Education Levels by Country

[ShadowHM]

Attracting teachers here is tough.  Starting salary in our District is $30,000, a tenured teacher with a Masters Degree might get $ 47,000.  You  have to love the job to do it here.

According to the AFL, listed here:
http://www.aft.org/research/survey01/table...s/tableI-1.html

The American school boards are offering fairly low wages for the job, and it is worse here. The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (the main source for teaching degrees here) has this to say:

http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~gpieters/gosouth.html


What worries me more than anything is the 'other factors' -

"In Ontario, teachers are facing increased teacher workloads, belittling paper tests, reduced professional support services, and impoverished resources, which all serve to exacerbate the growing wage disparities between here and the U.S."

In my years of involvement with the school system (the eldest of my four sons is 17 now) I have seen a growing case of dispiritedness among teachers. There have been bad teachers, indifferent teachers and stellar teachers. In general, they have been good to great, with the few bad apples really standing out by contrast. But the level of 'other' BS they have to deal with as well as teaching is starting to show.

We have just come through a period where our provincial government has 're-organized' the education system. Ostensibly they were doing this for two reasons: cost cutting and improvement. Budgets have been slashed immensely, and standards have been re-arranged. I do see some light at the end of the tunnel on the standards side, but I find it hard to be optimistic about it when I see the effects of the budget slashing on the other side. Interestingly, the budget they have just set for my school board includes (with no negotiation) a wage decrease for all teachers (i.e. below current contract levels). We are in for a rough ride, I fear.