One of the Idaho Education Association's goals is to have the legislature mandate a minimum starting salary for teachers of $40,000 a year. Look, I do think that teachers are generally underappreciated and often underpaid. But here's a reality check. In Ada County (where the capital is located), and the median household income in 2004 was $50,754 per year, this would mean that a starting teacher would be making probably $10,000 a year more than the average worker (figuring that many but not all of those households have both husband and wife working). Okay, you could argue about this a bit I suppose; a lot of non-teachers here don't have college degrees--although a lot do. But many of those non-teachers have filthy, disgusting jobs that involve significant risk of injury, don't have health insurance through their employer, have no hope of tenure, and work twelve months of the year--not ten/Clayton Cramer. More here
D.F. Oliveria started Huckleberries Online on Feb. 16, 2004. Oliveria's Sunday print Huckleberries is a past winner of the national Herb Caen Memorial Column contest.
of $40,000 a year. Look, I do think that teachers are generally underappreciated and often underpaid. But here's a reality check. In Ada County (where the capital is located), and the median household income in 2004 was $50,754 per year, this would mean that a starting teacher would be making probably $10,000 a year more than the average worker (figuring that many but not all of those households have both husband and wife working). Okay, you could argue about this a bit I suppose; a lot of non-teachers here don't have college degrees--although a lot do. But many of those non-teachers have filthy, disgusting jobs that involve significant risk of injury, don't have health insurance through their employer, have no hope of tenure, and work twelve months of the year--not ten/Clayton Cramer. More here
