A blogger called Kafkateach writes that teachers’ salaries are lower now than they were ten years ago, with any gains wiped out by inflation.
“In 2007, a 15 year veteran would be making almost $47,000. In inflation adjusted dollars in 2017, that amount would be almost $56,000. Most 15 year teachers currently working in Miami Dade currently don’t break $45,000. And apparently, that’s exactly what Miami Dade County thinks 15 years teaching experience is worth if you look at the bottom portion of the 2017 salary teachers who transfer in from another state or district, $45,000. Back in 2007, if a 22 year veteran transferred into the district they would have been entitled to $64,000. Now they will get paid $46,000.”
“In 2007, a 15 year veteran would have made $10,000 more than a first year teacher. Most 15 year veterans in Miami Dade currently make about $4,000 more than a first year teacher.”
It’s trends like these that explain why veteran teachers are leaving, and the ranks of new teachers are shrinking.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is exactly what the DeVos crowd wants – to drive dedicated teachers away from education so the corporate autocrats can step in and turn education into a profit-making industry called CHOICE without any labor unions to get in the way of boosting profits and controlling what young people learn. For instance, that all life blossomed in a few days 6,000 years ago and humans lived alongside dinosaurs; that industrial pollution does not contaminate the world and increase the risk of lifestyle diseases and contribute to global warming. To trust in their god.
It’s not just “the DeVos crowd” though. Rank and file labor union members support Democrats. They supported Obama. He did absolutely nothing for them.
I don’t care about the labor union leaders who are paid very well and can take care of themselves but it’s disgraceful how DC Democrats treat ordinary labor union members. They have contempt for them.
Ordinary union members are the problem. The membership gets the leadership it deserves and the leadership the membership it deserves.
Everybody keeps talking about Randy as if she is a Union leader. Truth be told she negotiates not one contract . She authorizes not one strike . She is the head of a federation of local unions most of whose leaderships are not highly paid. So as NY State Teacher has said on many occasions, Are the memberships of the local unions up to the task at hand? The Union movement was built with great sacrifice. Even the NLRA was birthed with the threat of violence, a National Steel mill strike that would have derailed the recovery in late 1935 as Roosevelt was nearing the election year. Had it not been for some very left wing steel unions we would not have to worry about Right to Work we would not have had the right to organize.
So are or were the teachers in Miami ever ready to bear the sacrifice
required to strike in a state that not only is RTW but has punishing laws against public worker strikes. Unfortunately all to many members can not even make the awesome sacrifice of voting for a candidate who is not anti union. One in five AFT members and one in three NEA members voted for Trump and that does not count free loaders and totally non union teachers, in non Public institutions or charters. And yes you do not have to tell me about the disaster of neo liberal (hate that description of Reaganomics) Democrats. .
. Why should Right to Work even be a problem? Why because all too many members ask what has the union ever done for me rather than how can I build a stronger Union.
Now I would not expect teachers to resort to violence but a little civil disobedience would not be out of the realm of possibility. But you would never even get a strike vote in Florida. Or Wisconsin… when they could have. They might discover that old adage of LBJ to MLK about showing us something that even a farmer in Iowa might say that ain’t right,or at least the parents in the district. If that didn’t occur it might be time to seek a new profession anyway.
Weingarten involved herself in the previous go round of union contract negotiations in Newark.
Abigail Shure
Details; most Nation Unions can urge support for one position or another yet the ultimate decision is local. For example the Machinists local in Washington State was pressured to accept the Boeing offer a mistake. However ultimately it was the Local who accepted that agreement. There are occasions that the elected leadership at a local level can be suspended but that is almost certainly for cause like corruption. Could a local union seek the aid of the National president yes. But that is voluntary and usually the sign of week leadership at the local level.
So what were the specifics in Newark and was it viewed as a must win. If not a must not lose situation, between Christie and Booker.
edit button
national / weak
The decimation of the teaching profession in Florida was actually accelerated by Obama’s Race to the Top grant which forced my district and the state to adopt merit pay and VAM. New teachers were supposed to receive merit pay and older teachers were supposed to remain on a grandfathered step schedule. Miami’s Superintendent and teacher’s union decided it was too expensive to pay for merit pay and the veteran teacher step schedule, so they just got rid of the step schedule that teachers were legally entitled to remain on. As a result, there are now teachers with 5 years experience making more than teachers with 15 years experience who will now never reach the top of the pay scale. Veteran teachers are being forced to pay for younger teachers’ merit pay. Now our Superintendent is planning on running for Congress as a Democrat. I don’t believe anyone in Washington these days cares about teachers, labor or the middle class.
The dinosaurs still live along side us humans, the Republicans are undeniable evidence of that fact.
Demosaurs, too
“The Era of Reform” (also known as the Cretinaceous Period and Era of Error”)
In Era of Reform
DeVossosaurus wrecks
And Dumbosaur’s the norm
And Teachosaurs are hexed
And VAMosaurs wreak havoc
On Publosaurus schools
With Demosaurs ecstatic
That Chartersaurus rules
SomeDAM Poet
Tell me which Democrats . We have a different definition of Democrat. Unfortunately so does that party . We have a two party system . Republicans or Fascists, if you prefer . And Republic-rats eating from the same swine feeding trough. With a progressive wing attempting to return the party to the days before Clinton.
There is effectively only one party when it comes to education.
And they are ALL Dinosaurs.
You have to be to support the policies they do.
Even the so called Progressives in the Democratic party have largely supported school deform.
In my home state, Rosa DeLauro, who is in the progressive caucus, backed Malloy and actually worked to get Jonathan Pelto out of the primary race because she was afraid he would hurt the chances of her pal Malloy.
And even Elizabeth Warren loves standardized testing and insisted that the state testing requirements remain a part of ESSA.
These people are pathetic.
SDP,
All the Democrats in the Senate voted to preserve the federal mandates for standardized testing and AYP. It was called the Murphy amendment to ESSA, sponsored by Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of CT
Diane, that was actually what I was referring to with regard to testing and ESSA.
I suspect that people like Warren have either bought into the Reform= Civil rights claim that came to the fore under Obama or , even if they don’t believe it, they are simply afraid of opposing reform for fear of being branded as someone who does not support civil rights. In Warren’s case, she is obviously constantly assessing the possible impact of her vote on a future Presidential bid, which seriously clouds her judgement and affects her ability to effect change.
Framing reform as a civil rights issue was actually a brilliant marketing ploy.
My hat goes off to whoever came up with the idea.
SomeDAM Poet
That marketing ploy like most rt wing assaults has a long history . It was long ago used to attack Prevailing Wage laws which are essentially minimum wage for an industry, long after the construction trades integrated.
I see the civil rights thing as pressuring the progressives to support the Obama agenda. When Obama was under a constant assault from the right. How many issues could the progressive caucus oppose him on .
The NAACP new position has exposed the emperor.
There were two camps in the anti Obama education agenda here in NY. One led by progressive pro public education groups like “opt out NY ” and the stop Common Core groups who seem to equate Common Core with fluoride in the water, as some sort of left wing global conspiracy. Ignoring the roots of it in the Business Roundtable and seeing Trump as a dragon slayer. Most could care less about charters, that don’t affect their suburban children. They would be all for vouchers for religious schools . While their support for teachers is minimal.
The same dynamic applies to trade and immigration as well which have both been used in a neo-liberal free market assault on Americas middle class.
So my question to you and Diane is who would you rather be sitting down to discuss any of these issues with. Obama/ Jeb /Trump or Warren , Sanders and the progressives.
In Ontario, Canada, our top salaries are in the $90 000 range after 10 years. Beginners make $45 000, thanks to strong unions.
It’s actually worse than my original post. I found the salary schedule for 2004, and conducted an online anonymous survey for what teachers actually made in Miami Dade County thirteen years later in 2017. Over 7,000 teachers working in Miami Dade County in 2017 make less than they would have in 2004 without accounting for inflation! If you account for inflation, some make almost $22,000 less. You can read more about it here https://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2017/05/13/the-biggest-losers-in-tallahassees-continuous-underfunding-of-public-schools-are-florida-teachers/
Another way the district saves money is by letting new teachers go before the end of the school year so they don’t have to pay them health insurance over the summer. I don’t know why anyone signs up to teach in Miami in 2017.
I finally left Illinois where I worked as an elementary classroom music and went to work overseas.
My first district, Chicago Heights, did not pass a referendum. I was given the choice to stay and become a classroom teacher with no planning time or leave. I left and went through four districts in six years. Apparently districts were saving money by hiring music teachers but made sure none of us ever got tenure.
In Frankfort, IL one of the music teachers told me that I was the eighth music teacher that that district had hired. He said that not all of us could be that bad. I stayed in Frankfort one year and had to move on. I was told by the superintendent that I “wasn’t what they were looking for”.
This was a number of years ago so short-changing teachers is not anything new. It’s just grown worse.
America seems determined to devolve into a “developing nation” status for everyone except the 1%. The decline in salaries reflects the disinvestment in the common good and the hijacking of our public institutions by corporations and billionaires.
That 1% figure is closer to possibly 10% perhaps a real stretch to 15%. Your scenario only occurs if the 90% allow it to happen. One of the major criticisms of the early union movement was that it was too fragmented to be a true social movement. But history even recent history is full of examples where oligarchies of one sort or another are toppled. Look no further than the pink tide in Latin America. Yes the oligarchy does fight back as we have seen. So progress is never easy.
Florida is already a failed state, complete with two bit dictators like Rick Scott and Jeb Bush.
The sad thing is when I was teaching in South Florida, the biggest raise I ever got was given to me by Rick Scott. So what does that say about the Mickey Mouse Union that is supposedly looking out for it’s teachers. Mrs. Weingarten can do all the photo ops with UTD and BTU she wants but it doesn’t change the fact that both organizations care about nothing more than their double dipping Union crooks while giving teachers the shaft at every turn.
NO teacher, public or private, should have to take a vow of poverty. Shame on our nation.
We’re just going to turn back the clock to 1872
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1872rule.asp
But they’re feeling very “empowered”!
People should run when they hear that word. It almost always means “less money, but a lot of meetings!”
We have a similar situation here in Texas. Every year the cost of insurance goes up and we get almost enough to cover the increase, therefore our take home is less.
I took a pay cut this year.
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/i-almost-got-a-pay-raise-this-year/
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/i-almost-got-a-pay-raise-year-the-follow-up/
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/i-am-taking-a-paycut-to-begin-my-29th-year/
The salaries in Rochester New York are higher. Most teachers make over $70,000.
Not to be outdone in the race to the bottom. I looked at the post and was absurdly comparing the 2004 numbers to the current OK contract. But hey, let’s get rid of all the non-english speakers.
http://www.tulsaschools.org/1_Administration/03_STAFF_MEMBERS/_DEPARTMENTS/compensation_benefits/salary_schedules_main.asp
Be sure to check out the ADMINISTRATIVE SALARIES, they not kept pace either – they have FAR outpaced teacher salaries. But hey, you have to pay to recruit and keep top talent right?
Glad I quit. I left with 13 years experiwnce making a whopping 43K. Miami is also the most expensive rental market inthenation when adjusted for income. Teachers can forget about owning anything Miami. Miami Dade County Public Schools has no shame as they send out emails instructing its teachers on how to apply for food stamps over the summer. Teacher appreciation week my ass. Shame on MDCPS.
Sorry for the typos. Sausage fingers on a tiny smartphone keyboard
Trump’s policies and America’s fleet of SUVs guarantee that Miami will soon be underwater, so maybe buying a house there isn’t the best idea anyway.
Weingarten Should look into the UTD (Miami Teacher’s Union) – smells like something very fishy going on in Miami. It appears many of the teachers union members in Miami are not even teachers.
You are correct. We have security and clerical vote on teacher contracts since they are included in the bargaining unit. I can’t find another TEACHERS’ union in Florida that also includes clerical and security. Seems as though we all have very different issues that should be bargained separately. Maybe there is some reason for this, but I don’t know what it is other than to help ensure a favorable vote for contracts that repeatedly financially devastate 40% of the teaching force.
Chicago Height, IL was known for its corrupt connections to the mafia. The school board would put their relatives into positions. We teachers believed that these relatives probably were ones who couldn’t find any other job.
When it came to negotiations for contracts for the coming year, custodians would always get their settlements done before teachers. We would have an idea of how much our contract would be based on how much of an increase the custodians got.
Teachers can give themselves a raise any time they want. Why don’t they educate themselves how badly they are getting screwed in their 403b to start?
Savings? Miami teachers can’t save to afford a rotten 403b
Teachers receive rotten salaries. I was a single mother who worked in Illinois for a little over 20 years. My ex-husband was also a teacher so my child support was minimal. He did the best he could.
I managed to save $55.00 dollars one year. Unbelievable.
Please watch this short video, like it, and share it to show your support for Miami teachers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V-VKqmXV5Q