If You Think that Educators Are Overpaid... Just Wait!

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan addressed the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards on Fri., July 29 and recommended the starting salary for educators should be $60,000. Experienced educators, he revealed, should earn about $150,000. Of course those remarks were well received.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan addressed the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards on Fri., July 29 and recommended the starting salary for educators should be $60,000. Experienced educators, he revealed, should earn about $150,000. Of course those remarks were well received.

Only a week earlier, PayScales's annual report regarding median mid-career incomes of college graduates was released. According to report, which analyzed information of graduates who had more than a decade of experience in their fields, graduates of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, have a median salary of $126,000 each year, highest in the country. What sounded like great pay on July 22 doesn't even come near to what teachers should earn, according to Secretary Duncan's comments seven days later. Hey, youngsters, wanna earn masses of cash? Forget engineering and science. Become a public school teacher. You'll leave those folks from Harvey Mudd, Princeton, and Cal Tech in the dust.

As a retired educator, I'm comfortable saying that educators make a reasonable wage but aren't often considered to be among the highest paid professionals. The median pay for Harvey Mudd grads with ten years experience in their field is $126,000. If Secretary Duncan is to be taken at his word, he would like experienced educators to earn nearly 20% more!

But why let reality slow you down when you can win friends in the field of education by suggesting things that have less chance of happening than a snowball's chance in hell?

The policies of Secretary Duncan continually demonstrate that he is no friend of teachers. Rather more alarming is the fact that he appears comfortable to curry favor by making remarks that any reasonable person knows is unrealistic. When someone commends something that appears both impractical and too good to be true, beware. You are about to be snookered.

Written by :

Bob Sullo