Do Teachers Have it Easy?
© 2005 by Parents' Press
By Dixie Jordan
Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices
and Small Salaries of America's Teachers
by Daniel Moulthrop, Nínive Clements Calegari, and Dave
Eggers, The New Press, New York, August, 2005, $25.95 hardcover.
"I spent $3,500 of my own money
last year on my classroom," says Steven Herraiz, a kindergarten
teacher at John Muir Elementary School in San Francisco.
"That's a lot of money. And it's
not anything extravagant. It's stuff like paper clips and art
supplies and paint and the things you would assume that the district
provides and they don't."
In order to pay for supplies and the
nutritious snacks he buys for his students ("Kindergartners
need to eat every few hours to get through the day"), Herraiz
tends bar on weekends.
Herraiz isn't unusual. Up to 35 percent
of public school teachers work a second job, many because they
simply need the extra money to support their growing families.
And according to a National Education Association (NEA) poll,
the average teacher puts more than $400 a year of his or her
own money into the classroom.
In fact, contends Daniel Moulthrop,
lead author of Teachers Have It Easy (and a former San Lorenzo
High School teacher), teaching is a demanding and underpaid profession
where excellence and achievement often go unrewarded. As a result,
top college graduates are likely to choose a different job.
Meanwhile, many young teachers leave
the profession during their first five years. Frequently they
switch careers because they can't afford to buy a house or raise
a family on their salaries.
Listen to Matt Huxley, a vice principal
at Berkeley High School:
"I was able to survive as a teacher,
but not to save money for a house . . . one of the reasons that
drove me to administration was so that I could make more money
and buy a house. I didn't know when I'd be able to afford a house
on a teacher's salary."
And to Patrick Daly, a former junior
high science teacher in Washington State who switched to a sales
career:
"The salary is triple what I made
as a teacher, and I work less. I work forty or fifty hours a
week, just like most people in business . . . I got frustrated
with working sixty-hour weeks or more and then over the weekend
not having any money to go out or do anything or even go skiing
with my friends."
Changes Ahead?
Extensive, thoughtful comments from
teachers (and former teachers) throughout the U.S. make the realities
of an educator's life inside and outside the classroom
vivid and immediate for readers of Teachers Have It Easy.
Author Dan Moulthrop would like to see
changes in those realities.
"We're really advocating for changing the way teachers are
paid," he said in a phone interview with Parents' Press.
"Right now it's a lock-step process
involving years on the job and the number of continuing education
courses. Raises aren't tied to any measurable outcome."
He doesn't advocate pay that's based
on how well a teacher's class performs on standardized tests.
But he does think that achievement and excellence in teaching
should factor in.
He points to successful new approaches
to teachers' pay in the public schools of Denver, Colorado, and
Helena, Montana, and at the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center,
a charter school in Los Angeles (all discussed in detail in his
book).
"We want to get our book into the
hands of people who aren't teachers," he says. "It
really does open people's eyes a lot."
Take Moulthrop's advice and read Teachers
Have It Easy at the least, it will give you new insight
into your children's teachers, and it may even inspire you to
advocate for change.
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