{"id":578,"date":"2012-09-11T14:34:03","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T19:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foreignersview.wordpress.com\/?p=578"},"modified":"2021-08-20T16:56:01","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T21:56:01","slug":"the-myth-of-the-lazy-over-paid-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2012\/09\/11\/the-myth-of-the-lazy-over-paid-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"The myth of the lazy, overpaid Chicago teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Do these people look lazy to you? Credit: SocialistWorker.org<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just a quick post today since I have a lot of work to do, but I can’t stand all the lies flying around about Chicago teachers. I’ve seen people cite figures as high as $80,000 a year for the average pay of a Chicago teacher, which is nothing but a vile fabrication. Here’s the truth<\/a>:<\/p>\n

CPS gives a starting salary of\u00a0$50,577<\/a>\u00a0for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree. But that’s including the seven-percent “pension pickup,” which comes from the Board of Education: it’s compensation, obviously, but not money teachers get right now.<\/p>\n

Since that doesn’t seem to be regularly included in the salaries quoted by news reports, it’s probably better for comparison to subtract it, which can easily be done with the more detailed tables provided by CPS (PDF<\/a>).<\/p>\n

If we do that, the starting salary is $47,628. The maximum, for a teacher with 20 years’ experience and a doctorate, is $88,680 ($93,817 if you include the pension pickup). The average, according to the AP, is\u00a0$69,000<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But that’s not the whole story. The annual increases in CPS (which Rahm is trying hard to get rid of) are much smaller than the increases in schools in the suburbs. As CPS alumnus Paul Karafiol tells us<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A teacher with a master\u2019s degree, 30 additional credit hours, and ten years of experience, can expect to earn $87,513 in Evanston this year; last year, in Oak Park, a teacher would have made $88,978. In Chicago this year, the same teacher will earn $75,711 \u2014 about $12,000 a year less than in districts to which he or she could walk or take public transportation from a home in Chicago.<\/p>\n

Over the course of a career, that difference amounts to over a quarter of a million dollars. This disparity should concern everyone, because it\u2019s a primary reason why experienced teachers leave CPS to go to the suburbs \u2014 and why CPS has to train thousands of brand-new teachers every year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some people will say that the problem is not that CPS teachers aren’t getting paid enough, but that teachers in the suburbs are getting paid too much. After all, the average Chicagoan does make much less than the average Chicago teacher. But the average Chicagoan doesn’t have a master’s degree in education.<\/p>\n

Others will say that it’s outrageous they get paid so much, given that they work so little. The school day is only 7 hours for elementary schools, 7.5 for high schools. But there’s more to it. As\u00a0labor expert Robert Bruno of U of I<\/a> will tell you, “the claim that Chicago public school teachers aren\u2019t working enough hours during the school day is unwarranted at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.”<\/p>\n

According to a study by Bruno, Steven Ashby<\/a> and\u00a0Frank Manzo IV:<\/p>\n