$250,000 a year isn't rich!

[TJ in Oregon]

My Mom is a special reading teacher and my sister teaches junior high kids in inner-city Phoenix.

Oh my... where do I begin?

First and foremost the main problem with the US education is a lack of parents who care, understand how to raise and discipline their children, and are able to make objective and sane decisions about their children's education. I’ve lost count of the number of times my Mom has come home and predicted with pretty good accuracy which of her students are going to make the jump from her to a normal classroom, and more often than not the key is parents willing to take some time and read with their kids. That really is by far the number one difference maker. There are also plenty of kids whose parents’ lives are such a mess they cannot possibly be expected to learn. How can a six-year-old be expected to focus on reading when his Dad just assaulted his girlfriend and Mom is suing for custody? It isn’t going to happen. There are also a slew of behavioral issues created from parents failing to discipline their children that can wreck the whole process as well. Remember, the school itself has very little ability to actually do anything to punish a child in today’s abuse/victim mentality world. And all this is from my Mom’s students, not even mentioning the crazy stuff that happens to my sister’s since she’s in a neighborhood where drug busts are a common occurrence and gang violence is very real.

The school system itself operates in a questionable way even under the best circumstances and at worst is a complete disaster. For example, if a student does not pass a grade level, the school can request the parents to hold the child back. You wouldn’t believe how many times the parents do the exact opposite of the advice their given and wonder why their child is struggling. A decent portion of what the school does is taming insane parents and trying to appear as to cater to their interests. Having a good principal makes a tremendous difference. Both my Mom and sister have told horror stories about how when the principal is incompetent the entire system collapses. The principal is expected to take on the façade of discipline and attend IEP meetings with parents. Whenever the boss doesn’t do his (her) job, the teachers often start trying to pick up the slack and some get sick of it and stop even trying to do the principal’s job for them.

There is a culture of career education administration that has no clue what the heck they want to do. My mom tells me all the time about how they’ll send her to a conference for some “proven effective” teaching strategy so that an administrator can pad his resume while the school only implements it in a token fashion or doesn’t implement it at all. The school continuously decides to make severe changes to the curriculum on a whim just because it is the “newest trend” in education. For example, my Mom has a smartboard (don’t ask me why) and a brand new Mac computer (which she didn’t want) that is barely compatible with it (ie. crashes waaayyy more often than a PC would). Also, the entire concept of a “proven effective” teaching strategy is a complete joke because in order to conduct a study you need a control group, something few parents would volunteer to have their child in, so the study ends up prohibitively expensive such that only a select few loaded education giants can afford to conduct them. Then some random parent reads an article in a magazine about how great some strategy is and starts suing to get it implemented.

And how much money is wasted on technology? My Mom’s school district decided to install smartboards in every room and is now issuing laptops to junior high and high school students. I don’t understand how this is supposed to improve education. What, so now every lecture will be mindless PowerPoint slides instead of an overhead or blackboard? If we really wanted to teach technology, we would be buying shiny new Macs, we’d be getting some old DOS relic or Linux-based computers to make them understand how the darn things work.

As far as teaching salaries are concerned, we have to realize that we aren’t going to get most of the best and brightest to enter the field when someone like my Mom needs a Master’s degree to get paid $35k a year. I understand that this gets complicated because paying more will attract more candidates good and bad to teaching jobs and the hierarchy isn’t set up to favor the best; it’s set up to favor the oldest. It’s interesting to hear my Mom and sister talk about merit pay because my Mom is terrified at the prospect of it being instituted and my sister has it and loves it. My Mom is a special reading teacher so she’s worried the school might punish her because all of her students’ test scores are low (obviously) and I can’t say I blame her considering whatever random political crony that was the most recent person appointed (and probably double-dipping on the tax payer dime) to the curriculum director or whatever office is in charge that has absolutely no experience teaching.

I’d like to end this post on a positive note after ripping the education system to shreds (and deservedly so): The reason why my sister loves merit pay is that her team of teachers had the best test score improvement out of any group in the district. Her school, after plenty of turmoil, is finally well run under the current administration. In the six years she’s been there, she’s one of only four teachers in the entire building who’ve been there the entire time. Her school although public, has uniforms (gasp!) and a pretty intense no tolerance policy to bad behavior. She makes all her students write on every paper they turn in their name, the date, the assignment, and the phrase “No Excuses”. Still, most of her kids enter way below where they should be for their grade level, but they’re a whole lot closer by the end than they would have been.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Of course one way of making sure that there is absolutely no chance of the best possible teachers joining the profession is to denigrate the profession, its practices and institutions (such as they are). As has been done in many countries for the bulk of the past thirty years, often in the guise of... er... attempting to raise educational standards. Bit of a paradox there.

If far too many teachers suck, one might as well own up to it. Sparing their feelings won't help the kids. The only thing one can ask is to be factual. That is the only way to begin to mitigate, and maybe someday move a fair amount closer to solving, the problem. We should find out what the Finnish are doing too.

Public education is far better in America than its given credit for.

There, I said it.

[Ebowed]

Public education is far better in America than its given credit for.

An unacknowledged truth if there ever was one.

[Torie]

It's not a question of the 'feelings' of anyone currently in the profession (although I do tend to think that you don't get the best work out of people if you try to undermine and demoralise them, but that's by the by), but an expression of a fairly obvious reality; how do you expect to recruit the best people (however defined) to an occupation if the position of that occupation (both in material terms and in terms of authority) is under constant assault? Or if you impose a byzantine (and ever-changing) set of regulations, tests and 'market' mechanisms onto the profession that is supposed to be all about 'raising standards' but mostly seems to be about undermining the autonomy of teachers?

I also think it is a lot easier politically to blame the teachers than to blame the parents.  That is the national pass time in America.  When you talk about healthcare people criticize how doctors practice medicine.  They never say the way to control costs is to get the majority of fat Americans to lose weight.  Nope its the doctors fault.

Blaming parents won't help. They are not going to change much.  So we need to figure out how to get more of you guys to go into secondary school teaching, you know, guys with a real brain, educated, enthusiastic about the world and what is in it, high energy, charismatic, and self confident, and rather fearless. We need to get you guys, along with the Torie's, and the Al's, and the Lewis's and so forth to be attracted to the profession, and in my opinion to do that, you need a system to separate the wheat from the chaff, and then for the very best wheat, pay salaries right up there with other highly paid, highly skilled, professionals, like $150,000 per year or so for 9 months work.

There is no other way, really, that I can see.

[Simfan34]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/fashion/08halfmill.html

No, it's not, depending on where you are.

[anvi]

There is a culture of career education administration that has no clue what the heck they want to do. My mom tells me all the time about how they’ll send her to a conference for some “proven effective” teaching strategy so that an administrator can pad his resume while the school only implements it in a token fashion or doesn’t implement it at all. The school continuously decides to make severe changes to the curriculum on a whim just because it is the “newest trend” in education...Also, the entire concept of a “proven effective” teaching strategy is a complete joke because in order to conduct a study you need a control group, something few parents would volunteer to have their child in, so the study ends up prohibitively expensive such that only a select few loaded education giants can afford to conduct them.

I don't think Atlas can get enough of a share of cyberspace to allow me to sing as many rounds of AMEN to this as I'd like to.  This is the assessment agenda in modern education, which superficially makes politicians look like they're doing something about education, gives administrators license to use lots of travel money for workshops and worsen an already suffering curriculum, and does nothing for new teachers or students. 

They don't need to conduct studies and get parents to volunteer their kids for them anymore, TJ, because every classroom is made into a control group through the introduction of assessment tests that are supposed to measure how well a student is mastering certain content or whether a teacher is employing a fashionable technique adequately.  In my previous teaching position, I was forced, as a newbie at that institution, to be the assessment coordinator for my whole department and lassoed onto the college-wide assessment committee, and boy was it all one big joke without a punchline. 

First of all, the flavor-of-the-month pedagogy craze is based on a fundamentally fallacious assumption.  Any teacher worth a damn and with even the slightest iota of experience can tell you that the one teaching technique won't work with every class; the very same technique, presentation and assignments will prompt one class to perform superbly and another to tank.  That's of course because student aptitude, varying learning styles and class chemistry, none of which can be either pre-or-post-determined by a teacher, play huge roles in any given course.  The best way for teachers to deal with these variables is to have access to a battery of different methods and approaches, so they can do early navigation corrections onstage and employ different techniques when the situations call for them while still ensuring that the students get the content of what is to be learned.  And the best way to ensure that is to give teachers good pedagogical training and practical experience while they are studying for their degrees and then provide them with good mentoring and peer review from experienced and master teachers when they are new hires, but sadly, the first is often substandard in degree programs leading to teaching positions and the second is almost uniformly terrible in the education system now; I've worked in five different college and university systems where peer mentoring and review was for all intents and purposes meaningless.  The sway that peer review holds over the tenure and promotion process has given way to quantitative student class evaluations (fill in the oval from 1 to 5 on whether you find the teacher, class, textbooks so and so), and students tend to reward teachers in such evaluations that are good entertainers, who go easy on homework and who are easy graders (this is where the "satisfying the customer" model in education ruins the whole point of the process).   

In addition, the assessment exam results are supposed to be quantitative for every subject across the board (fill in the oval from 1 to 5 on whether the student wrote research papers with an proper mechanics).  And when college-wide assessment boards read these exam results (through the medium of a department-produced report, of course), they give departments "feedback," which usually boils down to how to craft a better assessment exam next time, though occasionally, within departments, it results in tenured people telling non-tenured people what to teach more of in their classes, which could be good or bad).  Then, these exam results and accompanying reports are stuffed into cabinets or saved on disk drives, only to be pulled out when the schools apply to the state board for reaccreditation, and so long as schools are conducting an assessment process, regardless of what the results show, they are in compliance with education board requirements and get reaccredited. 

Results: politicians get to look like they're creating accountability in education; administrators get to pad resumes and salaries and look like they're on the cutting edge of pedagogical theory; departments get to avoid administrative cuts to their programs if they comply with the process; teachers get practically no help in becoming better teachers; students very rarely learn anything they wouldn't already have learned in the classroom.   

The administrators who conduct this process and spend the rest of their time rewarding departments that grow enrollment and cutting those that don't, by the way, get paid anywhere between three to six times what the average teacher makes, with even more handsome benefit packages and fringes than teachers get.  But I didn't see or hear anyone in the Wisconsin, Indiana or Ohio statehouses making any moves to cut the fat out of the educational administrative hog--it's newly minted faculty, many of whom have just finished twelve years of higher education, and the students they teach, that are getting screwed by our public education policy, and they're decidedly, absolutely, the wrong targets.

By the way, before anyone suspects any status-quo agenda on my part in the above complaints, I am in favor of ending teacher tenure, systematically weeding out bad teachers and promoting good ones in *smart and effective* ways, and am suspicious that huge raises in teacher salaries will perhaps skew incentives and be just as likely to attract questionable candidates into the field as good ones.  Of course good teachers should be paid more than they are paid now, but it's just as easy to corrupt people's motivations with money as it is to corrupt them with all that time off--we should lengthen our schoolyear too, by the way).  But we have to fix quantitative reductionism in measuring student learning, an absence of support for teachers-in-training and new teachers, shallow corporatism in our educational administration, and political hackery in crafting education policy.  Those and many other things too. 

Chorus ended.  Sorry for the long post.

[Yelnoc]

Anvi, are you calling for the lengthening of the K-12 school year or the collegiate school year? 

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

If you are making even $100,000 a year, you are undeniably rich. Period.

[anvi]

Anvi, are you calling for the lengthening of the K-12 school year or the collegiate school year? 

Both.

[Sbane]

If you are making even $100,000 a year, you are undeniably rich. Period.

If you are living in NYC, and your spouse doesn't work, and you have 3 kids, and you want to send them to a good public school, are you still rich?

If you are single, can live in an apartment or a condo, and don't have any other responsibilities, sure 100k is rich anywhere.

And yes, this does come down to choices. You don't necessarily have to send your kids to the best school, or live in a 2,000 sq ft house with a white picket fence, but if you have to make such choices are you really rich?

[republicanism]

If you are living in NYC, and your spouse doesn't work, and you have 3 kids, and you want to send them to a good public school, are you still rich?

Yes, of course.
100k a year is always rich, as already mentioned in this thread. Anyone who thinks otherwise is completely out of touch with reality.

[Sbane]

If you are living in NYC, and your spouse doesn't work, and you have 3 kids, and you want to send them to a good public school, are you still rich?

Yes, of course.
100k a year is always rich, as already mentioned in this thread. Anyone who thinks otherwise is completely out of touch with reality.

It depends on what you mean by rich. To me rich means you are able to buy luxury cars for all of your family, afford an overseas vacation every year and other such goodies. You can't do that if you have a 100k income in NYC with 3 kids. Maybe you can do that if you live in other parts of America though. Of course your definition of rich might be different than mine, and that's fine. They are definitely comfortable, but they are definitely not rich by my definition.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/fashion/08halfmill.html

No, it's not, depending on where you are.

I cry myself to sleep thinking of the poor bankers trying to make ends meet on half a million a year.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I don't understand the notion that, because you're spending a huge amount of money from your much-larger-than-average income, that suddenly means you're no longer rich.

[Napoleon]

I don't understand the notion that, because you're spending a huge amount of money from your much-larger-than-average income, that suddenly means you're no longer rich.

People aren't satisfied with their income unless it greatly exceeds lifestyle expenses, duh.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't understand the notion that, because you're spending a huge amount of money from your much-larger-than-average income, that suddenly means you're no longer rich.

It is quite so very Atlas, isn't it?

[All Along The Watchtower]

I don't understand the notion that, because you're spending a huge amount of money from your much-larger-than-average income, that suddenly means you're no longer rich.

Don't forget that you're part of the group that pays "80 percent of the taxes."

[Sbane]

I don't understand the notion that, because you're spending a huge amount of money from your much-larger-than-average income, that suddenly means you're no longer rich.

Housing costs are what I'm talking about mainly. If you don't believe me, you can look it up yourself. So someone with a 100k or higher income in the middle of the country has a much larger disposable income to spend on useless sh**t like electronics or fancy cars. That person in my definition would be rich. Housing is something I would put in the necessities category. Or maybe I just don't know sh**t. Being homeless in La can't be that bad. The weather is so nice!

And I know what you're going to say, don't buy a 2,000 sq ft house, rent an apartment or stay in a smaller house. And that is exactly what people with 80k incomes and kids do on the coasts. Do you consider that to be rich? I sure as hell don't. While you can live in a huge house in the rest of the country for that. Oh well. I guess I'm just crazy to think that the definition of rich can change from place to place. A person with a 30-40k income in India is rich. Obviously that is true of Ohio as well!

[Lief 🗽]

I agree (I think) with sbane that someone making $100,000 a year in Manhattan isn't "rich." That said, they're clearly very well-off and doing significantly better (or have the resources to, providing they are not living beyond their means) than the vast majority of Americans, regardless of their location.

[Sbane]

I agree (I think) with sbane that someone making $100,000 a year in Manhattan isn't "rich." That said, they're clearly very well-off and doing significantly better (or have the resources to, providing they are not living beyond their means) than the vast majority of Americans, regardless of their location.

Yup, comfortable, but not rich.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I don't understand the notion that, because you're spending a huge amount of money from your much-larger-than-average income, that suddenly means you're no longer rich.

Housing costs are what I'm talking about mainly. If you don't believe me, you can look it up yourself. So someone with a 100k or higher income in the middle of the country has a much larger disposable income to spend on useless sh**t like electronics or fancy cars. That person in my definition would be rich. Housing is something I would put in the necessities category. Or maybe I just don't know sh**t. Being homeless in La can't be that bad. The weather is so nice!

And I know what you're going to say, don't buy a 2,000 sq ft house, rent an apartment or stay in a smaller house. And that is exactly what people with 80k incomes and kids do on the coasts. Do you consider that to be rich? I sure as hell don't. While you can live in a huge house in the rest of the country for that. Oh well. I guess I'm just crazy to think that the definition of rich can change from place to place. A person with a 30-40k income in India is rich. Obviously that is true of Ohio as well!

That was quite the sudden jump, from me arguing on the topic title of 200-250k a year to you suddenly acting as if I was talking about people earning 80-100k a year.

No, you're right, there is a slightly relative element to being rich. I'm not going to deny that. What I will say is that, unless someone is making horribly stupid decisions with their money, someone earning four to five times the national average income is doing pretty well for themselves and could fairly be considered rich. Trying to suddenly turn this into an argument over what's rich in rural India is a ridiculous red herring.

Yeah, earning 80k in Los Angeles isn't rich, nor is 100k. 250k? I would say so. I would also say it's silly to point to a handful of cities as if that suddenly makes it the norm. There are very few examples you could point to and say "if you live here, here, or here, that makes you not rich!" when you can't say that about almost anywhere else in the country. Living in the most expensive areas in the country doesn't suddenly make your much-higher-than-average wealth less meaningful when the rest of the country would (fairly) consider it extravagant. Even "just" 200k is a bit under 3x the mean household income of LA and over 4x the median household income there.

The definition of rich isn't entirely objective, I'll concede. But it doesn't suddenly jump from town to town or state to state. 200k a year is an extreme amount of income regardless of where you live. And choosing to spend more of that money than necessary doesn't suddenly mean you're not rich. It just means you're a poor money manager. Your examples are rare exceptions to the rule, and shouldn't mean we run our tax policy based on those exceptions.

My maternal grandmother is currently struggling along barely breaking even on what amounts to 16k a year. I think most people vastly overestimate the amount of money they make, or even the money they need to make a living. Yeah, rural Ohio ain't Big City California, but 200k would be pretty damn comfortable in either location unless you were blowing money on luxury. (I was going to type unnecessary luxuries, but that would be rather redundant.) The idea that someone would be homeless in LA if they made under 80k (or even half of that) is absurd.

[Sbane]

I don't understand the notion that, because you're spending a huge amount of money from your much-larger-than-average income, that suddenly means you're no longer rich.

Housing costs are what I'm talking about mainly. If you don't believe me, you can look it up yourself. So someone with a 100k or higher income in the middle of the country has a much larger disposable income to spend on useless sh**t like electronics or fancy cars. That person in my definition would be rich. Housing is something I would put in the necessities category. Or maybe I just don't know sh**t. Being homeless in La can't be that bad. The weather is so nice!

And I know what you're going to say, don't buy a 2,000 sq ft house, rent an apartment or stay in a smaller house. And that is exactly what people with 80k incomes and kids do on the coasts. Do you consider that to be rich? I sure as hell don't. While you can live in a huge house in the rest of the country for that. Oh well. I guess I'm just crazy to think that the definition of rich can change from place to place. A person with a 30-40k income in India is rich. Obviously that is true of Ohio as well!

That was quite the sudden jump, from me arguing on the topic title of 200-250k a year to you suddenly acting as if I was talking about people earning 80-100k a year.

No, you're right, there is a slightly relative element to being rich. I'm not going to deny that. What I will say is that, unless someone is making horribly stupid decisions with their money, someone earning four to five times the national average income is doing pretty well for themselves and could fairly be considered rich. Trying to suddenly turn this into an argument over what's rich in rural India is a ridiculous red herring.

Yeah, earning 80k in Los Angeles isn't rich, nor is 100k. 250k? I would say so. I would also say it's silly to point to a handful of cities as if that suddenly makes it the norm. There are very few examples you could point to and say "if you live here, here, or here, that makes you not rich!" when you can't say that about almost anywhere else in the country. Living in the most expensive areas in the country doesn't suddenly make your much-higher-than-average wealth less meaningful when the rest of the country would (fairly) consider it extravagant. Even "just" 200k is a bit under 3x the mean household income of LA and over 4x the median household income there.

The definition of rich isn't entirely objective, I'll concede. But it doesn't suddenly jump from town to town or state to state. 200k a year is an extreme amount of income regardless of where you live. And choosing to spend more of that money than necessary doesn't suddenly mean you're not rich. It just means you're a poor money manager. Your examples are rare exceptions to the rule, and shouldn't mean we run our tax policy based on those exceptions.

My maternal grandmother is currently struggling along barely breaking even on what amounts to 16k a year. I think most people vastly overestimate the amount of money they make, or even the money they need to make a living. Yeah, rural Ohio ain't Big City California, but 200k would be pretty damn comfortable in either location unless you were blowing money on luxury. (I was going to type unnecessary luxuries, but that would be rather redundant.) The idea that someone would be homeless in LA if they made under 80k (or even half of that) is absurd.

I was talking about 100k like 2 posts before yours. I thought your comment was directed at me. 250k is rich, like I have said in this thread before, I do believe. Of course it's really, really rich in other places but that's beside the point. I'm glad you agree 80-100k ain't rich in certain places. And of course a lot depends on family circumstances. As for the homeless....I was only pointing out how damn important housing is. It's not on the same level as a luxury car or electronics. One can live without those, they cannot live without housing. And yes, nobody making 80 or even 60k is going to be homeless, but to have the same disposable income as other places, they would have to live in a much, much more modest housing.

BTW, as someone who is spending just about 16k a year as well right now, I understand quite well how much people can get by with. But in California, with the exact same standard of living, I would be spending about 25k. Of course I'm not buying a house right now, but if I wanted to buy a house, the income spread needed to have the same standard of living between California and Tenneseee would be even greater than just 9k a year. I just find it absurd that someone who can barely buy a 4bd house and a few cars is considered "rich". They are well off, obviously, but are they rich, as Republicanism thinks? Well, anyways you agree with me there.

Oh, and while LA county actually has a median income that is just slightly higher than the national average, the standard of living of the median person there just isn't. You should visit sometimes.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I read a recent cost of living survey which based on the cost of certain necessities, housing and common 'luxuries'... as of Oct 2011, the top ten most expensive cities to live in are...

1 Japan, Tokyo
2 Switzerland, Geneva
3 Switzerland, Zurich
4 China, Hong Kong
5 Liechtenstein, Vaduz
6 Brazil, Sao Paulo
7 Japan, Osaka
8 Norway, Oslo
9 Russia, Moscow
10 Australia, Sydney

...I should also point out that my city of 400,000, Canberra, comes in at #13.

The most expensive city in the US... unsurprisingly, NYC at #59.

I think Americans generally don't realise how low their costs of living are, when compared to comparable nations.

[phk]

The cost of living might be a bit "unfair", but there are certain cultural, economic, social premiums and amenities that come with those desirable areas that those that live elsewhere do not. Family friend whose a Dermatologist operates two practices. One in Manhatten and one in Fresno, while he could easily afford a mansion in Fresno (he actually makes more money in Fresno) there is something to having the UN walking distance or tons of fine dining options or Broadway shows or Wall Street.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think Americans generally don't realise how low their costs of living are, when compared to comparable nations.

Yes, but unless one owns a mansion, several yachts, at least three second homes, and has a luxury car (and trust funds!) for every member of their family, then one cannot seriously considered to be rich. One would merely be... an ordinary American living an ordinary American life.