Our local paper -- Dallas Morning News -- has a blog that their columnists contribute too, and their education guy made the followig statement. -- Correction -- he's the highway guy. The education columnist got it better.
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The Dallas Morning News | Bold Types Blog E-mail This Entry

Teachers also have a lot of opportunity in summer to earn extra income.

Certainly worth discussing here.

I will start out by saying, I'm pretty happy with my pay and life these days, BUT when I started out teaching, the pay cut was a bit tough to take.

There are many reasons that I left programming as a profession and went to teaching, but I will have to state that the pay cut was hard. It was easier because I went without pay at all for a couple of years while I was getting my teachign certificate, but it was still hard to take.

I started teaching during a time period when it was not hard to get teachers for our district. In fact, the district had a reduction of force.

The good news is that I am able to pick up a few thousand dollars extra each year, but the bad news, is that I don't come near close to making up the $24,000 I lost each year by going into teaching. And that doesn't take in account the raises I would get.

This summer, I'm doing summer school, district finals, and I'm going to get paid for setting up and teaching an online course. I also get extra money for tutoring for TAKS, AP incentives, and this year I also got a math stipend. All told, I get about $4000 extra. Like I said, not the $24,000 difference.

It was real funny but until after I completed a year of teaching, my husband thought the same way. He even encouraged me to try to find extra money.

But as each year goes on, he encourages me NOT to find the extra money. He didn't want me to teach summer school for example. Why? He wanted me to recharge and relax.

Teaching is stressful and a lot of things get neglected. Summer gives me a chance to clean the house really well, assses what needs to be repaired/replaced and get that sort of thing done. Same thing goes with the cars, and other things in our lives. He prefers that I take the summer to deal with that sort of thing.

So the point of this -- have you managed to make up the pay cut YOU took to teach (as there isn't anyone teaching high school CS who hasn't taken a cut in pay). And if you do, does it take away from your energy during the school year? In other words, what is the true cost?

The education columnist has a better editorial at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/all/stories/071706dnmetbenton.3598a74.html and isn't part of the Bold Types blog. His editorial shows how the starting pay is not going to keep teachers because our raises from one year to the next are pretty flat.

My district is starting at $39,150 with a Bachelor's and with a Master's Degree and 14 years experience, I'm getting just above $49,000. That doesn't seem quite right, does it?