She has a college education. She has two post-undergraduate degrees and is working on another one. She has won many awards for her work. In 1999, she flew to D.C. to receive a national award as the top professional in her field for the state of Louisiana. Everyone she works with speaks highly of her professionalism and dedication. She rarely spends less than 50 hours a week working.
Oh, and she earns less than the bus drivers.
She is my mother, who teaches fourth grade in a Louisiana public school. And while she loves her job and makes a difference in the life of every student who sits in her classroom, she is overworked and underpaid. Of course, both those adjectives have become synonymous with “Louisiana public school teacher.”
This week, Gov. Mike Foster and State Treasurer John Kennedy joined forces with Hibernia Bank and Fannie Mae, a company that helps people purchase homes, to offer a $10 million program giving teachers lower mortgage rates. The program was designed to encourage more teachers to put down roots in Louisiana and stay in our school system.
The state announced the program Jan. 22. Teachers claimed all the money within three days, and more remain on a waiting list. I for one am not surprised.
I commend Gov. Foster for his dedication to education, but more is necessary. Lower mortgages are a start, but teachers need raises. If it means we take money from other areas in the state’s budget, so be it. I’d rather drive on an unpaved road or live without a professional football team than live in a state that refuses to pay its teachers what they’re worth.
I know some people feel teachers have an easy job. As a proud teacher’s kid, I have had words with more than one ignorant individual who explains, “Well, they don’t have to work during the summer.” Yes, and most of them take on a second job during that time to make ends meet.
Fortunately for our family, my father also works, so we have two parents to pay the bills. But other teachers, many of whom are female, are divorced or unmarried and can’t make enough to support themselves. Single parents have an especially tough time. One of my middle school teachers was forced to explain to our class that she would be wearing jeans for the rest of the month because she couldn’t afford to buy groceries for her kids and pay the dry cleaning bill. Her ex-husband didn’t help out much — hey, she had a job, she was a teacher.
Data also shows teachers make a difference here, and this should be acknowledged in the form of better pay. A U.S. Department of Education survey showed Louisiana was one of only seven states to make significant strides in raising the average fourth grade reading level from 1992 to 1998. We are one of the states making efforts to improve our education. And yet nationally, we consistently rank low on the totem pole in teacher pay.
Teacher pay isn’t exactly stellar everywhere. A national survey the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development conducted in 2000 showed elementary and secondary school systems in the United States on average devote 57 percent of their budget to teacher pay. The international average, however, is 64 percent.
Teacher pay should be raised nationally, but raising it in Louisiana is imperative. In a state with high crime and poverty levels, education is the one hope for our future. So give the teachers some credit.
I don’t plan to work in education myself, and neither do many students I know. But I hope all of you will lobby for better teacher pay anyway. After all, these people are not just our teachers, they are our friends and our heroes. They are the ones who make a difference. And they are the ones who have the power to change things for every generation.