Most people in our society are passionate about education. But passion has two extremes: love and hate. There are those who value education and who take every opportunity to support it. And there are those who believe education is a waste of taxpayer dollars poured into a bloated, ineffective, and unnecessary system. The former are quick to describe teachers as over-worked and under-paid, while the latter describing teaching as an easy, overpaid profession with 3 months of vacation – over-paid and under-worked.
Education supporters could try reasoning with such people by describing exactly what teachers do all day, or comparing teaching salaries to other professions with similar job requirements. But there is no need for such arguments, as the facts about the teaching profession speak for themselves.
In any job, there are benefits – competitive salary, prestige, and personal fulfillment for example. There are, likewise, less pleasant aspects – lower salary, long hours, and lowliness. How much unpleasantness a person will tolerate depends on the trade-off: pay and prestige can make up for long hours. Conversely, personal fulfillment may compensate for lower salary. This is the ratio of “benefits” to “bad stuff”; the B to BS ratio, if you will. A high B to BS ratio will attract and retain people in a career. A low B to BS ratio and the opposite occurs – few people enter the profession, and many who do leave after a short time.
To know if teachers are over-worked and underpaid, versus under-worked and overpaid, we don’t need to understand the details of the job, the work load, or the level of compensation. We need only look at the supply and demand for qualified teachers, and study the demographics of entry to and exit from the profession, and the B to BS ratio will reveal itself. Check back for part 2 of this series, examining the supply and demand demographics of the teaching profession.
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