Taking Issue with a Salary Survey

I have a question concerning the report reprinted from Forbes magazine ("Headlines," October 1998). Do these "average" teacher salary figures include administrators' salaries? Do they include higher education salaries? If they do, then the numbers are greatly misleading. There is a huge gap between the typical teacher salary and typical administrator salary ... In addition, university professors with Ph.D. degrees also would offset the true "average" teacher pay.

-- E-mail message from Oklahoma

Interesting that you would publish an article comparing teachers' salaries to the average wage for all workers in a given state ("Headlines," October 1998). Most teachers I know have four or five-year degrees, or have worked to become masters of a skilled trade in order to teach. Why would you compare these good folks with minimum wage people? Why not engineers, doctors and other professionals?

Michael Antonucci pulled a fast one here and you bought it. Let's keep the coverage fair.

--Dave Crawfis

Apollo Career Center Lima, Ohio

Being a new subscriber to Techniques, I have found some very useful information. However, in the October 1998 issue in the Headlines section, "Teachers' Salaries Not So Low?" made me angry.

I cannot imagine a vocational teachers' magazine publishing such a chart that compares teachers to average workers. Why not compare teachers to the attorney or doctor? The average worker works from 8 to 5, period. …