CAREER COMPARISON

Career comparison: Accountancy and Teaching

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION3

Purpose4

Sources and Methods4

The Accounting Profession5

Structural trials opposite the Accounting Profession6

Teaching Profession8

Calls for Accountability in Teaching and Learning9

Teaching as Alignment13

References16

Career Comparison

INTRODUCTION

When choosing a career option you may be looking for challenge, more meaning, balance, development, and recognition. These are to be considered when thinking about different career options. Each year, the two national teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), the release of its survey of public school teacher salaries across the country. Every year, they take advantage of the opportunity to mourn the state of teacher pay. In April 2002 the publication of data from the NEA, former NEA President Bob Chase complained: "It's hard to convince someone to stay in the classroom when the salary is so low." In addition, the AFT criticized the fact that wages "average.

Continues to fall well below the average wages of other white-collar occupations" The average teacher, according to the AFT, earned $43,250 during the 2000-01 school year, compared with an average of $52,664 for mid-level accountants, $71,155 for computer systems analysts, $74,920 for engineers, and $82,712 for lawyers (Swassing, 2009).

This paper is based on an interview with professional accountant and a professional techer. James is an accountant while Jane is a teacher.



Purpose

The AFT has chosen comparison groups to do their best. Where, many wonder the comparisons with accountants and teachers also with other professionals. Should not the average salary of a high school English teacher be compared with that of accountant ? One could argue that the salaries of high school physics teachers or the calculation should have some resemblance to those of accountants, but the AFT believes that the benchmarks adequately compensated by third grade teachers are the salaries of engineers or lawyers?

Sources and Methods

Data from the NEA and AFT are very influential with facts and these facts will be utilized throughout this report. The U.S. Department of Education collects some data of its own on this matter. For the most part simply recycles union data in publications like the Digest of Education Statistics 2001, a reference standard in which five of the six tables of salaries for teachers are based on data from the Union. All data compiled together, present a fairly accurate picture of teacher salaries nationally and have some value for comparisons from state to state (Friedlob, 1996).

However, some suffer from serious limitations when interest groups, politicians, and experts use. These figures to make an observation about how the nation values with its public school teachers.

The Accounting Profession

Talking about the function of an accountant, James said that the function of the accountant is traditionally characterized by objectivity, emotional detachment, soberness and vigilance to fine detail. Accordingly, the stereotypical likeness of accounting as dull and accountants as uninteresting and boring seems to have become routinely held. “However, more lately the accounting occupation appears to have been promoting a rather different likeness of accounting and the accountant”, he ...