Oklahoma Teacher Salaries

Teachers should be paid more because “They work outside of the classroom” (Snyder). They have to work on lesson plans, grade their assignment, tests, and quizzes (Snyder). In 5 Reasons Why Teachers Need To Get Paid More, it says, “If you take into account the average teacher’s salary and the hours they spend at work, they could probably make more money being an hourly wage employee.” (Snyder). They should be getting paid more because they do not get paid enough with how much they do outside of work to be able to do what they do in the classroom. Teachers work very hard for what they do and to get everything done.

In taking a brief look at the Oklahoma education system, one need not look far before issues of significant underfunding and understaffing come directly into view. Many different proposals regarding what Oklahoma needs to do to resolve this problem have been suggested in the past, but very few of these proposals outline an answer regarding how these fixes will be implemented. How Oklahoma's educational system can increase the effectiveness of its limited funding is something that can be addressed with simple cost-effective steps and strategies that have proven their effectiveness in other states. Additionally, the issue of understaffing can be looked at from a fresh perspective in order to understand what the Oklahoma education system can do to bring in new teachers and keep these teachers. Finally, in joining with national-level movements and interest groups such as the National Education Association which can help with budgetary issues and Teach for America which can help to bring in new, trained and enthusiastic teachers into areas of Oklahoma that have seen poor performance from students in the past.

Texas faces many problems with the current educational system and many of them continue to go unresolved due to the way Texas has established certain laws. A decline in education has been seen since 2006 when legislators decided to cut property tax which pays for education (Maule). Those policies only further hinder the progress of education improving, which is why policies like those do not need to be further implemented. More involvement with students is needed and that will be acquired by having more effective teachers. Many studies have shown that students with effective teachers do better in class than those with ineffective teachers. Not only do students do poorly with ineffective teachers, but “[s]tudies show that most students drop out due to poor academic performance. And studies have proven that the teacher in the

As somebody who has experienced the Oklahoma Education System first hand, I have came to the conclusion that it needs to be improved drastically. There were countless times that teachers just played a documentary instead of getting up and teaching the students and touching the children’s hearts. This might be due to them just being lazy, or the teachers feeling that they are not valued under the current system that was in place in Oklahoma. I believe that the teachers of Oklahoma should be valued highly due to the fact that they are the people who create doctors, scientists, politicians, and inventors. They need to be valued up there among the doctors and scientists and treated like it. This will raise test scores in children that usually do

Public education in the state of Texas is not at its best right now. Students are not being challenged to think anymore. As the second most populous state of the United States, I believe that Texas should be at the top of public education not only in the country, but in the world. We should change how and what teacher are teaching to students. Now days we go to school to memorize keywords so we can graduate and get a diploma. After that, some students that don’t go to college don’t reuse the information that was taught to them for four years, so basically the schools wasted resources and money, and students lost time. I believe we can and should strike for greatness and change the public education system from head to toe. Learning is a fun activity to do and school should not just be about going to class and learn how to pass an exam or get good grades in a class. Learning is about gaining knowledge and applying that knowledge to learn and discover new things about that topic.

     High school teachers’ average salary varies across the world. The United States is said to be one of the richest countries in the world, yet our teachers are being paid one of the lowest amounts. The Education Intelligence Agency, author of the article “Ohio Teacher Overcomes Union’s Tolerance” published an International Teacher Salary Report ranking the fifty states by “how much the average salary exceeded per capita personal income.” According to the Education Intelligence Agency Ohio’s percentage rate is only fifty- five point one percent. According to the Education Intelligence Agency the lowest state percentage is in South Dakota at twenty- three point six percent and the highest state percentage is

The low pay for our educators is causing many negative effects. New York Times shows that the low income is causing sixty-two percent of teachers to have a second job outside of their teaching jobs. Just to have enough money to support their families and make ends meet. Most everyone decides to college to prevent having these struggles with money, and to avoid having to work multiple jobs, when they get older; however, not when it comes to living off of only a teacher’s income, the struggles to have enough money are interminable. This low pay is also causing most teachers to retire, and find new jobs. New York Times states, “every year 20 percent of teachers in urban districts quit. Nationwide, 46 percent of teachers quit before their fifth year. The turnover costs the

Oklahoma as of today is ranked 49th nationally in per-pupil expenditures and ranked 48th in teacher pay (Klein 2). Putting Oklahoma as one of the worst states to be educated in the United States. “Oklahoma is consistently ranked near the bottom for education funding and teacher pay” (“Investing In Education Is Key For Growth And Job Creation” 3). When there are state cuts that need to be made, the departments of education are one of the first that usually tend to suffer. Since the 2008 economic crisis, Oklahoma has continued to cut the budget for education; even though the economy has since then gotten better (Perry). Budget cuts in education affect all parts of the education process for the students. “Some school districts have ordered teacher layoffs and shorter sessions” (“Oklahoma Makes the Poor Poorer” par 4).Schools are now struggling to keep their heads above water. Each year from the budget cutting, schools have had to lay off teachers, cut entire programs, and have limited resources used to educate the students. Even the teachers’ retirement system is suffering, being one of the top poorly funded pension programs nationally (Ash par 3). Seeing as that the schools have to cut down classes and programs, administration has had no other choice than to increase class size, overwhelming teachers tremendously. “Oklahoma has 1,500 fewer classroom teachers and 40,000 more students since 2008-2009” (“Investing In Education Is Key For Growth

The issue of teacher shortage today is continuing to grow. The effects of the achievement gap are reaching the teachers, not just the students: “...good administrators and teachers, who are doing their best under difficult circumstances, will be driven out of the profession…,” (Boyd-Zaharias 41). The achievement gap is part of the reason teachers feel they are underpaid, which happens to be one of the leading cause in teacher shortage considering, “Teachers were paid two percent less [than comparable workers] in 1994, but by 2015 the wage penalty rose to 17 percent,” (Long). Being a teacher requires passion in order to stay in the field, especially if the money in teaching is decreasing. Money is an important aspect for people when it comes to their careers, therefore, fewer people want to become teachers. This lack of teachers and the lack of college students studying to become a teacher leads to unqualified teachers and larger classroom sizes (Ostroff). Both of these causes are eventually affecting students’ learning environments. I chose this issue in education for my project because I have personally felt these effects, and I know others who have as well. As a future educator, I want to see better wages and better benefits, but this can only happen with qualified, passionate teachers. I plan on being one of them, and I plan on sparking a change. I am a future educator fighting to end teacher shortage.

Teachers have and will always have a big impact in everyone’s life and if not everyone, well, at least they did for me. They teach you everything you need to know about a subject and valuable life lessons, so why are they not paid sufficiently enough to make a decent living? Teachers salaries have always been low and I believe it is the time that changes. Being a lawyer, doctor, or engineer is great, but none of that would be possible without the insight of a teacher, I will inform you in this paper on why I believe there is a need for action. I will go over the background of teacher’s salaries, my ideas on what would be best for teachers not just in Texas, but nationwide, and pros and cons on the issues and ideas at hand.

Thesis Statement: Oklahoma schools are now in desperate need of teachers; however, these positions are hard to fill because Oklahoma public school teachers are among the lowest paid teachers in the nation. To correct this issue, we must realize what is the problem, what caused the problem, and what is the best way to fix the problem.

Would you like to in order to have a job? If you answered no, then don't ever become a teacher. Every year countless teachers teachers spend hundreds of dollars on school supplies. In schools around the nations on average teacher's pay for 77 percent on school supplies that are needed in the classroom. Teachers are the the people that are educating the future generations, they shouldn't have to pay for school supplies because funding is too low, teachers don't work in the summer and finally because they pay to much money on these supplies.

I believe that teachers need respect and trust in order to thrive. The two go together. Trust means giving teachers (appropriate) autonomy in their classrooms, but it also means giving them influence over policy—real influence, not a few token teachers on some committee—and it means giving them control over their own professional growth. We need to stop fixing teachers and create environments in which teachers themselves fix their own profession. We need to trust them to do

As stated above, State Schools Chief Jack O’Connell believes that student’s education should be protected and invested in the future. Our government had a critical mission which is preparing students for productive futures. What he means by this is that we should have an educated, highly skilled workforce that can compete in the global economy for our state’s long term success, but since our resources are excessively depleted, we cannot succeed in achieving this necessary. He felt that the governor and legislature was not fair or responsible approach to closing this budget gap, especially the vital state services such as education. He argued that we can talk about courage, but it is just a word and it will not be useful until it is supporting by the right kind of action. By the way, the right kind of

Who should be in control of ours school? Unions? School boards? The government? Everybody want access to our schools and make the changes that they think is better. Better for who? Students, teacher, or themselves? Is it a real compromise from the state and federal government of having control of our schools? Having local control is working best for our students? Are the people in these positions working for the best of our country or there are a conflict of interest? According to Bergmann (2010), “preparing our students to compete in a global economy, bridging the achievement gap, bringing classrooms into 21st Century Learning, and keeping quality teachers in the classroom are complex issues with no easy solutions.” It 's hard to prepare our schools for the new comings, but we need to put our best effort to have the best education of the world. Student achievement has stagnated or declined since 1970, and the cost of sending a child to the K-12 systems has tripled, even with the adjusted inflation (Coulson, 2010). Who must be in control?