Quote:
Originally Posted by graciegirl
|
There's a HUGE difference. Maybe you were reading the wrong states. You're definitely reading the wrong website.
If you want to know salaries, you have to go to the actual district's official website, not some aggregate that collects data from all kinds of sources and doesn't fact-check.
Sumter County's schedule of salaries for public education teachers for last year (2018-2019) is here:
http://assets.sumter.k12.fl.us/Human...y-Schedule.pdf
Teachers starting with a BS degree start at $40,875. The most they can earn, after 25 years of service, is $59,248. If they get a Master's degree they can tack another $2,667 on that, and if they're a specialist or have a PhD in Education they can add $3,667.
There are incentives for them to work in underserved schools - but the incentives are just a bump up the existing schedule, the max doesn't change, they just reach it sooner because they start out further up the pay level.
Compare to Waterbury, CT, a valley town with some fairly tony areas, and a lot of underserved areas. Their contract is here, the schedule of salaries is on page 69:
https://www.waterbury.k12.ct.us/user....pdf?id=548457
Teachers starting with a Bachelor's degree enter at $43,110. Not much difference there. But after only 12 years of service they cap out at $77,369. That's almost a $20k per year difference, and they achieve it after 12 years rather than 25 years.
A PhD starts at $52,491 and caps at $93,365, which is more than $30,000 higher than the max cap for Sumter County Florida. And again, that's after 12 years, not 25.
They also get significant incentives, such as an additional $5,542 if they double as an assistant Baseball coach with a JV team for the whole season.
Florida usually ranks in the bottom 5-10 in public school quality. Connecticut is consistently in the top 10 and often makes it to the top 5.
Florida public schools are horrible, their teachers are poorly paid, well under the national average, and their systems are given insufficient funding to educate their kids. Connecticut schools typically perform very well, their teachers are well paid, always much higher than the national average, and the systems are given funding that can cover at least the minimum costs. Even when they don't, the teachers don't have to get a second job to afford to pick up extra pencils for their students.
That doesn't mean you should just randomly pour money into schools and expect them to suddenly become good schools. But proper training, higher standards of education, comprehensive education, providing a safe, effective, productive education that isn't focused on "graduation" but instead is focused on "kids who know more stuff" costs money.
So many school systems only care about how many kids graduate, that they're teaching them how to pass tests and not teaching them anything they actually need to know, in order to succeed in life after school.
Connecticut has entire programs dedicated to internships and civil service, social programs - all things the students are required to participate in, if they want to graduate. They are required to "be good citizens" in addition to learning how to read and write.