taken to the cleaners on payday, that won't matter in terms of trying to recruit new teachers to replace the coming wave of retirees. When new college grads with shiny new teaching certificates hit the job market, they're going to look for the teaching positions that will help them pay off their student debt ASAP. They aren't going to look at $35K/year in Madison or Flandreau and say, "Ah, everyone else is underpaid there! Sign me up to get hosed, too!" They'll say, "I can do the same work that I love and am trained for in Pipestone, Worthington, Sioux City, Cheyenne, or Fargo, get my summers off for study just like here, and pay off my college loans two years sooner. Hello, Minnesota (IA, WY, ND...)!"
Watertown school board blogger Fred Deutsch agrees (though in calmer terms, as usual). He notes that Watertown has been lucky not to experience an outflux of teachers seeking better pay. Of course, Watertown also has the big-town advantage of being able to offer more job opportunities for teaching candidates' spouses, making it easier to attract and retain teacher candidates with families. But he sees the retirement boom coming, he sees fewer eager candidates coming to area teacher recruitment fairs, and he is concerned.
I don't like higher taxes any more than you do, gentle readers. But South Dakota education is about to get squeezed by the toughest opponent it can face: the free market. Labor supply is dwindling, and our competitors are paying better wages. I love South Dakota, but we can't bank on everyone else letting such love (or illusions about the cost of living) dictate their economic choices. Keeping a qualified labor force in education in the coming decade is going to require more money. Invest now in higher teacher pay, and we can avoid a crisis later.
Drinking Liberally Update (11/15/2024)
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3 days ago
Teacher pay is just fine. Any profession will pay according to how hard you are to replace. Have you seen how many college kids have education degrees and are waiting to find a teaching job somewhere. Get a clue.
ReplyDeleteAnon 8:53, you're flat wrong and uninformed! The reality of teaching in SD is that retirement and attrition are larger enemies than border crossing for higher wages. We have to replace those experienced educators.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're at the bottom of the national barrell in salaries, you face what is known as "adverse selection" in which we may not get the best and brightest, rather, we may select from the leftovers.
Remember, in any profession, physicians, lawyers, teachers, 50% of them graduated in the bottom half of their class. Who do you want teaching your children?
It sounds like anon 8:53 is more happy with being "Just Good Enough", instead of investing some real money in keeping the best teachers in South Dakota.
ReplyDeleteGo to any teacher fair in South Dakota and most of the schools that are looking for teachers are from out of state... Texas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska. They know what a good product we produce and teachers trained in South Dakota are a pretty valuable commodity.
It's funny... all these other states think our teachers are pretty valuable and yet our state and our legislature don't think so. No wonder so many young teachers are leaving for greener pastures!
It would not matter if the State would raise teacher pay or not. What young recent college grad wants to go teach in Beresford, Volga or some other podunk town in SD. I would be leaving the state myself if these were my choices!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAnon 12:08: Leave out the profanity, thank you. Feel free to repost the substance of your comment, though.
ReplyDeleteHere, I'll even do Anon 12:08's work for her/him, with the unnecessary language edited:
ReplyDelete"The article mentions we should be paying our teacher $45k/year. Go ahead and try to find a job for $45/k per year in South Dakota. Good luck with that, and you want 3 months off and all holidays, sure, not a problem, they are a dime a dozen. Just ask all those people working at call centers how difficult it is to find jobs that pay over $30k/year. Then you mention places like MN, IA, ND. Well I have lived in Sioux City.... Like our winters here? Subtract 15 degrees and then you have ND. Like lots of taxes, move to MN. Money is nice, but it is not everything. SD is a great state to live in, the teacher pay is good compared to other jobs in SD. So it is not the highest in the nation, but our cost of living is not highest in the nation either.
"And if you want a high paying teacher job in SD, speak Spanish as a first language and teach in Spanish. Starting wage for that position is $48k/year."
Note that Anon 12:08 continues to ignore the mathematical facts. Yes, our cost of living is 92% of the national average. Our teacher pay happens to be 70% of the national average.
ReplyDeleteOh well, you can't convince all of the people all of the time. What matters is that we convince more teacher candidates to stay... and the free market says the way to do that will be to pay a competitive wage. We're not competing with the other non-education employers in SD; we're competing with the education employers who outpay SD.
Starting pay for a teacher in Madison is about $27,000. That amounts to $2250 a month over a 12-month pay plan, less taxes, you're making about $1700 a month net with four years of school loans to pay back, rent, utilities, food, fuel, car payment, insurance, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt should be obvious that our teachers are not in it for the money, rather they have a love for children and helping them grow and expand their minds. There are teachers making more money, but that is based on years of experience and continuing education.
Anon 11:21, get involved on a committee in your local school district, see all the good positive things that are happening and maybe your opinions will soften a little. Don't judge a town by its level of podunk. There's nothing wrong with podunk towns as long as it's your choice to live there.
Your comments about teachers being strapped for money do not fly with me. Rent, utilities, food, fuel, car pay/ins, etc. are basic facts of life for every working person. School loans are a choice by the individual, I worked every summer, did not party it up on spring break down in Mexico every year and had the majority of my loans paid in full when I graduated. While the pay may not be as great as some other states, teachers do not have my sympathy.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's because of that attiude right there, Anon, that you're going to see the best and brightest young teachers leave South Dakota for other states that will treat them with some modicum of respect!
ReplyDeleteIf you mean treating them with respect by paying their tuition and increasing their pay good luck with that. Where do you draw the line, should we pay the tuition of surgeons, and other people who do good in the community. Good riddence!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.state.sd.us/factpage.htm
ReplyDeleteThe average teacher in SD makes $34k/year.
The average person in SD makes $28.4k/year.
That means the average teacher makes about 20% more than the average person in SD. In addition to making 20% more they get 3 months off during the summer and all federal holidays off.
Everything is about perspective. To a person who grew up in SD, making 20% more than the average person in SD sounds great. However, making 20% less than someone in another state sounds horrible.
But before jumping over the fence ask yourself this. Do you really want someone who is motivated only by money teaching? Sure money makes paying bills easier but it does not make someone enjoy their job.
Everything is about perspective.
And if you had surgeons, doctors, and lawyers, all trained professionals, work and get paid at 70-percent of cost of living like teachers do, what are the odds that they're going to stick around? Not bloody likely!
ReplyDeleteSee, your problem, anon, is that you and many others think of the teaching profession along the lines of working at a call center. That can be further from the truth. Teachers must possess a four-year degree (which most students will borrow up to 30-40 thousand dollars in loans to do this), hold a professional certificate (like a doctor, lawyer, or an engineer), take continual classes (paid out of pocket) in order to keep that certification.
One of my best friends was a teacher around here. He taught K-12 music in two different towns, directed the musical, and was a basketball coach. With the hours he was pulling down, plus the hours he spent at home doing prep work, grading assignments, etc., he was making about $3.85 an hour. You might call that typical, I call that insulting.
Teachers aren't asking to make 100-thousand dollars like doctors or lawyers. They're never going to be rich in their profession. But at the same time, you have states that are looking for our graduates, who are among the best-educated and hardest-working people in the U.S. A teacher that will be doing the same job for 10 to 20-thousand less than what they can get in other states will start looking pretty hard at his or her situation.
A lawyer makes 60-thousand a year and no one bats an eye... a surgeon makes 250-thousand a year and no one cares... a sales person makes 90-thousand a year and people yawn. But a teacher makes 30-thousand a year and people are in hysterics!
Waste of Taxpayer Money! They make too much money! They shouldn't be in it for the money!
And it burns me that these professionals who dedicate their lives to helping create the next generation of doctors, lawyers, technicians, and yes, teachers, take it on the chin financially simply because 60 years ago, teachers only needed a 2-year degree.
They're not asking to be given charity. They're asking to be paid on a scale that reflects their abilities and education. In other words, to be treated like the professionals they are!
Why are we discussing pre-school funding and mandatory kindergarden? Pre-school and kindergarden should both be parent funded. All these years of headstart have not helped our youth. By the time first grade arrives, school is mundane. Also with todays technology we should be needing fewer teachers. My point is we could cut education spending in many ways if more money is needed for teaacher pay. One more point, if the lowest states in teacher pay are really not that far apart in actual numbers, but none want the last place, then it will be a continuous fight and escalation of salaries forever. Someone has to be last place in ever ranking.
ReplyDelete"Not that far?" South Dakota is $3000 behind North Dakota.
ReplyDelete"Someone has to be last place" -- sure, but it doesn't have to be us. I don't play to come in last every year; neither should South Dakota. Complacency is for losers, and complacency is not the example I want to set for our kids in a competitive world.
Sounds as if jackrabit1 is a bitter teacher him/herself. The statements you made about lawyers, surgeons and the like making big monies and nobody bats an eye goes back to my first post when I said you are paid according to how hard you are to replace. A good neuro-surgeon is a one in a million, good teachers, not so much.
ReplyDeleteFORMER teacher... and with good reason! Namely, the "good teachers are only worth a dime a dozen and should be treated thus" mentality that I experienced.
ReplyDeleteI've said it before, and I'll say it again. No profession in SD makes as much as we could make in some other states. It is NOT only teachers that are at the low end of the pay scale nationwide. We all are. We are also free to move to those places that pay more for whatever profession we are. I stay in SD because I like living here. We have many benefits that other places do not.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to raise teacher pay, then you had better also want to raise the wages of other state workers a comparable degree.
Lest you wonder, I do respect teachers. It's a job that I wouldn't want to do; that's why I chose something else.
But it gets really tiresome to hear talk of raising teacher salaries when they already make more than most South Dakotans, and they also get summers off which no other profession does.
Must be jsut as tiresome as hearing the same irreleavant argument over and over again. I agree: We should raise wages in South Dakota across the board so that (among other reasons) more South Dakota families could make a living on one income and afford to have one parent stay home to take care of the kids if they want. 40 hours of honest work should pay for a family's normal expenses and allow a little saving, whether that work is teaching, painting, farming, building, policing, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut the issue here is recruiting and retaining teachers. No matter how great the perks of being a teacher are compared to your job (and they aren't enough to convince Anon 1:56 to get certified and pick up the chalk), teachers can get those same perks anywhere, SD, MN, etc. And when the perks for this specific profession are thousands of dollars less in SD, we put ourselves at a perpetual disadvantage in our labor market.
The low pay of everyone else in SD is irrelevant to this particular economic reality.
And here's a novel thought: if we start paying our teachers a wage competitive in their profession, might we spur other SD employers to raise their wages?
It isn't just that I don't want to pick up the chalk and become a teacher, even though teachers do have some perks. I don't have whatever it takes to teach anyone anything; that's why I am doing something else as a profession.
ReplyDeleteI stand by my statements above. A lawyer working for the state doesn't make as much as a lawyer in private practice. And in fact, a lawyer starting out in private practice makes very little for the amount of education he/she has. Same as a beginning teacher. Same as a beginning veterinarian. In fact, there are teachers in our district making more than some vets.
All in all, as you work your way up the pay schedule in teaching, the pay increases, same as with anything else. And unless wages are raised across the board for state employees, teachers should have no more right to complain than any other state employee.
If you take a teacher salary and increase it by 1/4 for the amount of days they work less in a year than other professions, their pay increases to a quite reasonable wage for SD.
And if all we were competing with were South Dakota employers, we'd be fine. Unfortaunately, we are competing with out-of-state employers who will draw away some of our best and brightest, even if they love this state, because they simply have to pay the bills. I'm willing to fight to keep some of those best and brightest.
ReplyDelete