Special Education Teachers

[Scratchtown]

So, my wife is a special education teacher and we were talking tonight while packing up our apartment (getting ready to move tomorrow), and she mentioned that South Dakota pays their Sp Ed teachers more than their regular ed teachers.

Anyone have any thoughts on this in Nebraska? Or how to get that started? My wife goes way above and beyond the school day hours with planning IEP meetings, leading those meetings after or before school. It gets into our weekends because she has parents texting or calling her asking questions. It seriously never quits.

I know I'm a little bias because more money is always nice but for the work they do and the stress they deal with I think they SHOULD be paid more than a regular teacher. Considering I am going to be a regular teacher after this school year I get that planning and stuff always gets outside school hours but special education teachers are bogged down so much more than anyone else in the school.

Curious on anyone's thoughts, if there are any.

 

[broganreynik]

No ideas really, but I agree with you about SPED teachers having it harder. My sister has Cri du Chat, and her teacher ended up almost becoming like a member of the family. She would have my sister over all the time for barbecues, and what have you.

 

[ColoNoCoHusker]

Supply & demand is more or less where it starts... Out here in Colorado, it's common for Special Ed teachers to make more than the average educator. Burnout rate is much higher, job demands are much higher, training/education/credentials are much higher, larger number of students in the program, etc... Compensation does vary wildly by school district out here though. Your wife can document the time she spends on these things and ask for an adjustment but it may be moot; hard to say without knowing the School District or at least some detail on their pay structure.

How serious is your wife about getting a pay increase?

 

[NUance]

I have the utmost respect for teachers. (There are a half dozen or so of my extended family members who are teachers.) But I swear, teachers complain about low pay more than any other profession I can think of. And I can't for the life of me understand why. I mean, in college there must have been fifty different majors that paid more than teaching. Yet, for as long as I can remember college kids major in teaching, and then spend the next forty years complaining about the low pay.

That said, public schools are incredibly wasteful with $$$. If schools didn't waste so much money on stupid stuff they'd have more money to pay teachers. /end rant

 

[Eric the Red]

Supply & demand is more or less where it starts... Out here in Colorado, it's common for Special Ed teachers to make more than the average educator. Burnout rate is much higher, job demands are much higher, training/education/credentials are much higher, larger number of students in the program, etc... Compensation does vary wildly by school district out here though. Your wife can document the time she spends on these things and ask for an adjustment but it may be moot; hard to say without knowing the School District or at least some detail on their pay structure.

How serious is your wife about getting a pay increase?

Denver Public Schools has something called ProComp. In which tough to hire positions (SpEd) and tough to hire schools (typically low income) will see an additional 3% usually in their salaries.

 

[Eric the Red]

So, my wife is a special education teacher and we were talking tonight while packing up our apartment (getting ready to move tomorrow), and she mentioned that South Dakota pays their Sp Ed teachers more than their regular ed teachers.

Anyone have any thoughts on this in Nebraska? Or how to get that started? My wife goes way above and beyond the school day hours with planning IEP meetings, leading those meetings after or before school. It gets into our weekends because she has parents texting or calling her asking questions. It seriously never quits.

I know I'm a little bias because more money is always nice but for the work they do and the stress they deal with I think they SHOULD be paid more than a regular teacher. Considering I am going to be a regular teacher after this school year I get that planning and stuff always gets outside school hours but special education teachers are bogged down so much more than anyone else in the school.

Curious on anyone's thoughts, if there are any.

OPS and maybe LPS will be the only districts that I would ever forsee going to a bonus system. OPS routinuely has positions going unfilled to fill SpEd classrooms. OPS has thrown around the idea for many years now, but a friend mentioned the teachers union doesn't seem to like the idea. They want all teachers aid the same.

 

[Eric the Red]

I have the utmost respect for teachers. (There are a half dozen or so of my extended family members who are teachers.) But I swear, teachers complain about low pay more than any other profession I can think of. And I can't for the life of me understand why. I mean, in college there must have been fifty different majors that paid more than teaching. Yet, for as long as I can remember college kids major in teaching, and then spend the next forty years complaining about the low pay.

That said, public schools are incredibly wasteful with $$$. If schools didn't waste so much money on stupid stuff they'd have more money to pay teachers. /end rant

I think when you're in college you're still quite naive and have this romantic idea your going to change the world and everything will work out just fine. But then the bills start rolling in and it's not so much fun anymore.

The pay is also why 50% of all teachers leave the profession within their first five years in education. So indeed, many people are quite fed up with it, don't want to complain about not making money and leave the profession.

 

[ColoNoCoHusker]

Supply & demand is more or less where it starts... Out here in Colorado, it's common for Special Ed teachers to make more than the average educator. Burnout rate is much higher, job demands are much higher, training/education/credentials are much higher, larger number of students in the program, etc... Compensation does vary wildly by school district out here though. Your wife can document the time she spends on these things and ask for an adjustment but it may be moot; hard to say without knowing the School District or at least some detail on their pay structure.

How serious is your wife about getting a pay increase?

Denver Public Schools has something called ProComp. In which tough to hire positions (SpEd) and tough to hire schools (typically low income) will see an additional 3% usually in their salaries.

Yep, that's a good program. Even so, DPS pays ~10% lower for Special Ed educators than most other Front Range school districts. Supposedly Jeffco used to have a similar pay differential as DPS but the previous Executive Director nixed that on her way to creating the smoldering dumpster fire she left behind. Once they get a permanent E.D., it sounds like reworking compensation is high on the priority list... One of the Springs Districts moved their Special Ed staff into "exempt admin" group to bypass union pay structure back in the late 90s. It's worked well although I don't see a school district getting away doing that today.

 

[NUance]

I have the utmost respect for teachers. (There are a half dozen or so of my extended family members who are teachers.) But I swear, teachers complain about low pay more than any other profession I can think of. And I can't for the life of me understand why. I mean, in college there must have been fifty different majors that paid more than teaching. Yet, for as long as I can remember college kids major in teaching, and then spend the next forty years complaining about the low pay. :dunno

That said, public schools are incredibly wasteful with $$$. If schools didn't waste so much money on stupid stuff they'd have more money to pay teachers. /end rant

I think when you're in college you're still quite naive and have this romantic idea your going to change the world and everything will work out just fine. But then the bills start rolling in and it's not so much fun anymore.

The pay is also why 50% of all teachers leave the profession within their first five years in education. So indeed, many people are quite fed up with it, don't want to complain about not making money and leave the profession.

Sadly, that's when teachers are the most underpaid: When they are fresh out of school and just starting out. The pay gets a bit better by the time they have 10 or 15 years under their belt.

 

[BigRedBuster]

I have the utmost respect for teachers. (There are a half dozen or so of my extended family members who are teachers.) But I swear, teachers complain about low pay more than any other profession I can think of. And I can't for the life of me understand why. I mean, in college there must have been fifty different majors that paid more than teaching. Yet, for as long as I can remember college kids major in teaching, and then spend the next forty years complaining about the low pay. :dunno

That said, public schools are incredibly wasteful with $$$. If schools didn't waste so much money on stupid stuff they'd have more money to pay teachers. /end rant

I think when you're in college you're still quite naive and have this romantic idea your going to change the world and everything will work out just fine. But then the bills start rolling in and it's not so much fun anymore.

The pay is also why 50% of all teachers leave the profession within their first five years in education. So indeed, many people are quite fed up with it, don't want to complain about not making money and leave the profession.

Sadly, that's when teachers are the most underpaid: When they are fresh out of school and just starting out. The pay gets a bit better by the time they have 10 or 15 years under their belt.

Ummmm.....Isn't that the case with most majors coming out of college? They get paid the least right when they start then go up from there?

 

[NUance]

I have the utmost respect for teachers. (There are a half dozen or so of my extended family members who are teachers.) But I swear, teachers complain about low pay more than any other profession I can think of. And I can't for the life of me understand why. I mean, in college there must have been fifty different majors that paid more than teaching. Yet, for as long as I can remember college kids major in teaching, and then spend the next forty years complaining about the low pay. :dunno

That said, public schools are incredibly wasteful with $$$. If schools didn't waste so much money on stupid stuff they'd have more money to pay teachers. /end rant

I think when you're in college you're still quite naive and have this romantic idea your going to change the world and everything will work out just fine. But then the bills start rolling in and it's not so much fun anymore.

The pay is also why 50% of all teachers leave the profession within their first five years in education. So indeed, many people are quite fed up with it, don't want to complain about not making money and leave the profession.

Sadly, that's when teachers are the most underpaid: When they are fresh out of school and just starting out. The pay gets a bit better by the time they have 10 or 15 years under their belt.

Ummmm.....Isn't that the case with most majors coming out of college? They get paid the least right when they start then go up from there?

Sure. But I think most career fields have a flatter pay scale than teaching. Or at least that's just the impression I have. (I don't have any stats to back that up.)

 

[ColoradoHusk]

I have the utmost respect for teachers. (There are a half dozen or so of my extended family members who are teachers.) But I swear, teachers complain about low pay more than any other profession I can think of. And I can't for the life of me understand why. I mean, in college there must have been fifty different majors that paid more than teaching. Yet, for as long as I can remember college kids major in teaching, and then spend the next forty years complaining about the low pay. :dunno

That said, public schools are incredibly wasteful with $$$. If schools didn't waste so much money on stupid stuff they'd have more money to pay teachers. /end rant

I think when you're in college you're still quite naive and have this romantic idea your going to change the world and everything will work out just fine. But then the bills start rolling in and it's not so much fun anymore.

The pay is also why 50% of all teachers leave the profession within their first five years in education. So indeed, many people are quite fed up with it, don't want to complain about not making money and leave the profession.

Sadly, that's when teachers are the most underpaid: When they are fresh out of school and just starting out. The pay gets a bit better by the time they have 10 or 15 years under their belt.

Ummmm.....Isn't that the case with most majors coming out of college? They get paid the least right when they start then go up from there?

Sure. But I think most career fields have a flatter pay scale than teaching. Or at least that's just the impression I have. (I don't have any stats to back that up.)

From the teaching pay scales that I have seen, it's pretty much a flat pay scale that increases slightly for each year of service/experience. Some school districts will pay more for teachers with Master's Degrees and additional courses, but there really isn't a "promotion" opportunity unless the teacher tries to get into administrative duties.

 

[BigRedBuster]

To the original post, it's a great subject and I'm going to respond with my true feelings on the subject and please don't take them as cold hearted at all because I truly appreciate everyone who does what your wife does. The wife of the coworker right next to me is a special ed teacher and I hear what they do and go through.

Let me go back to when I moved to the current community I live in. I had to go through a time when I had to convince my family to move here. I had three kids (4th, 2nd and kindergarten). So, the school system was a major part of what we looked at. We took a tour of the entire school system. We were obviously satisfied with what we saw or we wouldn't be here. BUT, both of us commented after the tour that we were amazed at the amount of money spent on special ed students. Let me clarify, this school system knew we didn't have special ed children but they spent so much time taking us through all the facilities and talking about the services provided to these children. I want to make it clear that I am not against this.

However, I think sometimes it gets out of balance.

I look at education as that there are three main groups of kids (in an effort to over simplify it). There are special ed kids, average kids, advanced kids. When we got here, it was obvious to me that way more facilities, expense...etc was being paid to the special ed students than the average student in either of the other categories.

Now, this is the part where I don't want to sound cold hearted. But, does that make sense? Here you have a group of kids that are going to be in life what they are. I firmly believe they need to be taken care of and trained to help themselves take care of themselves as much as possible later in life. That is totally different than the average student.

Now, you have the rest of the student population that you have a responsibility to educate to be as successful as you can make them. If you have advanced students, these students will be competing with students from all across the country or world for jobs and careers. That starts with getting the best education possible in HS so that they can get into the best colleges and move on with their lives to hopefully (as a collective macro group) make this country better in technology, math, science, medicine, business, leadership...etc.

Now, to say a special ed teacher should just flat out be paid more than these other teachers just leaves me scratching my head. Now, I can see one being paid more if they have the expertise and experience and time in the job to warrant that. But, to say across the board, these teachers should be paid more leaves me baffled. Meanwhile, we are trying to replace a VERY good science teacher that a huge number of kids benefited from and can't find an appropriate replacement.

 

[Eric the Red]

Supply & demand is more or less where it starts... Out here in Colorado, it's common for Special Ed teachers to make more than the average educator. Burnout rate is much higher, job demands are much higher, training/education/credentials are much higher, larger number of students in the program, etc... Compensation does vary wildly by school district out here though. Your wife can document the time she spends on these things and ask for an adjustment but it may be moot; hard to say without knowing the School District or at least some detail on their pay structure.

How serious is your wife about getting a pay increase?

Denver Public Schools has something called ProComp. In which tough to hire positions (SpEd) and tough to hire schools (typically low income) will see an additional 3% usually in their salaries.

Yep, that's a good program. Even so, DPS pays ~10% lower for Special Ed educators than most other Front Range school districts. Supposedly Jeffco used to have a similar pay differential as DPS but the previous Executive Director nixed that on her way to creating the smoldering dumpster fire she left behind. Once they get a permanent E.D., it sounds like reworking compensation is high on the priority list... One of the Springs Districts moved their Special Ed staff into "exempt admin" group to bypass union pay structure back in the late 90s. It's worked well although I don't see a school district getting away doing that today.

OPS just signed to give all teachers a 7% raise over the next three years. Except all the suburban school districts are going to just pull ahead again. Where would you teach? Toucher situations and kids for less pay or easier classrooms and kids and more pay?

 

[Eric the Red]

To the original post, it's a great subject and I'm going to respond with my true feelings on the subject and please don't take them as cold hearted at all because I truly appreciate everyone who does what your wife does. The wife of the coworker right next to me is a special ed teacher and I hear what they do and go through.

Let me go back to when I moved to the current community I live in. I had to go through a time when I had to convince my family to move here. I had three kids (4th, 2nd and kindergarten). So, the school system was a major part of what we looked at. We took a tour of the entire school system. We were obviously satisfied with what we saw or we wouldn't be here. BUT, both of us commented after the tour that we were amazed at the amount of money spent on special ed students. Let me clarify, this school system knew we didn't have special ed children but they spent so much time taking us through all the facilities and talking about the services provided to these children. I want to make it clear that I am not against this.

However, I think sometimes it gets out of balance.

I look at education as that there are three main groups of kids (in an effort to over simplify it). There are special ed kids, average kids, advanced kids. When we got here, it was obvious to me that way more facilities, expense...etc was being paid to the special ed students than the average student in either of the other categories.

Now, this is the part where I don't want to sound cold hearted. But, does that make sense? Here you have a group of kids that are going to be in life what they are. I firmly believe they need to be taken care of and trained to help themselves take care of themselves as much as possible later in life. That is totally different than the average student.

Now, you have the rest of the student population that you have a responsibility to educate to be as successful as you can make them. If you have advanced students, these students will be competing with students from all across the country or world for jobs and careers. That starts with getting the best education possible in HS so that they can get into the best colleges and move on with their lives to hopefully (as a collective macro group) make this country better in technology, math, science, medicine, business, leadership...etc.

Now, to say a special ed teacher should just flat out be paid more than these other teachers just leaves me scratching my head. Now, I can see one being paid more if they have the expertise and experience and time in the job to warrant that. But, to say across the board, these teachers should be paid more leaves me baffled. Meanwhile, we are trying to replace a VERY good science teacher that a huge number of kids benefited from and can't find an appropriate replacement.

it's not the school that is placing the huge emphasis on a particular group of students, but the federal government....all political parties. They expect all students to be at a certain point, well the low performing kids need the most.

BTW, I thought your reply was well balanced and very mature in the fact that even though I have a special needs child I didn't feel the least bit offended. I think it's completly normal and understandable to bring this up.