Young Workers Not Saving Article

[jimhcom]

Being a Wall-Mart greeter isn't the only option for non savers there are also excelent positions wearing paper hats and asking people "would you like fries with that". Its just not my idea of the good life. 8)

[preben]

He,he - Not Me; we all know that JG could pay it back tomorrow should he decide - had he written "only debt is a 100k credit card debt" you would have jumped at that!

Anyway we NEED these people to keep spending to keep the hamster wheels turning for the rest of us! It is however a thin line to balance on.... As the group (read: VOTERS) of disgruntled people grow, the governments will have to please them (to get re-elected) taking from the "rich"(us... ) and giving to the poor spendrifts...

Cheers!

Originally Posted by ()

Amazing.* Someone with 100k in credit card debt can dismiss it by calling it 'flippin'.

When you owe someone $100,000 and they expect you to pay it some day, thats called 'debt'.

[Marshac]

Originally Posted by saluki9

You should see it here in the burbs north of chicago.* Avg teacher salary is about $75-85.* They top out in the low $100s after 10 year on the job.*

I call BS. Can you show us an IL state link providing the teacher pay scale? It's strange that you claim one thing, yet the Heritage foundation claims an average salary of just a hair over $51k/year. Here are the numbers from Washington State. http://www.k12.wa.us/safs/PUB/PER/SalAllocTbl0103.pdf

As you can see, a masters with 16+ years of experience will only get you $52k/year.... I really don't wonder why some of my favorite science teachers left for the private sector.

[justin]

And send me an application for the $75k teacher job while you're at it.

[bosco]

60K for about 1000 hours of work a year is no chump change, especially when you factor in the benefits..

Spoken like someone who hasn't been around many teachers, or at least many good ones. I'm not a teacher, but my mom and a few good friends were/are. All of them put in more hours in their 10 months than most people I know working 40 hour/week jobs 50 weeks/year. They all got phone calls regularly at home, all attended PTA meetings in the evenings, and all spent their own money on supplies because the public valued education so little that they wouldn't fund it properly.

Good education (= good teachers) is a big part of the future of keeping earnings high and social security healthy.


Bosco

[Jay_Gatsby]

Just like private industry, there are many teachers that work extremely hard for their poor salaries, while there are also quite a few who just "phone it in" after being on the job for 10-20 years.

Rather than continue this thread along the lines of "teachers are under-appreciated", I would agree based on anecdotal evidence that younger workers aren't saving enough.* It seems like most of my friends/colleagues didn't start saving seriously until after they got married, turned 30 (a magic age for some reason), had kids, etc...* Perhaps such life milestones indicate the final transition point into adulthood, whereby frivolous spending is no longer an option if one ever wants to retire.* At the same time, the young person who begins saving from day one of his or her first post-undergraduate job can continue spending more freely than the average 30-year old.* The statistics indicate that an additional 10 years in the market can make a tremendous difference.

[youbet]

My wife recently retired after spending 35 years as a elementary school teacher, the last 20 or so as a Special Education teacher. I was in the private sector. You can imagine the interesting conversations we had regarding salaries, benefits, etc.

In the end, we came to the agreement that teaching is just like any other profession in that the participants will receive what the market will bear. If a school district has vacancies they can't fill, they aren't paying enough. If they have plentiful, qualified applicants available at all times, they're paying enough. It has nothing to do with the importance, ease or difficulty of the job.

Admittedly, government and unions will step in from time to time to muddy the free market waters.

[saluki9]

Originally Posted by Marshac

I call BS. Can you show us an IL state link providing the teacher pay scale? It's strange that you claim one thing, yet the Heritage foundation claims an average salary of just a hair over $51k/year. Here are the numbers from Washington State. http://www.k12.wa.us/safs/PUB/PER/SalAllocTbl0103.pdf

As you can see, a masters with 16+ years of experience will only get you $52k/year.... I really don't wonder why some of my favorite science teachers left for the private sector.

Ok, fine call BS. Here is a link to the list of average salaries by district in IL. My district is fifth down. http://www.thechampion.org/teach2004/avgteachersal.asp The AVG teachers salary is around $78K. This is lower than it will be because there are a lot of newer teachers that were recently hired.

[Marshac]

Originally Posted by saluki9

Ok, fine call BS.* Here is a link to the list of average salaries by district in IL.* My district is fifth down.* * *http://www.thechampion.org/teach2004/avgteachersal.asp* The AVG teachers salary is around $78K.* This is lower than it will be because there are a lot of newer teachers that were recently hired.

Is this total compensation, or perhaps an 'annualized' rate (ie: 'if they were working 12 months rather than 9, this is what they would get)? It doesn't say on the page where the numbers came from, so I can only guess... These numbers are just unbelievable.... and if are actually correct, well, then i'm movin to IL to become a teacher!

[saluki9]

No, those are for 9 month contracts. I know several teachers here, they get about $5K per class on top of that for summer school

As you can guess, the jobs are very hard to get. Most of them have masters degree or PhD's

[laurence]

Hmmm, I would like to see their sources, as the web page hosting this data has an obvious agenda (turning red states blue, take back our schools from commie god hating teacher's unions etc.). Not to say the data is incorrect, but I didn't see any source data or links during my (albient superficial) search of the site.

My mother is a teacher in the Los Angeles school district. She has a Ph. D in Chemistry, and is a year from retirement, is department chair, top of the salary scale in all categories. She is making somewhere in the 70's right now, and growing up in her house, I know she worked way more than 40 hours a week x 9 months. She started lesson plans a month before school started in the fall. Then there were workshops, conferences, continuing education etc.

You want to talk about overcompensation, talk about my step-dad the junior college professor! He holds a Masters in physics, and is department chair. He gets paid six figures to teach two classes and be the union rep. Classes are tuesday thursday and office hours are wed. 4 day weekend every week! No wonder ER is not on his radar.

[haha]

Originally Posted by Laurence

You want to talk about overcompensation, talk about my step-dad the junior college professor!* He holds a Masters in physics, and is department chair.* He gets paid six figures to teach two classes and be the union rep.* Classes are tuesday thursday and office hours are wed.* 4 day weekend every week!* No wonder ER is not on his radar.* *

You said a mouthful when you referenced the union. Public employee unions are unbelievably powerful. That is why this guy is so egregiously overpaid.

Schools are mostly a boondoggle, though, on any level. I just read some info from my old school district in Cincinnati. Cincinnati schools are almost entirely black, except for a college prep school named Walnut Hills. Every year for at least 80 years, it has sent lots of graduates to the Ivies, Stanford, Cal-Tech, MIT, etc.

From the POV of the school district, this is a bad thing, because Walnut Hills pulls up city wide achievement levels, thus messing up their grab for more federal funds. The goal is to have the entire city declared "Special Education".

So what to do? What they did was to fire a bunch of excellent, high achieving teachers, and turn the school into a Charter School. It is being litigated now, but I would guess the city will pull it off. In this case, either the union rep wasn’t very good, or he got taken care of.

There goes Walnut Hills, and there also go the last academically qualified teachers in the city. They would not fit into the culture in the other "schools", and I would doubt that the pricipals and other staff would feel comfortable with all that intellectual horsepower anyway.

Probably the older ones will retire, the young ones seek other employment

Ha

[laurence]

Originally Posted by HaHa

You said a mouthful when you referenced the union. Public employee unions are unbelievably powerful. That is why this guy is so egregiously overpaid.

Schools are mostly a boondoggle, though, on any level. I just read some info from my old school district in Cincinnati. Cincinnati schools are almost entirely black, except for a college prep school named Walnut Hills. Every year for at least 80 years, it has sent lots of graduates to the Ivies, Stanford, Cal-Tech, MIT, etc.

From the POV of the school district, this is a bad thing, because Walnut Hills pulls up city wide achievement levels, thus messing up their grab for more federal funds. The goal is to have the entire city declared "Special Education".

So what to do? What they did was to fire a bunch of excellent, high achieving teachers, and turn the school into a Charter School. It is being litigated now, but I would guess the city will pull it off. In this case, either the union rep wasn’t very good, or he got taken care of.

There goes Walnut Hills, and there also go the last academically qualified teachers in the city. They would not fit into the culture in the other "schools", and I would doubt that the pricipals and other staff would feel comfortable with all that intellectual horsepower anyway.

Probably the older ones will retire, the young ones seek other employment

Ha

Hmmm, as with all things, the issue are not clear cut:

"I'm going to tell you flat out, there are some excellent teachers at Walnut Hills, both black and white, but the worst teachers are black," he says. "They can't show up on time for class. They were ill prepared, unprepared and most of the time the children, the students, were more intelligent than the teachers."

http://www.citybeat.com/2004-06-23/cover.shtml

Sounds like a private school that gets public funding. Sounds like there are some serious racial tensions in the area, too. There are probably legitimate points to be made on both sides, but things have gotten too ugly at this point for either to be heard fairly.

[sgeeeee]

I did a little googling to see if I could get some independent data on teacher salaries. Most of the data I found was a little dated, but well below the figures being tossed around here.

http://www.special-ed-careers.org/ca...mployment.html

"Average Salaries of Public School Teachers 2000-2001

. . .
Rank State Average Salary
10 Illinois 47,865
. . ."

http://news.surfwax.com/education/fi...sociation.html

"Nation's largest union sets goal of $40,000 starting salary for teachers Jul 4, 2005
LOS ANGELES The National Education Association says the typical starting salary for teachers should be 40-thousand dollars. It's a lofty goal. (WPRI, RI)"

http://www.collegeboard.com/csearch/...rs/106175.html

"Compensation
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the 2003 average yearly earnings of teachers (not including special education teachers) by educational level taught:

Kindergarten: $43,530
Elementary school: $44,960
Middle school: $45,600
Secondary school: $47,810"

http://www.aft.org/salary/index.htm

"2003 Survey & Analysis of Teacher Salary Trends

The latest AFT salary survey shows that efforts to make education salaries competitive with other professions face a stiff headwind—in the form of skyrocketing costs for health benefits. The 2002-03 average teacher salary was $45,771, up 3.3 percent from the previous year, and average beginning teacher salaries rose 3.2 percent to $29,564 for the same period. But those gains are dwarfed by staggering increases in the cost of health insurance benefits—which spiked an astounding 13 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports."

[haha]

Originally Posted by Laurence

Hmmm, as with all things, the issue are not clear cut:

"I'm going to tell you flat out, there are some excellent teachers at Walnut Hills, both black and white, but the worst teachers are black," he says. "They can't show up on time for class. They were ill prepared, unprepared and most of the time the children, the students, were more intelligent than the teachers."

Laurence, I know you to be a fair person. But the comment you picked to illustrate your link was the only one that mentioned race in a very long article.

I graduated from this school. In my class of 285, only one woman did not go to college. 75 students went to first-tier elite universities.

The only way in is a difficult examination. When you fail a year, you don't repeat- you drop down to a less elite school. (At least that is the way it was.)

The student body was fully 40% Ashkenazi Jews, in a city with a Jewish population proportion nowhere near this figure. There were African Americans- many were in fact Africans, the children of visiting professors at University of Cincinnati.

There was absolutely no prejudice. There was absolute meritocracy. In these same years, Yale University restricted its undergraduate population to less than 10% Jewish. So you can see that a meritocracy was not real common. It is impossible to have an elite school with a proportion of African Americans similar to the surrounding community, unless it is in Greenwich Connecticut or similar. Like CCNY, Walnut Hills was in fact an elite school, open and free to working class and middle class people. But you did have to be smart; and you did have to work much harder than most high school students are willing to work.

When I got there I was astounded to find that the smart kids, including girls, instead of having to hide their wits were respected for them.

I am sure that racial shenanigans, which seem to have a role here, will ruin Walnut Hills, just as they ruined CCNY (now a SUNY branch.) But if we hope to compete in a very competitive world, children will have to be educated in ability groupings, even if the high groups are disproportionately Asian and European.

We don't expect African-American athletes to play with a “proper” proportion of whites, just so whites can be properly represented. As you know, the good players play, the wannabees take PE or play at lower than varsity levels. And in major sports, most of the good players are black.

Everyone shoud be educated, but if you want to ruin a school, go for the lowest common denominator. Of course, that is what has been done in public education in America, and our chilfdren of all races are paying for that.

Ha

[saluki9]

Originally Posted by Laurence

Hmmm, I would like to see their sources, as the web page hosting this data has an obvious agenda (turning red states blue, take back our schools from commie god hating teacher's unions etc.). Not to say the data is incorrect, but I didn't see any source data or links during my (albient superficial) search of the site.

My mother is a teacher in the Los Angeles school district. She has a Ph. D in Chemistry, and is a year from retirement, is department chair, top of the salary scale in all categories. She is making somewhere in the 70's right now, and growing up in her house, I know she worked way more than 40 hours a week x 9 months. She started lesson plans a month before school started in the fall. Then there were workshops, conferences, continuing education etc.

You want to talk about overcompensation, talk about my step-dad the junior college professor! He holds a Masters in physics, and is department chair. He gets paid six figures to teach two classes and be the union rep. Classes are tuesday thursday and office hours are wed. 4 day weekend every week! No wonder ER is not on his radar.

I would never suggest that teachers don't work. As I said before, I have a brother in law who teaches at one of the schools at the top of the list. It sounds like a school very similar to the one in Philadelphia. It has a 99.9% graduation rate, something like 98% of kids go to college, and it has the highest SAT and ACT scores in the state.

It's all relative though. I never said all teachers in IL are highly paid, just in this area. I happen to live in a very affluent area. If it weren't for my entire family and my job being right here I would live somewhere with a lower cost of living.

[MRGALT2U]

Originally Posted by Laurence

Hmmm, I would like to see their sources, as the web page hosting this data has an obvious agenda (turning red states blue, take back our schools from commie god hating teacher's unions etc.).* Not to say the data is incorrect, but I didn't see any source data or links during my (albient superficial) search of the site.*

My mother is a teacher in the Los Angeles school district.* She has a Ph. D in Chemistry, and is a year from retirement, is department chair, top of the salary scale in all categories.* She is making somewhere in the 70's right now, and growing up in her house, I know she worked way more than 40 hours a week x 9 months.* She started lesson plans a month before school started in the fall.* Then there were workshops, conferences, continuing education etc.

You want to talk about overcompensation, talk about my step-dad the junior college professor!* He holds a Masters in physics, and is department chair.* He gets paid six figures to teach two classes and be the union rep.* Classes are tuesday thursday and office hours are wed.* 4 day weekend every week!* No wonder ER is not on his radar.* *

When I was single, I dated a couple of teachers. I never taught, but it sure
looked easy to me. Big money and short hours. One was a high school
English teacher. Very little prep, she just phoned it in. If she was really feeling lazy she would show them a film which would eat up most of the class time
and then ask them to write a paper on it.

Teacher shows a movie. Students buy Cliffs Notes. Not a pretty picture.

JG