Are Science Teachers Well Paid?
By Christopher MooreAn old post got an interesting comment yesterday, which got me thinking: was I well compensated as a high-school teacher?
The commenter, Doinkicarus, has a few things to say about Michigan’s new tougher graduation requirements that I disagree with. He’s against them. I’m trying to change the culture of education, so I like more required math and science. Stricter requirements themselves are not necessarily a bad thing (although I admittedly know nothing about the new requirements.)
But I care more right now about what he points out later in his article:
I submit that you need to increase the incentives for math & science teachers, or rather, allow the market to work it out properly. But as sure as I sit here, the teachers’ union will not hear that argument. The teachers union unfairly restricts the pay of math & science teachers, who can earn far more, in a more rewarding environment in the private sector. The teachers’ union is the one to blame for these distorted incentives, where a woodshop teacher is paid on par with a chemistry teacher.
Teachers unions do restrict pay of math and science teachers in some states. Some of Virginia’s (right-to-work state, thank God!) counties have”workarounds” such as offering extended contracts and bumps in “experience levels”. But are math and science teachers generally getting shafted when it comes to pay?
Doinkicarus again:
According to Salary.com, the median income for an entry level “scientist” in the Detroit area is about $87,900. “Chemist” indicates a median income of about $48,000, and an entry level “Physicist” can expect somewhere in the neighborhood of $53,000 annually. Now the median high-school teacher also earns about $54,000 annually. But that’s the average median, not the median for “entry level teachers.”
Now I won’t pretend to know about the cost of living in Detriot, so I’ll use Richmond, VA numbers and compare them to my entry-level salary in the Henrico County school system.
Salary.com has the median entry level “Physicist I” earning about $48,000 per year. In Richmond, the median high school teacher salary is about $49,000. Now as Doink points out, that’s not entry level.
My very first contract with Henrico was for $38,500 per year. I had a Masters degree, so it was higher than average. But the average starting salary for a teacher is somewhere around $34,000 per year. Now off the bat you might think a $14,000 difference is pretty big. But what isn’t included in these salary reports is how much time during the year are you working.
The typical high-school teacher has a 9 month contract. The typical physicist has a 12 month contract. That means the starting physicist gets paid roughly $4,000 per month of work and the new teacher gets paid about $3,800 per month. If the teacher works during the summer then s/he’d make just about as much as the physicist!
It’s not the pay that’s the problem. It’s the hurdles teacher’s unions place in the way of math and science teachers. It’s an entire culture of education geared towards humanities. It’s the fact that education classes put scientifically minded people to sleep.
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Chris, it is like you are narrating my life. Of course, that might be because I have your old job and your old classroom.
I don’t feel undercompensated - I get paid to play with lab equipment for 180 days a year. The students can’t help learning from the experience. They literally can’t help it. This job is fun, which as you note can more than make up for the lower pay. It’s a quality of life issue - I could literally make twice as much if I worked twice as many hours, but I turned that offer down - due to my personal priorities.
But I could be forced back to that higher paying job with its boring long hours, because of the state hoops. Did you realize I am still not licensed?
Comment by Wulf — Tuesday -- April 25th, 2006 @ 6:58 pm
Is this Jason? The only guy I know that would have my old job and my old classroom who would have the URL atlasblogged.com is Jason.
If it is, how’s my old life treating you? And I need to call you because we need to play some golf and drink some beer.
Comment by Chris Moore — Thursday -- April 27th, 2006 @ 7:10 pm
Oh. And it’s been more than three years. I thought they’d be showing you the door by now without being certified?
Comment by Chris Moore — Thursday -- April 27th, 2006 @ 7:13 pm
Yeah, it’s Jason - using the moniker Wulf because I like keeping AtlasBlogged from showing up when my students do Google searches on my last name.
It’s funny you should mention the administration showing me the door, because they might be doing exactly that if I don’t finish up this final pedagogy class I am taking. Since I hate it and I haven’t been doing my homework at all, that is actually a real possibility. But on the bright side, they’d like to make me department chair in July if I don’t get fired in June.
As you know, my school year is nearing its best time for catching up with old friends, drinking beer, and playing golf, but I wouldn’t even know how to get ahold of you these days. I’ll email you.
Comment by Wulf — Thursday -- April 27th, 2006 @ 9:00 pm
You definitely don’t want your students finding out your a loony libertarian! And a Randian on top of it.
Comment by Chris Moore — Thursday -- April 27th, 2006 @ 9:19 pm
That’s “Randroid”, thank you.
Comment by Wulf — Friday -- April 28th, 2006 @ 7:04 pm
I’m soooooo tempted to put your last name in so Google will pick it up. We get crawled daily, you know. But I respect your wishes, so I would never post the last name of a J.R. Tucker Henrico Physics Teacher.
Ohhh, and as a side note, I was making some soup the other day and I accidentally dropped a new package of shoe laces into the pot. It took me a few minutes before I realized I was stirring laces.
Comment by Chris Moore — Sunday -- April 30th, 2006 @ 10:34 pm