[HN Gopher] Nobody wants to teach anymore
___________________________________________________________________
Nobody wants to teach anymore
Author : grej
Score : 506 points
Date : 2022-08-21 12:18 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jessicalexicus.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jessicalexicus.medium.com)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Teacher's lives were taken over by bureaucrats and regulations
| that are updated yearly requiring new 'training'.
|
| Ever seen the pages long bullet points of sub-sub-sub topics
| supposed to be covered in kindergarten? Know how much stress that
| would add...
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| The United States seems hellbent on sabotaging education. This is
| not going to help future generations, and is going to put the
| likelihood of ongoing hegemony into question - over time, how can
| that compete with nations that continually invest in their
| population?
| [deleted]
| sanxiyn wrote:
| I mean, yes in general, but there is simply no mystery here. US
| already competes by accepting immigrants, and US will be able
| to compete in the future as long as it is attractive to
| immigrants and keeps accepting more immigrants than anyone
| else. US definitely should invest in education, but US hegemony
| can be secure without doing so.
| brightball wrote:
| Cut the administrative overhead, cut a lot of the federal
| requirements that drive up costs and put that money into
| classrooms directly.
|
| This is the stuff that advocates for vouchers and private schools
| have been saying for years. It's impossible to change things in
| public schools due to the channels involved.
|
| Private schools, on the other hand, can operate and adapt much
| more efficiently. My kids go to one. They love it, we love it,
| their teachers are happy and well respected. Because by sending
| our kids to that school we made a choice. We evaluated our
| options and decided this was the best place for them.
|
| When kids are forced into a school due to zoning or because their
| parents can't afford either a private or home school option, or
| moving to a house with different options, the parents have no
| recourse but to grumble about everything that they don't like. It
| wasn't their decision.
|
| Is money part of the problem? Sure. But it's not just the teacher
| pay it's the money for options that parents can choose.
|
| So much of this goes away if a school can simply tell an unhappy
| parent, "Maybe this isn't the best school for your family?"
|
| When parents make a choice themselves, they own it.
| black_13 wrote:
| kleer001 wrote:
| ... in the United States.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Increase the child tax credit and let schools compete on
| strategy. Having multiple strategies is actually super useful for
| preventing monocultures and increasing diversity of thought.
| devwastaken wrote:
| "old system in modern day doesn't work, in other news water is
| wet.". Teachers leave overwhelmingly because of the school office
| politics. Admins want things to stay the same forever, pushing
| classes that we don't need for people that don't want them.
|
| High schools are prisons. Universities are scams. The good
| teachers recognize this and left. If we want to fix it, we need
| to wipe the system and create a new one that focuses upon what's
| necessary and not what ivy league people think is needed.
| nerdponx wrote:
| There is a lot of room between "teachers have it really rough"
| and "high schools are prisons and we should blow it all up".
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| > Demoralization is what happens when you spend years becoming an
| expert in a subject area, and nobody cares. They'd rather hire
| another MBA to make all the important decisions, while they stick
| us on committees writing reports for ghosts. That's when teachers
| start to withdraw from their jobs, when we realize it doesn't
| matter what we think, and it definitely doesn't matter how
| amazing we are at what we do.
|
| This was really well put, and applies to any profession, not just
| teaching. Consider software security experts, who know all the
| ins and outs of making systems secure. They advise, the offer
| guidance and best practices on very complex material.
|
| And yet at the end of the day all that work gets thrown out by
| some PM's that think it only adds complexity, or worse yet users
| simply don't use the more secure features of an application.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > it only adds complexity
|
| Of course what they mean by "complexity" is money.
|
| What experts recommend costs money, where the MBA/PM will come
| with dumb solutions that cost less on paper.
| donatj wrote:
| I think there's a point though where people are so deep in it,
| they can't see the forest through the trees anymore.
|
| Security, as you mentioned, is definitely a balance with what
| your users will actually want to do. Security experts see
| doomsday scenarios everywhere, but if their solution is a
| hassle, your customers will just go to the less secure
| competitor.
|
| I've worked with DBAs who were absolutely experts and knew far
| more than us but wanted to normalize the data to the point
| where actually retrieving it would have been a major hassle of
| JOINs. There's a balance there that experts miss.
|
| "Experts" in my general experience often lack the big picture.
| They get so honed in on their little area of expertise that
| they can forget that people don't value what they value to the
| same degree.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I think we need to admit managerialism fails at knowledge
| fields -- perhaps Taylorism entirely.
|
| I'm not sure what's better, though.
| sul_tasto wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree. I think a critical examination of the
| MBA degree, and the values it embodies, is long overdue.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| Any MBA or Product Manager telling a security expert what's
| important and what's not is absolutely doing it wrong. What
| they teach in an MBA is simply the larger picture of a
| business, it's complex systems, it's architecture. Anyone
| that writes code should be fairly good at it because it's
| essentially the same thing one does as an engineer:
| Determine the interfaces and contracts between the teams,
| understand the 'organs of the body' and the processes
| therein, understand the inputs and the outputs and
| governing systems such as cash flow and income. What often
| happens is prioritization and risk assessment ... the needs
| of the customers are many and there is only so much room in
| the backlog. What the security expert needs to do is to
| make the risks clear to the manager in business terms that
| they can understand, which to be honest, often comes down
| to probable loss of money, or customers, or brand.
| d4rti wrote:
| MBAs:
|
| - do not improve - output -
| investment - employment growth - sales -
| profit
|
| - do - reduce employee wages
|
| Source : https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w
| 29874/w298...
| moomin wrote:
| Honestly there's useful and interesting stuff in an MBA
| course, but it has very little to do with practical
| management of a business at any level. Pretty useful if
| your job is doing financial projections of projects with
| relatively predictable costs and payoffs.
|
| Imagine if we put in charge of a tech firm the dude with
| the best understanding of category theory.
| svnpenn wrote:
| > it only adds complexity, or worse yet users simply don't use
| the more secure features of an application.
|
| This is true, on both counts. Adding top end security _does add
| complexity_. The business should decide if it 's worth it. And
| users generally want whatever is simpler, and will only use MFA
| if it's forced upon them.
| readingnews wrote:
| I was going to quote that very paragraph, as a professor
| teaching three classes this semester, in addition to my 50 hour
| a week job as the technical director.
|
| I see at my university the outside consultants telling us how
| and when to teach. But OPs first sentence here seems to ring
| true a lot on my campus. Your boss, HR, some organization
| called "student success" which is made up of MBAs that have
| never taught a class, some VP of whatever division, they talk
| down to you. Tell you, as a professor with great student
| feedback and high marks all over the place, that you do not
| understand "how to teach" and that we should have Elvsiver,
| Pearson, or some other bookseller tell us how to teach, or even
| better, that we should just outsource teaching to them.
|
| They can not imagine why people are leaving.
| origin_path wrote:
| In fairness a lot of professors are terrible teachers and
| don't really care about teaching at all. My own course was
| full of them. I'm sure they didn't like to hear it though.
| incone123 wrote:
| My friend is a professor and admits she has no interest in
| teaching. She is a scientist and counts herself fortunate
| to have enough research funding that she is rarely expected
| to lecture.
| effingwewt wrote:
| Or could it possibly be they aren't paid enough to care?
|
| Here above you was a professor stating how shit it is to be
| one, and the very next comment is a student shitting on
| professors in general.
|
| This very thread exemplifies why no one wants to teach.
| gms7777 wrote:
| It's not that they're not paid to care, it's that they're
| not paid to teach. At least at research universities,
| tenured/tenure-track faculty's job is to do produce
| research and get grants. Teaching is a thing that's piled
| on top of it that doesn't help your career and takes a
| whole lot of time away from your primary job function.
|
| A lot of professors do actually care about teaching and
| genuinely want to help students, but the system as
| designed strongly disincentivizes (or actively punishes)
| doing more than the bare minimum. I know a professor who
| was recently denied tenure at a research university that
| likes to describe itself as very "undergraduate teaching
| focused" -- he had decent but not outstanding research
| output, but had gotten several university-wide teaching
| awards and was broadly considered by students one of the
| best lecturers in the department. Some of the comments he
| had received suggest that this actively hurt him for
| tenure, because they felt he was too focused on teaching
| over research.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| Could it be that some of those "terrible teachers" are
| actually excellent teachers for a different kind of
| student?
| readingnews wrote:
| I will admit, there are those, just like the SW dev that
| hates coding, the Dr. that hates patients, etc. Most in the
| teaching profession that do not "like to teach" are people
| who like to do research, but are forced to teach.
|
| I would probably argue, as another poster noted, that the
| really good ones quit, or their classes are perpetually
| full as they are the good ones. In the CS department where
| I teach, we generally do not have the luxury of multiple
| sections after the intro courses, but in say Mathematics,
| you really see this point driven home. The "good" Calculus
| I profs class fills instantly, then everyone else is left
| with "that researcher person" who does not like to teach.
|
| Of course, the obvious solution: have research professors
| and teaching professors. Right? Nope, colleges are run by
| business people. "Have people just do research??" Only the
| well off colleges can really do that.
| Shorel wrote:
| And it could be because the good ones quit.
|
| For all the reasons mentioned in the article.
| politelemon wrote:
| The title makes it sound like the fault or some problem lies with
| teachers, and that doesn't help in spreading the issue. Similar
| to "nobody wants to work anymore" sounds like a fault with
| workers, but actually is a symptom.
|
| Title should be, nobody wants to _support_ teachers anymore.
| dd36 wrote:
| nobody can afford to teach anymore.
|
| That said, I couldn't have installed solar on my home, built a
| deck, replumbed my house, etc. without Youtube.
| locutous wrote:
| The entirety of the edifice of public education is rotten. Nobody
| likes building software for clueless business types, running
| deathmarch after deathmarch. I don't blame teachers for seeing
| problems.
|
| Time to rework the system. More likely, blow it up and start over
| as it's politically impossible to make the structural changes
| required. Just like since companies can't be salvaged, this one
| is done.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Some professions simply can't do capitalism. I always joke with
| people at work that a hundred years ago doctors could charge
| whatever they wanted and sexually harass their patients.
|
| Now we just want to help people.
| dhosek wrote:
| Former HS math teacher here. It was the hardest job I've ever
| had. I still have _nightmares_ about being back in the classroom
| 18 years later. I was easily working 12+ hours a day doing class
| planning, grading, etc. not to mention the actual teaching.
| Returning to programming my pay doubled and my stress level
| dropped profoundly. Teacher pay should easily be double what it
| is.
|
| (And about that summers off--with the exception of teachers who
| had non-teaching spouses or those in the back third of their
| career, everyone worked summer jobs to make ends meet.)
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I'm also a former HS math teacher and I 100% agree.
| douglaswlance wrote:
| Why do you need to plan/grade ? Why isn't that automated?
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| Planning needs to be responsive to how the prior lessons
| went. You can't simply pre-plan a whole year and expect those
| lessons to be effective. Eventually, you can get close to
| that point, if you are lucky enough to teach the same subject
| for years. But much like you can't expect a standup comedian
| to perform someone else's routine effectively, as a teacher,
| each individual has to figure out what's effective for them.
| Teaching is dynamic and _interpersonal_.
|
| Grading is not just a matter of right/wrong, even in fields
| like math, where questions can be given that have one correct
| answer. It's providing the student feedback on where their
| misconceptions were that led to an incorrect response. And of
| course, the most meaningful schoolwork assignments don't have
| a single correct answer.
| simonw wrote:
| This is one of the many things that I find so interesting
| about effective teaching.
|
| Your students are forming a mental model of how something
| works. Your job is to help guide them to the correct mental
| model.
|
| If their mental model goes wrong, you have to debug it: you
| need to figure out exactly what they've misunderstood
| (which could be anything, and could be from years before
| your lessons with them started) and help them correct.
|
| Here's a really good detailed write-up of this idea:
| https://teachtogether.tech/en/index.html#s:models
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| Yep, done correctly, it's a lot like debugging. Although,
| maybe in reverse. When I'm debugging, I'm trying to learn
| from the infallible machine how my assumption of how my
| own code works is incorrect :)
| jedberg wrote:
| Ah, the engineer who thinks everything can be solved with
| software.
|
| To automate grading you first must create a general AI,
| because if you just do multiple choice exams, you aren't
| really testing or measuring someone's ability to perform the
| task, you're just measuring their ability to make a good
| guess. And some teachers do that. But not the good ones.
|
| As for planning, some senior teachers have filing cabinets
| labeled by day. They just reach into the file and pull out
| the lesson for "day 82". But any good teacher will realize
| that they have to customize the learning to that year's kids,
| and constantly update with new teaching methodologies, new
| information, etc. And sometimes the school adopts a whole new
| curriculum, and then you have to start all over.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _But any good teacher will realize that they have to
| customize the learning to that year 's kids, and constantly
| update with new teaching methodologies, new information,
| etc._
|
| I mean this seriously: why? High school math is not a
| rapidly changing field. Sure, you might have to slow down
| or speed up, depending on the class -- although, is _even
| that_ true? Is the average student really changing all that
| much from year to year? -- but that means taking out the
| file for day 82 on day 87 or whatever. That 's not a
| massive adjustment.
|
| The material is unchanging. The students aren't going to be
| all that different from year to year. What's going on that
| it seems like common sense to so many people that teaching
| high school math requires a bunch of novel planning?
| juve1996 wrote:
| The material may stay the same but the reason why a child
| may not understand it will vary.
| jedberg wrote:
| > High school math is not a rapidly changing field
|
| Are you sure? Here is a list of 16,000+ papers written
| about teaching high school math since 2018: https://schol
| ar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2018&q=pedagogy+up...
|
| Also, as a teacher, you have to adopt the district
| standards, which change every few years. Certain areas
| are removed, others added, some things are more
| important, some less. Those standards are changing to
| meet new standardized testing requirements.
|
| There is a lot of change happening. Just like in
| programming. People who learned Cobol still need to learn
| new languages once in a while, because things change,
| even though the principles stay the same. It's the same
| data structures, same algorithms, but yet software
| engineering is rapidly changing.
| andrewprock wrote:
| Most of this change is driven by something other than
| need. The high school mathematics curriculum is a bit of
| a funny beast in the US, but it is certainly not the weak
| point in the system.
| [deleted]
| HighPlainsDrftr wrote:
| I always phrase it as the principles (mostly add/delete)
| stay the same, but the methods are almost always
| different. Once you learn the principle, it's always
| about the method of getting there.
| dale_glass wrote:
| That's still work though. You might know all you need to
| know on the subject you will teach, but if the standard
| you have to fulfill changed, that means you have to
| change your plans.
| another_story wrote:
| Your day is 8 hours long and includes 5 hours of
| meetings, 1 hour which is composed of duties and and
| maybe 30 to 45 mins for lunch. You've now got 1.5 hours
| to make "small adjustments" to the 4 classes you teach.
| Also, maybe you need to do some grading, deal with unruly
| kids, document what you did for those kids with IEPs,
| field emails, and adjustments for whatever latest fad the
| school admin is applying to the curriculum.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| The desired goal of high school math may not change much
| from year to year, but the best strategies for meeting
| that goal certainly do. I cannot imagine asking a student
| today to learn algebra the way I did 55+ years ago. Log-
| tables and slide rules? Probably not a good strategy.
|
| Until one has taught something that is completely new to
| a student, it is difficult to imagine how challenging
| that can be, and how individual it is. What helps Johnny
| understand (or even care) is often completely different
| from what helps Mary. It is very difficult to teach
| effectively without figuring out what the student does
| not understand. And there are as many ways to
| misunderstand as there are students.
|
| That is why teachers keep revising. They want to make the
| material more accessible to more of their students.
| sseagull wrote:
| In addition to changing cohorts that others mention -
| What are the chances the way you taught it last year is
| the most effective way?
|
| Good teachers experiment - maybe something they taught
| last time didn't go over too well, how can that be
| improved? Can they make the material even more relevant
| this year?
|
| Also, it makes teaching it more interesting, rather than
| regurgitating lessons. Teachers are human after all.
| dionidium wrote:
| If kids were learning high school math just fine 50 years
| ago (and, as far as I know, they were), then that
| suggests that advances in pedagogy are either not
| forthcoming, entirely irrelevant, or overwhelmed by other
| factors.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| > Ah, the engineer who thinks everything can be solved with
| software.
|
| Just as a bit of feedback, starting your comment like this
| may have turned off the original poster to the rest of your
| thoughts, which I agree with.
| azemetre wrote:
| Sometimes we all need to be slapped with a fish in the
| face in order to see how credulous we are with our
| biases.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| My comment is net -1 right now, and I don't believe I
| made any assumptions about the person I responded to in
| the feedback I tried to offer. If people don't think my
| feedback is useful, that's fine, but if I had started it
| off with something like "ah, the presumptuous teacher",
| I'm pretty sure it would be been received even worse.
|
| I read the initial comment as asking a naive question,
| but I think that's great, as long as they are open to
| answers that contradict their assumptions. People should
| be able to do that and get earnest answers without
| backhanded comments. Asking naive questions is a big part
| of how I learn, personally.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| "ah, the presumptuous teacher" .
|
| That is a perfect example of bad discourse.
|
| Why is it bad? Because it is "Ad Hominem". It attacks the
| person making the comment, not the reasoning in the
| comment.
|
| https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
| closewith wrote:
| Maybe it will cause the OP to reevaluate whatever absurd
| worldview led them to posting a ridiculous comment?
| Uehreka wrote:
| Not GP, but I frequently start comments like this if the
| comment I'm replying to isn't just slightly off, but
| reflects a deeply unexamined prior. It's a signal that
| "The thing that's wrong with your comment isn't even in
| the text of the comment, it's in the worldview that led
| you to think this in the first place. Simply reacting to
| the text of the comment would be insufficient."
| dnissley wrote:
| The problem is that this type of reply reflects your own
| deeply unexamined prior (e.g. that software can't play a
| part of solving this issue, or that anyone who said X
| believes Y, etc.), and so sets up an antagonistic
| interaction with the other person where you are each
| arguing from atop your ladders of inference, rather than
| climbing down those ladders and deconstructing those
| priors in more detail.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I get the impulse, but I just think that if the goal is
| to correct someone--not just to be correct--starting with
| snark is most likely to be counterproductive. Even if the
| first comment is actually in bad faith, I consider my
| audience to be any reader, not just the one I'm replying
| to, and snark undermines credibility there, too.
| sseagull wrote:
| Also, I will add, there is an element of good teaching that
| involves building a relationship with your students.
|
| Getting personalized feedback (encouragement, small
| corrections, etc) can mean much more to a student than a
| simple green checkmark/red x somewhere. Good educators can
| know when to apply the right amount of pushing or backing
| off that can help a student succeed.
|
| Ideally, of course. Lots of bad teachers out there...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 100% agreed. On the other hand, automated grading would
| remove a lot of the biases. For example, it's been
| repeatedly proven that girls get graded higher than boys.
| d0mine wrote:
| Software is a tool that can be used effectively in
| education (e.g., Khan Academy). Nobody says it is the only
| tool that you should use.
|
| If you are saying that 100% of grading must be manual, it
| implies 0% effectiveness of Khan Academy (false). In
| practice, even if just a half of the tests can be
| automated, it would free the time for teachers to do the
| work that can't be automated.
|
| Software can provide a great leverage.
| thayne wrote:
| My mother is a teacher, and she often has to do work during the
| summer to prepare for the next year, even though her pay is
| based on her getting the summer off. Not to mention that she is
| required to do additional training during the summer, sometimes
| at her own expense.
| vuln wrote:
| Interesting. Every public city school system that I've
| attended and participated in gave the teachers the choice of
| 10 months of pay or 12. Seemed like every tenured teacher
| took the 12 month while the younger teachers took the 10
| month. This might be because of age and financial security.
| The tired teachers don't want to pick up a summer job. While
| the younger bunch picks up jobs as bartenders and servers and
| probably clear more in 2 months than the whole year as a
| teacher.
|
| One Friday evening I went out with some friends and ended up
| running into my son's 6 grade teacher pouring body shots on
| themselves for the patrons to enjoy.
|
| Maybe that's the way it works in a "resort" town.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Teacher's job is no doubt stressful. Therefore I think we must
| invent new ways of automating the teaching, amplify the powers
| of a single teacher. That way there will be enough teachers to
| provide for every child. Not sure how to get there.
|
| But what about the adult population? I think large swaths of it
| are in need of more education. Math literacy, evidence-based
| evaluation of propaganda. Large portion of US population
| believes last election was stolen.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Or, and hear me out: we could cut our military budget (which
| is larger than the next ten or so countries combined, both
| total and per capita) and start tipping the corporate tax
| share back towards the ~%50 it was sixty years ago and
| magically be able to:
|
| * pay teachers a fair wage
|
| * hire enough teachers, assistants, and admins so that
| teachers don't have to work at least another half a workday
| 'off the books'
|
| * fund schools well enough that teachers don't have to pay
| out of pocket for basic supplies like chalk and paper
|
| * feed our children a proper meal at lunch by default,
| instead of making them pay for a crappy meal (unless their
| busy parents jump through hoops to prove they're poor enough)
|
| One of the strangest things for me as a private school
| student coming from the public school system was being able
| to go into the lunch line, get what food I wanted, as much as
| I wanted, and not have to pay for it. No worries about losing
| the lunch money I'd been given, getting beat up for my lunch
| money, etc.
| avsteele wrote:
| Never trust an article with no numbers in it.
|
| Median teacher pay in NJ is $73K in 2020, and they get summer
| off.
| wawjgreen wrote:
| i have always said it: teachers don't know how to teach, students
| don't know how to learn, school admin don't know how to manage.
| Append a "most" for each (I love Ruby).
|
| The fundamental problem is one of teacher education and an
| understanding of what it means to impart knowledge. Nobody knows
| anything about this anymore, certainly not even edu psychologists
| (50% of their papers are statistically invalid, the other 50% are
| too lab-centric to have any classroom value).
|
| A good solution is to produce a highly-paid, highly-autonomous
| batch of properly-trained and highly-educated teachers who should
| have the biggest say in how they do their job--don't do that and
| pretty soon you won't have an educated class.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| I taught science for a few years.
|
| > "Teachers ... leave the kids alone." - _The Wall_
|
| Administrators ... leave the teachers alone.
|
| Many admistrators have _no_ education experience or credentials.
| The 'experience' of my superintendent was being a colonel in the
| military. Spent much of his time getting a return on the
| district's investment funds.
|
| > "It's about the money."
|
| Yep, you get what you pay for.
|
| If only full-time teachers were paid be the hour, like substitude
| teachers.
|
| I didn't get paid enough to get home at 7pm tired-out with a
| stack of papers to grade, eat supper and fall asleep instead.
| "Oh, and we need you to take admissions at the football game
| Friday night, and to stay afterwards to help count the money."
| sanderjd wrote:
| Why would they? Super hard job, terrible pay, horrible disrespect
| by parents and politicians. It's an awful situation that makes me
| very worried about my kids' ability to get an education.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| > "...asked to breathe children's germs and fling our bodies
| toward gunfire."
|
| These problems are above and beyond the community's reach to be
| resolved.
| bulbosaur123 wrote:
| Tons of people teaching on youtube every subject imaginable.
| irrational wrote:
| One thing I wonder is if teachers are in such high demand, why do
| they put up with crap from their administrators and politicians
| saying that this is what they have to teach and how they have to
| teach it. Why don't they just teach whatever they want to teach
| and do it however they want to do it? The worst that can happen
| is they will be fired, but they can probably find a new teaching
| position easily since there is such a high demand.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Two reasons:
|
| - They legitimately love their jobs and the kids.
|
| - If they quit/are fired, and have to find a new job that may
| reset their steps (i.e. they take a pay cut, but not just for
| one year but for their career). Inter-district transfers can be
| blocked or have the same problems at the receiving school.
|
| Plus there are some fields that are more in-demand than others
| (e.g. maths/science Vs. art/social studies).
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| >"The worst that can happen is they will be fired, but they can
| probably find a new teaching position easily since there is
| such a high demand."
|
| Just like any career, the next institution looking to hire
| someone is going to ask about why that person left their last
| job. Regardless of whether or not the next school is public or
| private, they're going to want to hire a teacher that is
| compliant rather than defiant. Even in the face of a teachers
| shortage, these schools are still obligated to teach a
| curriculum and won't want to hire someone who they will likely
| have to replace in short order.
| juve1996 wrote:
| The cushy easy jobs in great school districts don't have
| vacancies. There are plenty of jobs in "bad" neighborhoods
| where you'll be endlessly abused.
| krony wrote:
| Great opinion piece. Much agree. My wife works as a middle and
| high school substitute teacher across 6 districts in a large
| metro. All schools need subs so badly. But only 1 even raised
| their sub pay rate this year. Some try to offer higher rates for
| working more days in their district. But when one district pays
| $25 more a day than the others, they still don't increase it.
| Teachers deserve more money. Also boggles my mind that the
| teachers unions are supposedly so powerful in this country, but
| if so then why are they paid so poorly?
| freddealmeida wrote:
| Though many want to educate. teachers seem to be a new breed
| these days.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| Increase salaries, which will transitively increase the respect
| and prestige that teachers get in an actionable manner. Thanking
| them isn't enough.
|
| An alternative is to automate the teacher away. But I think most
| people would agree that there's still immense value in having a
| human being in the picture here.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Currently turnover is high for many jobs with great working
| conditions, so it shouldn't be news that people don't want a
| stressful job with relatively mediocre pay.
|
| I don't have the data to back it up, but I would expect a few
| European countries to be the only exception, and only those that
| have moved on from older educational models.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Not just mediocre pay, but nowadays unlivable pay with the
| current rent trends in suburban and city environments.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Not just mediocre pay, but nowadays unlivable pay with the
| current rent trends in suburban and city environments.
|
| Not just "nowadays." I recall (I've looked around, but can't
| find it archived) an article from 2000 in the San Jose
| Mercury News about full-time public school teachers living in
| homeless shelters because they couldn't afford housing in San
| Jose.
|
| So, no. Not new. Still a big problem, but not a new one.
| judge2020 wrote:
| But that's San Jose - I think we're seeing the problem
| spread to more reaches of the US. For example, Savannah, GA
| is a mostly stagnant area with only 4,000 population growth
| since 2017 and not much job growth. Meanwhile, the average
| rent for a 2 bedroom was stuck under $1100 until 2018, and
| after Covid the expiration of the CDC moratorium enabled a
| rent boom to $1500. I can guarantee you income has not
| risen to match that, so anyone already in an apartment is
| simply dedicating more of their income to paying the rent.
|
| https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/savannah-ga
| radiojasper wrote:
| Pay them more. Then while you're at it, pay police more as well.
| The two pillars that should keep our systems together are
| disgustingly underpaid...
|
| High School Teachers earned an average salary of $67,340 in 2020.
| Comparable jobs earned the following average salary in 2020:
| Elementary School Teachers made $65,420, Middle School Teachers
| made $64,990, School Counselors made $62,320, and Sports Coaches
| made $47,100.
|
| Then we haven't even mentioned the massive debt students rake up
| to be able to pay for their education and sustain their lives
| while studying. It's one big mess.
| scythe wrote:
| This blog post touches on a lot of topics. I'm laying in bed and
| groggy, so I'm just going to highlight one thing:
|
| >They're lucky if they have air conditioning.
|
| LKY: _" Air conditioning was a most important invention for us,
| perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the
| nature of civilization by making development possible in the
| tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool
| early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon
| becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in
| buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public
| efficiency."_
|
| You can't think properly if you're hot. This isn't my opinion,
| it's measurable. E.g.
|
| https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/ijerph/ijerph-18-07698/art...
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02656736.2017.13...
|
| _" Findings indicate that academic achievement is linked to
| building condition mediated by the social climate and student
| attendance. The model accounted for 70 percent of the variance in
| the outcome measures."_
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02724...
|
| Teaching is complicated. Politics is complicated. Parent-school
| interactions are very complicated. Air conditioning, by
| comparison, is _drop-dead simple_. The inability of school
| districts to do the simplest and most obvious thing to address
| the problem underscores the degree to which meaningful
| information is driven out of the education dialogue by pet-issue
| squabbling.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I've known former teachers who have turned to software
| engineering simply because the pay is better. People are going to
| go where the money is.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I tried teaching high school CS for the best part of two years in
| a private school. Everything to do with the pupils was amazing
| and I loved every moment. I am a natural with behaviour
| management and although it was stressful, every time the bad kids
| acted up it presented a teachable moment. You could really feel
| the impact on their lives and behaviour, well behind the Python
| and the TCP/IP and while loops.
|
| But everything to do with working with other teachers was utter
| misery. Never have I met such a cantankerous downtrodden passive
| aggressive bunch of backstabbing political jobsworths. Actually,
| it was probably only one third of the staff that were the hyper
| negative old timers, but they had such a dismal impact on me it
| felt like everyone was cut from the same cliquey snobby cloth.
| Imagine the worst, most power hungry, little-napoleon office
| manager you've ever had and then imagine one in three of the
| staff have that mindset.
|
| It drove me mad and I'm now a SWE again but also volunteering at
| a youth center in our most deprived part of town and loving it. I
| can have impact with the kids, and as a volunteer I seem to
| command much more respect from parents than a lowly teacher.
|
| So now I am tainted too -- if I hear you are a teacher then I
| will see before me someone who at best tolerates that level of
| crappiness in their workplace, and at worst actively takes part
| in it. Neither leave me with much respect for you, but I know why
| you do it: the kids.
| auslegung wrote:
| I'm sure your experience sucked, but having a bunch of crappy
| coworkers doesn't mean 100s of thousands of teachers across the
| nation are likely to be "the worst, most power hungry, little-
| napoleon office manager you've ever had".
| hollywood_court wrote:
| Your last paragraph reminds me of what my wife calls "one of
| your favorite sayings."
|
| "It's difficult to respect someone that doesn't respect
| themselves."
|
| Of course that doesn't mean treat people in a disrespectful
| manner, but I don't understand why anyone would wish to be a
| teacher in the US.
|
| It's not a pleasant experience. And the money isn't enough for
| most people.
|
| Education is a bit like healthcare. If you want to make money
| in healthcare, you don't become a doctor. You become an
| administrator. Same goes for education.
| Wistar wrote:
| My wife is a primary public school teacher in the U.S. I read
| to her your comment, and she said to me, "We have 21 teachers
| at our school, and only one of them resembles what that comment
| describes."
| myself248 wrote:
| False. I want to teach, I just don't want to teach in the
| environment we've created for teachers to exist in.
| obscurette wrote:
| 1. This is not about America. I'm from Eastern Europe and we have
| the very same problems.
|
| 2. This is not about money. Yes, being underpaid is part of a
| problem how teachers feel, but no money compensates humiliation
| and bullying teachers are experiencing.
|
| 3. It's not a rant. This EXACTLY how I feel after spending three
| years at school. I was a math teacher in classes of my kids
| because a school couldn't find any. Yes, nobody wants to teach
| any more.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I think we can all agree this is not a problem in Finland.
| Teachers there are paid in accordance with the high respect
| they're given in society.
| sampo wrote:
| > I think we can all agree this is not a problem in Finland.
|
| Schools in Finland are starting to have problems trying to
| recruit enough teachers:
|
| https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-12555574
|
| https://www.aamulehti.fi/pirkanmaa/art-2000009014541.html
| obscurette wrote:
| Nordic countries do all much better than others in my
| experience. I'm sure that they have their own problems, but
| such level of bullshit and disrespect is not one of them
| indeed.
| aqsalose wrote:
| Coincidentally just yesterday there was a big news article in
| the largest daily newspaper about the problems teachers have
| with uncooperative parents. One memorable case was of the
| parents calling the teacher and informing them that the
| parents have agreed with their kid is exempt from reading
| books. In another, during a disagreement with a teacher, kid
| called their parent, put the parent on speaker, who then
| proceeded disparage the teacher in very low language in front
| of the rest of class.
|
| The article is here
| https://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000009001096.html : it is in
| Finnish, but Google Translate manages to make sense of it in
| English.
|
| The social standing and respect teachers have varies a lot in
| different social spheres, but it is certainly not as high and
| universal as doctors.
| 300bps wrote:
| _I think we can all agree this is not a problem in Finland_
|
| The county I live in has similar demographics to Finland. We
| get 350 applications for every open teacher position.
|
| Not very accurate to compare Finland's homogenous population
| of 5 million to the United State's incredibly diverse
| population of 330 million.
| havblue wrote:
| This isn't entirely a criticism of the parent post, but
| praise of entirely different education systems comes across
| as Finland ex machina: just do what they do and our
| problems are solved. Aside from the parenting component
| which is a huge part of student success, there's also the
| question of replacing school boards, administration staff,
| hiring better teachers of course and reforming local laws.
| And of course the teachers unions and the financial issues
| with pensions. There's no easy way to transition out of our
| existing problems and parents with the means just hit the
| eject button, sending their kids to private schools.
| santoshalper wrote:
| It's not _just_ about the money, but I think the mediocre pay
| combined with all the bullshit is just too much.
| obscurette wrote:
| In most of Eastern Europe countries teachers had lower
| salaries than average as far as we remember - ie at least
| since WWII. It's expected for most of us here. But that
| wasn't my point.
|
| The point was that you can't compensate all this bullshit
| with money. OK, you might find some people who can do
| anything for money, but not so many you can fill all
| positions in public education system.
| pojzon wrote:
| 30 years ago teachers were respected and parents trusted
| teachers with their kids.
|
| If the kid was misbehaving in class or getting bad grades
| -> was properly managed by parents.
|
| Right now parents are delusional about their kids. Blame
| teachers if something is wrong with the kid.
|
| Cant understand that most likely they are the issue why the
| kid is behaving this way.
|
| Dont want to take the blame.
|
| At least those are my obesrvations - my mom was a teacher
| with 40 years of experience and national wide fame.
| 8note wrote:
| I think if teaching was a $2M/year job, plenty of people would
| want to teach.
|
| They might not be good at it, but actually good money will draw
| many candidates
| caoilte wrote:
| This is a better argument to cut CEO pay by 90% than anything
| else.
|
| The problem for teachers (and lots of other people in the
| care sector who struggle to take effective industrial action)
| isn't that the pay doesn't attract good people.
|
| The problem is it isn't enough to live on, especially given
| all the training they have to do (plus associated loans) and
| unpaid work.
| epgui wrote:
| And, sadly, good pay would probably be the thing that would
| most boost the social respect we show teachers.
| indymike wrote:
| > no money compensates humiliation and bullying teachers are
| experiencing.
|
| I wish I could upvote this x10000. This is the exact problem.
| brohoolio wrote:
| Undervaluing education is another sign that society is shifting
| to rent seeking. Extracting short term wealth by burning the
| future.
| eric4smith wrote:
| Because the old way of teaching has been broken for decades now -
| by broken I mean not applicable to todays world.
|
| One good thing about C19 is that it forced us to re-examine how
| we taught and what we taught.
|
| And I think we clearly see that we are spending too many hours in
| classrooms with boring teachers.
|
| Looking back many years at my schooling I can see that much of it
| was impractical and unnecessary.
|
| Things like math were not tied into the real world so I was never
| really taken with it.
|
| It Was very boring and when I became a teacher years later, I
| burned out after a year of following the curriculum.
|
| I could not really grok chemistry and physics in high school
| because it was mostly just theory completely divorced from the
| normal word.
|
| On the other hand our biology teacher gave me a lifelong start in
| that subject because she really tied it into our daily lives and
| we could relate.
|
| And I was not the only one.
|
| There are very very few teachers who teach like that - and so,
| most people just finish school and promptly forget everything
| they learned.
|
| Can this be fixed?
|
| Not now. We are more focused on culture wars that improving the
| way how we teach.
|
| It would take a really serious event (not any politician) to make
| changes.
|
| And that's why as more parents wake up, home schooling has
| increased from about 50,000 to well over 500,000 as of last year
| in the USA.
| quacked wrote:
| Here, check this out:.
|
| https://www.unschooling.com/t/the-seven-lesson-schoolteacher...
| flerchin wrote:
| Is there any evidence that teachers are experiencing a labor
| shortage out of line with any other industry? My kids' teachers
| are awesome, and they're quite good at their jobs. My district
| also pays quite a bit more than the state average in Texas.
| amelius wrote:
| Teachers are rockstars that need to find agents that make sure
| they get paid well.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| The problem with teaching is that the role has expanded way
| beyond what it used to be and teachers are expected to do FAR too
| much in the classroom and they get minimal support from admin who
| are more worried about their careers than supporting teachers.
|
| I just had this conversation last week with a couple teachers. If
| this matters to you, I suggest you find some older teachers who
| have been around long enough to actually see how the job has
| changed and ask them what they think.
|
| It has become an impossible job for any amount of money.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > Almost nobody respects teachers.
|
| > They think schools exist in order to warehouse children while
| their parents do the real work,
|
| Full disclosure: I'm not a teacher.
|
| Three thoughts:
|
| 1) I wish I had $20 for everytime I've seen a social media meme
| along the lines of "kids should be taught _____ in school.
| Like/share if you agree" and 90% of the time it's something
| parents can and should be doing at home.
|
| 2) Ironically, anecdotally, it seems it's "too busy for their
| kids" parents who insist on outsourcing more and more to school
| systems. Some of this seems cultural (i.e., that belief has
| become normalized) but it also exist in the context of systemic
| issues (e.g., wages continue to lose ground to
| inflation...everyone needs to own more than they can afford).
|
| 3) The last couple of years there has been a lot of chatter about
| "threats to our democracy" imho most of it misguided hyperbolic
| media narrative. On the other hand, The Fourth Estate has erroded
| to become a toothless stuff animal. That's a legit threat. All
| that's needed now are less educated less thought-able masses.
| [deleted]
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Well, that's a mixed bag.
|
| My son just started his second year teaching kindergarten. I
| agree teaching is underappreciated and under paid.
|
| I'm from South Dakota, I have a different view of the event she
| described. In my view, teachers were able to volunteer to score
| donated dollars by taking part in a light-hearted fund raiser.
| Accusing the organizers of being monsters assures there will be
| no further donated-money galas.
|
| My wife also acts as a substitute teacher. From what I can
| gather, unruly kids who do not understand discipline are perhaps
| the biggest cause of unnecessary stress.
| polskibus wrote:
| This is the case in many countries not just USA but also EU.
| ninkendo wrote:
| Unrelated, but when did Medium become broken in Reader mode in
| Safari? Reader only shows the first paragraph now, with an
| ellipsis after, which seems intentional on Medium's part.
|
| It's unfortunate because this seems like an interesting article
| but I don't want to subject myself to their website in order to
| read it.
| jscipione wrote:
| I don't want teachers anymore either because I see them as an
| institution of racially motivated anti-white hate. From CRT to
| the Minneapolis teachers' union all I see is hate.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Could you provide some concrete examples please?
| jscipione wrote:
| Sure https://criticalrace.org/ details anti-white hate
| training in higher education including teaching colleges as
| well as elite private high schools, and the Minneapolis
| Teachers' union's new anti-white hate policy has been widely
| reported for example by msn https://www.msn.com/en-
| us/news/us/minneapolis-teachers-union...
| holyknight wrote:
| Most teachers are incredibly incompetent at their job. I am all
| up in rising the wages of teachers if they can keep up with their
| task. Wages and seniority should be based on data on teacher
| performance not in years.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Can confirm - my wife is a teacher and it seems every year is
| getting more difficult. I guess it's too soon to say how much of
| this is pandemic-related, either directly or indirectly, but it
| seems like testing, bureaucracy and parent madness (e.g.
| perception that the curriculum is too "woke" or not woke enough,
| etc.) have certainly been getting worse too.
|
| But I'm also hearing (and experiencing) increased BS in other
| industries. Remote work spyware
| (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/14/business/work...)
| and flawed metrics-based performance measurement. So I don't know
| how much of it is teacher-specific and how much of it is general
| nonsense.
| gizmondo wrote:
| Which math books were banned for being too woke? Are they good?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| A reasonably prolific teacher Quoran on this topic:
| https://www.quora.com/The-number-of-public-teachers-in-the-U...
| zarzavat wrote:
| The problem/solution is YouTube. There is prestige in being a
| YouTube super-teacher like 3B1B, teaching millions of people.
| There is no prestige in teaching kids at a local high school who
| don't even want to learn.
|
| The smart people who once might have found their vocation in
| teaching, now prefer to set up YouTube channels.
|
| The role of teacher is splitting into content makers and
| babysitters.
| areoform wrote:
| Believe it or not, YouTube is not good pedagogy. A YouTube
| video doesn't help you to fill in the gaps of your
| understanding by re-working a difficult concept with you. A
| YouTube video, nor an app, doesn't go through the steps of
| solving a problem with you, and watch how you do it to give you
| constructive criticism.
|
| Educational content is amazing, but it's not teaching. It's a
| resource. It's like saying that the existence of books negates
| the need for teaching and that all the clever people are now
| writing books.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| "A YouTube video, nor an app, doesn't go through the steps of
| solving a problem with you, and watch how you do it to give
| you constructive criticism."--neither will 99.9% of teachers.
| Most of them out of sheer incompetence, impatience, and
| general inadequacy to be around children, some due to the
| fact that there are 30+ children in the classroom and they
| literally don't have the time and energy for that kind of
| effort. I am not speaking about American schools with
| 25K+/year tuition fee in NYC, I am speaking about teachers in
| a general classroom in Punta Arenas, Chile or a general
| classroom in Krusevac, Serbia.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > A YouTube video doesn't help you to fill in the gaps of
| your understanding by re-working a difficult concept with
| you. A YouTube video, nor an app, doesn't go through the
| steps of solving a problem with you, and watch how you do it
| to give you constructive criticism.
|
| Video is a replacement for teacher-centered lectures, that
| don't do these things either. Of course the tutoring part of
| education is also important.
| seydor wrote:
| And that is good
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| YouTube teaching is inherently one sided. There is
| significantly more to teaching than that. Tailoring the lesson
| to the individual, being able to immediately respond to
| questions, knowing when someone doesn't understand. These
| things are super important for great teaching. YouTube and
| online one sided teaching courses are never going to be able to
| beat that.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| These things are part of student-centered tutoring, not
| lecturing. Yes. they're super important. But 90% of a
| conventional education is lecture.
| [deleted]
| tejohnso wrote:
| > Americans think it's great that some dude like Joe Rogan or
| Elon Musk can make a fortune off being an asshole.
|
| Could've done without this pathetic personal attack on two of the
| most successful people in their domains. Joe Rogan bringing an
| outstanding format, guests, and great conversation that people
| are willing to pay for, and Musk bringing intelligence and
| obsessive drive and courage to bear on multiple industries,
| resulting in world changing improvements. But sure, just call
| them assholes and somehow attribute their financial success to
| that. If that's all it took, there would be a lot more people
| with a net worth of nine or ten figures.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Situation is similar in France. Teachers are underpaid and in
| some fields (e.g. maths), it gets hard to fill open positions.
| The gvt tries to improve slightly the entry level salary to make
| the job more attractive, while betting that senior teachers are
| stuck there with no other job alternatives. And they compensate
| by hiring under qualified, short term, teachers. To some extent,
| it's similar in higher education.
|
| The relative freedom enjoyed in academic jobs isn't enough to
| compensate an increasing salary gap between public/private
| sectors. In expensive cities, it can even be hard to live
| decently with a teacher/lecturer salary, and certainly not
| possible to save for your retirement. If you can't rely on
| external sources of income, I think it's not reasonable to engage
| in these activities if more lucrative alternatives exist.
|
| And considering France increasing public debt, I don't see how
| the situation is going to improve.
| ever1 wrote:
| yep, but I guess most people are ok with this, we have a lot of
| people saying that teachers are priviliged people having too
| much vacations and not working enough per week. It's a strong
| common belief. And with current government politics, it looks
| like we are witnessing the end of a public education in France,
| the unqualified contractuals teachers hired after a quick
| interview is more interesting financially than an official.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| There is a certain group of people who want to dismantle public
| education and replace it with a for-profit system.
|
| All of this going on right now is to support that goal.
| rr808 wrote:
| Here in NJ we invest a lot in education. Most school districts
| spend 20-30k per student. Senior teachers earn over 100k. The
| results are good, low income students have far higher grades that
| most of the country. It is expensive though, both our income
| taxes and property taxes are famously high. Lots of people leave
| the state because of this.
| tristor wrote:
| From growing up watching my mother struggling with the daft
| administration she dealt with as a teacher, I pretty much agree
| with the overall thrust of this article.
|
| I personally enjoy teaching and have discussed many times with my
| wife that I should teach in my retirement from tech, but we both
| understand the pay is so little it doesn't provide a realistic
| career option until after we've hit FIRE.
|
| We truly do treat teachers horribly in this country. That said, I
| think this article would have been better without irrelevant jabs
| at favored left-wing punching bags who have nothing to do with
| the main point.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| "Every single teacher I know has a second or third source of
| income, even professors. They're either married to a banker, or
| they work a conventional second job. They have side hustles."
|
| My anecdote: My sister is a professor and my partner a 3rd grade
| teacher. Neither ever worked summer jobs but it sounds like
| they're outliers.
|
| I will say that having a classroom full of kids whose parents
| want to apply their individual moral philosophy on everyone is a
| challenge.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| > My sister is a professor. Neither ever worked summer jobs
|
| Mmm... Not even summer semester?
| jedberg wrote:
| Do you and your partner live together? Do you pay some their
| rent, or food, or for travel? You're basically their subsidy.
| Nothing wrong with that, but just pointing it out, that maybe
| they don't need a second job because they have you.
|
| And are you sure your sister doesn't have a side hustle?
| Writing books? Tutoring? Expert witness? Consulting? Professors
| get a lot of opportunity for short term work, and many have to
| take it.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| I'm frankly surprised schools haven't collapsed. It seems like
| borderline abuse of teachers - low pay, undisciplined kids, have
| to buy your own supplies. Then this article also points out all
| the rules and people who think they know better than you.
|
| When I have kids, I plan myself to be lead with respect of the
| teachers when I meet them
| mberning wrote:
| Lot of sympathy here for teachers, which is very understandable.
| I am sure many of them, especially those early in their career,
| have a very miserable existence. But on the flip side I know
| several teachers that "stuck it out" and are making well over
| 100k annually working 9 months a year in low cost of living Ohio.
| In fact two of them are married, so they have a household income
| approaching 250k per year in an area where median household
| income is well under 100k. Teachers are very good at "putting on
| the poor mouth", but many of them are living very comfortable
| lifestyles. And the administrators even more so. Their salaries
| would make some engineers blush.
| jleyank wrote:
| Superb article. Perhaps covid has let people learn that they
| could survive without doing something they didn't like just to
| get some money. There's many ways to make or get money, and the
| hassle level is quite variable. But when people choose, say, an
| Amazon warehouse over their former position ya gotta wonder about
| what they gave up.
|
| If they know stem at all, why teach? If they can handle foreign
| languages or wield words, why teach? If they can work with their
| hands, there are trades and the like dying for people.... The
| buzz from a success has to be balanced against all of the issues
| discussed here in, and now the risk of physical harm is quite
| high.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| I am an early-retired EE and I thought that I could have a second
| career in teaching HS physics. I got the MA Teaching in Maryland,
| and did my one year student teaching assignment. My thoughts:
|
| 1. The degree program was decent, although a certificate program
| would be better for prior professionals if the law allowed it
| (lower cost, too much wasted time in redundant classes).
|
| 2. Teachers are sad. Very sad. They are underpaid and overworked,
| even at the better suburban high schools. Parents treat them
| poorly, even when they are veteran teachers with lots of
| experience.
|
| 3. In general, the public resents that teachers get "3 months
| off" in the summer. I believe that this is the justification for
| lower pay. It is silly, because teachers work more in 9 months
| than most professionals and they also pay for things out of their
| own pockets. They also counsel and tutor students after school.
| It's a difficult job.
|
| 4. In my job interviews, the first and most important
| qualification was "classroom control." Math, science,
| engineering, life experience were all distant seconds. Teachers
| ---even in advanced math and science classes---are first and
| foremost caretakers. Think about that for a second...
|
| 5. What is the current model for education based on? There are
| several competing historical arguments, but the salient factors
| like student-teacher ratio, subjects, grades, facilities, etc.
| are based on economics and legal requirements. The quality of
| either a student's experience or a teacher's experience is not
| very high on the list. Education is about checking a box on a
| list of requirements that was developed 150+ years ago.
|
| Ultimately, I decided to tutor rather than to teach in a
| classroom. I consider this a personal disappointment, although I
| learned a lot from the educational experience. I wish there could
| be a "town hall" type of discussion to consider ways to improve
| the situation.
| draebek wrote:
| The emphasis on "classroom control" personally doesn't surprise
| me. If two or three students start refusing a teacher's orders,
| that teacher is done for the year, and maybe forever at that
| school. In my middle school, discipline was all but lost in
| most of my classes. Play cards in class, tell the teacher to
| shut up. What's she going to do? We stole her phone and keys in
| first period, locked the doors to the room, and we disconnected
| the intercom weeks ago.
|
| You can send an administrator or a police officer to sit in the
| class, but are they going to sit there all day, every day,
| until the end of the year? Are they going to do that in all
| twenty classes that need the treatment? The second they get
| called away because someone set another fire in the woods, it's
| game on in the classroom.
|
| At least we almost never actually assaulted staff. Someone I
| grew up with became a teacher and quit after just a few years.
| She had a student actually beat her up.
|
| I regret a lot about my behavior in school, and reflecting on
| that has led me wonder why so many students hate being in
| school so much, and how--if?--we could educate children without
| making them resent the activity.
| 8note wrote:
| Send the kid home and fail them for the year? They can try
| again next year. Well behaved kids are the parents' problem
| MikePlacid wrote:
| > Send the kid home and fail them for the year? They can
| try again next year. Well behaved kids are the parents'
| problem
|
| You are speaking a Catholic school here. But there are a
| lot of other schools in 20-mile radius of my home in
| Silicon Valley where my wife worked.
|
| 1. Big city district with "no child left behind" policy,
| very stupidly executed. Never again, no matter how high the
| salary is.
|
| 2. A charter school chain - a commercial exercise- that has
| no money planned on disciplinary problems: no staff, no
| rooms to deal with reports and detentions. Dick drawing,
| chair humping - "it's your professional responsibility to
| control the classroom".
|
| 3. The Catholic school: "thank you doctor N for joining our
| school" - from kids! When she got all 25 answers on the
| first assignment- she cried. She was forced to leave the
| school because you can't get California credentials in a
| State university in a program paid by me, not the state -
| while working in a Catholic school, teaching exactly the
| same science course.
|
| But there is no need to brutal measures like expelling.
| There is say option
|
| 4. A public school in an ethnic minority suburb. Three
| reports - and a conference with the teacher and
| administrator, who is absolutely on the teacher's side but
| wants to know how to improve the situation. And that
| actually helps - these badly behaving kids are not
| necessarily cruel. "No child left behind" too, but executed
| properly.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Sounds simple but as a society we have decided not to hold
| parents and students accountable for their actions.
|
| Teachers are left to deal with the impossible burden of
| raising 30+ kids and fail.
| nemothekid wrote:
| A secondary problem is that public schools have essentially
| transformed into state nannys.
|
| 1. You can't send the kids home because both parents are
| probably working. It's more likely the kid becomes lost
| forever and it becomes a _government problem again_ once
| that kid is now living an alternative lifestyle that
| consumes government resources in other ways (crime,
| homelessness, or health).
|
| 2. Because of the realities of (1) everyone else is now
| forced to asked why the kid is no longer in school and
| becomes a failure of the teacher that the kid is not in
| school. The teacher must now deal with disgruntled parents
| and administrators for not enduring the emotional abuse and
| disruption a neglected child causes while also dealing with
| 20 other students.
|
| I think a lot of problems with child education and just be
| traced back to economic realities of many parents today.
| Even if you are relatively well off having your kid kicked
| out of school isn't financially feasible for a lot of
| families. Even a disruptive child might be the result of
| absent parents who must be at work to even afford school
| lunch.
| just_boost_it wrote:
| When I grew up, there were different classes for the smart
| kids and the less smart kids. There was a bottom class
| where the students had all sorts of behavioural issues.
| Some people just won't learn, and I think it's fair to
| separate them from the people who do. At least that way,
| teachers get at least a few classes of eager students.
| prepend wrote:
| > teachers work more in 9 months than most professionals
|
| I want to understand this more and think we need to measure
| this well.
|
| As a software dev, I've always struggled with measuring the
| amount of work performed and usually disregard measures of
| intellectual output as misleading measures (eg, lines of code,
| story points completed, whatever).
|
| What makes you think teachers work more in 9 months than a
| typical professional (engineer, attorney, healthcare worker)
| does in an entire year? Wouldn't it then make sense for these
| teachers to change professions? Or other professionals to
| teach? Or is everyone just stupid? Or just really dedicated to
| teaching as a passion?
|
| I only have my own experience but I've always had a stack of
| work after hours- training, mentoring, networking. And I
| assumed all professions have this kind of additional metawork
| that is unpaid. Is it harder to tutor a student than to mentor
| someone?
| jayski wrote:
| I've been working as a software dev for 20+ years,the only
| time I actually truly worked 60+ hours a week was when I was
| attempting to get my own startup off the ground.
|
| Other than that, it's usually been 10-15 of actual work work.
|
| Really not trying to brag, but to bring context to the
| conversation,I make 10 times what a teacher makes.
|
| I think it's a real problem teachers are underpaid and
| undervalued. IMO schools should have very basic
| facilities/luxuries, and awesome very well paid teachers
| (150-200k) who we expect a lot out of, give a lot of
| liberties to. This way there will always be competition and
| prestige involved with being a teacher.
|
| Might sound expensive, but I truly think it's an investment
| that will more than pay for itself in ~1 generation
| Glyptodon wrote:
| My SO works in schools and she seems to work 60 hour weeks 10
| months of the year for total compensation circa $60k, which
| is above the teacher pay scale for her years of experience.
| Schools seem to be undergoing a slow-motion collapse because
| every year the needs for specialized professionals go up, and
| the number of folks willing to do it goes down. Severe
| mental, social emotional, and behavior problems get worse
| every year, and even in K-5 schools people start to feel like
| they're just getting paid to get bit, spat on, and
| disrespected because there's no systemic solution to bad and
| crazy parents or neglected kids, let alone the fact that
| because nobody is willing to work in the conditions the
| average quality of those left is going down.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Teachers are changing professions, in large numbers, and have
| been for a while. TFA discusses that and how districts are
| resorting to desperate measures to get bodies to teach, like
| drafting in college kids, cutting school hours, and importing
| them.
|
| You don't have one student. You have easily dozens, maybe
| hundreds. There isn't enough time to actively teach, and
| grade all their stuff, and figure out the next lesson plan in
| the eight hour day.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| FWIW: as a high school English teacher in a wealthy
| Minneapolis suburb, I had approx. 120-150 students on my
| roster (depending on what classes I was teaching at the
| time).
| justsocrateasin wrote:
| I'm a software dev as well, coming from a family of educators
| (dad, mom, brother, all three have taught at some point
| during their career or for an extended part of their career).
|
| The problem I think is that you're examining 'working more'
| in the context of 'work output'. As a developer, it is very
| much about 'work output', however as a teacher it is often
| not.
|
| In my moms example, she had roughly 6x50 minute classes a
| day, with a 10 minute break between each one. So, roughly 6
| hours of 'meetings', since those 10 minutes in between were
| really just prepping for the next class, and oftentimes
| speaking to students in between too. That in and of itself is
| draining. This is the schedule of a manager, more or less - 6
| hours of meetings where you need to be "on" and can't zone
| out.
|
| The problem is that teachers don't just operate on a manager
| schedule. They also operate on a maker schedule: designing
| lesson plans. My mom's other 2x50 minute blocks were
| designated for a 50 minute lunch break and 50 minutes of
| planning. But 50 minutes of planning is not nearly enough
| time to plan two classes that my mom teaches every day. So,
| no actual lunch break, the lunch break is actually eating
| while planning. And that's still not really enough time, so
| my mom would get there an hour early and stay an hour late.
| She worked 7am-530pm M-F, and since getting behind on lesson
| plans means you need to put on a movie which puts your kids
| behind, she often worked 3-4 hours on Sunday to prepare for
| the week ahead. This is not my mom being an overachiever, or
| being dedicated to her work, this is her being dedicated to
| ensuring that she is just doing her job. This is what the job
| requires. Sure, it does get easier over time as you get to
| reuse lesson plans.
|
| The point I want to drive home is not that working 7am-530pm
| is "more [time] than most professionals", but rather the
| quality of work is so much different, and so much harder.
| Managing a classroom of 25-30 children, middle schoolers in
| her case, is draining, so much more draining than coding. It
| is more draining than being a manager, because your team is
| often 3x as big and significantly less behaved (they're
| children after all).
|
| The cherry on top is that my first job out of college as a
| developer I was already making $30k more than my mom a year.
| She had a masters and 10yrs of experience at the time. I am
| not under the illusion that I am smarter or more qualified.
|
| To answer your statement of "I also need to do trainings,
| mentorings, networking", teachers regularly need to do
| trainings too. For my mom, these trainings are required - she
| was required to do something like 20 hours of professional
| development a year. And they often mentor students as well,
| as you absolutely experienced during your own education
| whenever you went to a teacher during their lunch break for
| help. I don't think tutoring versus mentoring is that hard.
| Having someone come to you with questions is an easy way of
| educating someone. The hard part is lesson plans, to think
| through a year of "how can I distill this knowledge down and
| transfer it?", which I personally have never needed to do as
| a tutor.
|
| To answer your question of "why don't they change
| professions?", I think that's rather naive. Not everyone is
| on the path of trying to optimize financial independence and
| minimize time spent working. Why do folks go into journalism?
| Or art, or music? Are those people stupid, because they
| aren't in software engineering where work is more lucrative
| and easier?
|
| > teachers work more in 9 months than most professionals work
| in a year
|
| I do think this is an overstatement, maybe a little. Maybe
| not. It depends on the teacher and the subject. I hope these
| explanations help, growing up I definitely did not realize
| how hard my "good" teachers worked to provide me a solid
| education.
| WWLink wrote:
| > To answer your question of "why don't they change
| professions?", I think that's rather naive. Not everyone is
| on the path of trying to optimize financial independence
| and minimize time spent working. Why do folks go into
| journalism? Or art, or music? Are those people stupid,
| because they aren't in software engineering where work is
| more lucrative and easier?
|
| You're hanging out on a website where people regularly talk
| about how college should be abolished/de-emphasized because
| it's not needed to get a good job. Yea unfortunately, a lot
| of people here really DO think those people who go into
| journalism/art/music are stupid because they're not working
| in more lucrative fields.
|
| Of course they do that while listening to music and
| probably enjoying art. Of course.
| prepend wrote:
| > a lot of people here really DO think those people who
| go into journalism/art/music are stupid because they're
| not working in more lucrative fields.
|
| I don't think they are stupid as people have interests
| and there's many reasons to pursue a career other than
| money.
|
| I just think they are stupid when they complain about how
| they don't make a higher income in these fields. The
| income potential of these fields is known, so complaining
| about this, once in the field, is really just an
| irrational thing.
| asvitkine wrote:
| Why hasn't this changed through union action or lawsuits
| about needing to work unpaid hours?
|
| Surely, an employee should be able to take an employer to
| court about the employer requiring work that's unpaid. In
| the courtroom, presumably there can be evidence presented
| about how these unpaid hours are required by examining
| experiences of other teachers, etc.
| danaris wrote:
| Teachers are, to the best of my knowledge, universally
| paid salary, not hourly.
|
| The other reasons this hasn't changed are
|
| a) This is just "how things are". It's more or less
| considered the "normal" way of doing education.
|
| b) Changing it would require increasing education budgets
| by a fairly significant amount, and since those are all
| local, and based on local property taxes, they are much
| more likely to have a bunch of entitled rich people
| coming in to say "I shouldn't have to pay any taxes to
| support those damn kids" and voting for budget cuts.
| (Because the people who _aren 't_ rich don't have the
| time and energy to be coming in to these meetings on a
| regular basis.)
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| My guess is that this hasn't changed due to union action
| or lawsuits because (1) teachers are salaried, and tend
| to be over the limit where overtime pay is legally
| required; and (2) union organizers don't think they can
| get any more money without giving something else up.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I have the exact same experience: watching family members
| work in teaching, seeing them do overtime, getting a
| software job and beating their salary after 2 years in the
| job.
|
| It's disgraceful.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| > 1. The degree program was decent, although a certificate
| program would be better for prior professionals if the law
| allowed it (lower cost, too much wasted time in redundant
| classes).
|
| There are certificate programs in Maryland. That's how I got my
| Maryland teacher's license. You typically have to be enrolled
| in an alternative certification program, like Teach For
| America, Baltimore City Teaching Residency, etc. But there are
| a bunch of them:
| https://www.marylandpublicschools.org/about/Documents/DEE/Pr...
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Sounds like there are two jobs here: babysitting, and teaching.
| Both are valuable, though likely that the former isn't as
| difficult skill to master.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The problem is usually that in a very disrupted classroom,
| teaching is going to be impossible, so you do need to have
| the ability to keep things manageable.
|
| If kids start climbing on things and throwing stuff no one is
| going to pay attention to math.
| andrewprock wrote:
| There have to be consequences for actions like that. If
| there are no consequences, then yes teaching will become
| impossible.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I mean, there are.
|
| The thing about classroom control is that it is easier to
| notice early signs and stop the situation from escalating
| into behaviors that need to go through a whole punishment
| process (possible student trauma, paperwork for the
| teacher and administration), and so teaching how to
| correct things early and keep things controlled is a win-
| win for the student, teacher, and administration, and
| also the rest of the class.
| jholman wrote:
| As a _post-secondary_ teacher, I spend more mental energy on
| babysitting than on teaching. It 's definitely the harder
| part for me. I hesitate to imagine how bad it must be in
| primary or secondary education.
|
| Though, it's not really that clear-cut a division. When I
| worry about how to manipulate students into doing the minimum
| readings (say an hour a week) for a class that they
| voluntarily signed up for and paid for, is that babysitting
| or teaching?
| trimbo wrote:
| > 5. What is the current model for education based on? [...]
| Education is about checking a box on a list of requirements
| that was developed 150+ years ago.
|
| This is very well put. IMO nothing better illustrates how deep-
| rooted that model is than distance learning in 2020-2021 in the
| US. That was an opportunity to innovate quickly, and yet no
| state or district I know of took it seriously. Instead they had
| students on Zoom for 3-5 hours a day, including 1st-3rd
| graders, structured as if it was a regular classroom. It served
| no educational purpose except adhering to the model and
| requirements you mentioned.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| A better model for public education exists:
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-s...
| But in the USA the federal/state separation and other political
| considerations are so ingrained it would be hard to do this
| sort of revolutionary change.
| donatj wrote:
| > Well, I'm a teacher so let me tell you:
|
| > > It's definitely about the money.
|
| If that's the case, you choose so poorly and your judgment is so
| questionable I'm not sure you should be teaching our children.
|
| You're trying to get milk from a stone. You get milk from a teat.
|
| You get money from _where the money is_ , you get money from the
| private sector.
| nutanc wrote:
| I "want" to teach. It's just that, teaching as a profession is
| not sustainable for me.
|
| I am sure a lot of teachers are in the same boat as me.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| One core issue with modern education is that people DO want to
| teach. They want it so badly they will accept shit wages and
| spend their own money subsidising schools. The result is ever
| dwindling resources as teachers are viewed as sheep to be sheered
| and all cuts as tacitly excused as "they'll just have to make it
| work"...
| douglaswlance wrote:
| Why isn't education highly automated? Why do teachers across the
| country teach the same way we did before we had high-powered
| computers and information networks?
| zweifuss wrote:
| Learning is social. Very close to 100%.
|
| That is why the Nuremberg funnel was never really invented.
| Technology as a teacher substitute has never proven itself in
| practice (i.e. outside of laboratory environments). There are a
| few students that are exceptionally driven, but even they learn
| socially.
|
| That we have tried to get better schools by economy of scale
| and standardized testing is reason for some of the problems and
| therefore cannot be solved with more of the same.
|
| * Social learning is more enjoyable and motivating. We learn
| from people, with people and because of people.
|
| * Interaction with others gives meaning to ideas. Ideas mean
| little without a social context. This has been proven again and
| again.
|
| * Discussing ideas increases understanding and retention of
| those ideas.
| douglaswlance wrote:
| Not sure how this is relevant. The more automation, the more
| free time, the more people are able to be social.
| TIPSIO wrote:
| Your comment made me think of the scene in the first Star Trek
| movie where all the little Spock children are in an emotionless
| hole being programmed with math and philosophy.
|
| Not saying you are wrong or right, but for many kids having an
| adult who simply cares is worth infinitely more than any amount
| of efficiencies or base material.
| douglaswlance wrote:
| So automate what can be automated to free the teacher to care
| more.
| wiz21c wrote:
| FTA: "When you call someone burned out, it implies a personal
| moral failing on their part. The phrase shifts the conversation
| away from work conditions to a teacher's individual personal
| choices."
|
| So true... In other jobs too...
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| As the husband of a college teacher who has been perpetually on
| the tenure track, it really is true that they're not paid enough.
| My wife has put in more hours than anyone I know, is more
| qualified than almost everyone I know. And yet I made way more
| than her in a single year than she did in a decade because I
| happened to venture into a field VCs love (and which has zero
| positive impact on society - web3).
|
| Its cruel and a gross symptom late stage capitalism and its
| completely misaligned capital allocation.
| kevmo wrote:
| We probably should have elected Bernie Sanders.
|
| https://berniesanders.com/issues/reinvest-in-public-educatio...
| prirun wrote:
| I know a few teachers who have quit or want to quit. It isn't a
| money issue, at least for them.
|
| My high-school computer science teacher (many moons ago) taught
| advanced high-school math. He quit because the administrative
| requirements became too burdensome. He loved teaching, but every
| year the administrivia got worse until he finally quit.
|
| Another teacher was a special-ed reading instructor; that's what
| she was trained for. But the school lost their funding for her
| category, so they made her a kindergarten teacher. As if that
| wasn't bad enough, the principal scheduled so many meetings that
| the teachers effectively lost their planning period and had to do
| that at home. Parents had direct access to teachers via email,
| and parents' complaints had to be addressed by the teachers every
| day - also outside of school hours.
|
| Another teacher was in a poorer school district (elementary) and
| quit because the teaching environment was just too difficult.
|
| More money won't fix any of these problems.
| bittercynic wrote:
| More money can certainly solve those problems.
|
| I work at a school that improved during my time. We've enjoyed
| some changes that brought the school significantly more
| funding, and it has allowed us to attract better applicants,
| and hire additional staff members that help take some of that
| load off the teachers.
|
| Also, simply having more adults per student makes a big
| difference, provided they are the right adults for the job.
|
| Your friend was forced into the wrong category because of a
| funding problem.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Our school district just raised teacher salary significantly.
| Guess what? Applications are up 300%.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Yet the teachers union is extremely powerful
| epgui wrote:
| The lack of respect for education and the teaching profession
| will be the downfall of the West, IMO. It's not like that
| everywhere.
|
| My father was a teacher and I am very proud of that. However, I
| grew up thinking "my goodness, I never want to do this". It's a
| real shame.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Writing from South Korea. My father was a teacher and I am very
| proud of that and basically everyone around me reinforced that
| pride by showing respect. Everything I read about US teachers
| is so alien.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| The very same problem exists in other countries. We have been
| having an outrageously similar situation in France for years
| already, so much that this article does a really good job at
| depainting the situation here in France too.
| Felger wrote:
| Yep. Wanted to write the exact same thing.
| taylodl wrote:
| Nobody in their right mind would become a teacher today. John Q.
| Public, just because he's paying "some taxes" that's
| "contributing to your pay" think he's your boss and can order you
| around like they're Donald Trump acting on The Apprentice.
| Everyone feels entitled to tell you why education sucks so much
| today and why it was so wonderful 50 years ago. Why would anyone
| of sound mind go into the profession? I've thought about it from
| time to time, but there's simply no way I'm subjecting myself to
| that crap! It's not so much as "nobody wants to teach anymore" as
| it is the general public simply sucks and having to interact with
| them, with them thinking they're your boss, is more of a soul-
| suck than spending a weekend with a Dementor!
| tlogan wrote:
| And teachers here in San Francisco refused to teach for one full
| year. I do not blame them: it is really a crappy job.
|
| And as result of that only very bad are still teaching: the ones
| that hate the job, hate the kids and, in general, not nice
| people.
|
| I think the only way we can sole this is the following:
|
| - clamp down on union: it should easier to fire bad teachers
|
| - class size should be less than 10. Expensive yeah...
| bushbaba wrote:
| Class size should be less than ten for disruptive students.
|
| In California the other problem is that 10%+ of the students
| are ESL. With a large undocumented immigrant impact to school
| resources.
| barrysteve wrote:
| It's clear everything is falling and people are trying to jack up
| the wages to compensate. Yet nobody mentions how to fix the
| horrific management that allowed this to happen in the first
| place and won't solve the crisis.
|
| My last job wanted me to replace the existing management. They
| tried to sell this to me by complaining about all the different
| bosses they had to report to, how difficult the job was and how
| they want to retire and stop doing the job. Combined with all the
| other structural issues and tribalism within the workplace,
| having a management team that is happy to spell out their own
| doom is criminally incompetent.
|
| You can pretty up the teacher or management role with money and
| pride, but it's still going to fall apart if you're hellbent on
| overworking your staff and killing the golden goose. Everyday the
| terrible management continues, the more and more relatable Anakin
| looks. Disappointment is a weekly reality.
| smeej wrote:
| It sounds like there are a great many people who want to teach.
|
| The real headline should be, "Nobody wants to teach _in public
| schools_ anymore. "
|
| And do you blame them? The people (politicians, mostly, in
| dialogue with union leaders) who make the big decisions about
| public schools are so many levels removed from the students or
| the teachers that the _best_ -case scenario for these decisions
| is to be woefully out of touch.
|
| At this point, it seems like the entire world recognizes the
| American public school system is messed up beyond repair. So why
| are we spending so much time, energy, and effort trying to save
| it instead of trying to reimagine the whole thing?
|
| Who's successfully teaching these days? As in, who are the
| examples of people who are actually being successful at putting
| ideas into other people's heads?
|
| If what you want is to teach, learn from them.
|
| (If you have a hundred other goals, like providing childcare and
| increasing character through athletic competition and whatever
| else you want to do, those are fine things too, but quit trying
| to lump it all together and do it at once. Find the people who
| are succeeding at _those_ goals and learn from them _as well._ )
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _The real headline should be, "Nobody wants to teach_ in
| public schools _anymore. "_
|
| What part of TFA makes you think this is specific to public
| schools?
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-worst-i-ve-seen-it-j...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| There are plenty successful public schools out there, why not
| find out what is making them work instead of giving into those
| (GOP mostly) who want only the rich to get an education because
| they can afford private school?
| ljw1001 wrote:
| > Americans think it's great that some dude like Joe Rogan or
| Elon Musk can make a fortune off being an asshole.
|
| Thank you for your service.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Part of it definitely has to deal with the country where you're
| teaching, the kind of school (public vs private), surrounding
| socioeconomic conditions, age group, etc.
|
| I taught ESL overseas in elementary and junior high school in
| Taiwan for years. Compared to my experiences teaching in the
| United States, the children are just empirically better behaved.
| There is an ingrained culture of respect for teachers and it
| shows.
| swinnipeg wrote:
| In Canada each province has a fairly strong teacher union. In
| Manitoba for example a teacher with 10 years experience will earn
| approximately $95K CAD (more than most software developers here).
| This with strong pension benefits that can be collected at 55. I
| know teachers that retired in their late 50s, and will continuing
| making 70% of their inflation adjust salaries until they die.
|
| Relatively speaking this salary/benefits has higher expected
| lifetime earnings than a software developer.
|
| One negative is that the unions are also strong enough that
| teachers can't be fired/replaced for performance (this is similar
| to Police...etc). As with any profession the worst of the bunch
| is very bad, and unfortunately they keep doing it until their
| fifties at the cost of the children.
| gedy wrote:
| I think this applies to the US as well, at least California.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| It varies significantly by state. Five states explicitly
| outlaw collective bargaining by teachers and 32 states
| require it with various limitations on the scope of items
| that can be negotiated. Some states also have restrictions on
| striking.
|
| https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/how-strong-
| ar...
| anthonyskipper wrote:
| Wow, I did not realize how well Canadian teachers are paid.
| That is exactly the model we need here in the states, but it
| will never happen in the US. The red states would not be able
| to handle a job commonly occupied by women where they would be
| making considerably more than most men.
| pnf wrote:
| Some of the worst educational outcomes in the US are in deep
| blue states and deep blue cities. Meanwhile, suburban
| communities in the US tend to vote more "red" and are also
| the places people go to raise families because of the better
| public schools.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Poverty is a better analysis than political lines.
|
| Most of the best school districts are in purple districts.
| The worst ones are in heavily red or heavily blue
| districts, largely correlating with poverty.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| in the USNews ranking, 8/10 of the best states Pre-K-12 are
| blue, while 10/10 worst are red.[1]
|
| When you evaluate things beyond the partisan lens, poverty
| is a massive predictor in education outcomes which is why
| many deep blue cities do poorly and why many deep red
| states do poorly as well.
|
| Separately, the suburbs in the US are about as purple as it
| gets. Suburbs also have the lowest rate of poverty compared
| to urban and rural. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| states/rankings/education
|
| [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2018/10/02/5-facts-abo...
| ipaddr wrote:
| Why it doesn't lead to better educational outcomes?
| orzig wrote:
| Honestly asking: How are the kids doing? Is there a positive
| impact from the arrangement?
| boxed wrote:
| Change a few details and this is what it's like being a doctor
| too (at least in Sweden) from what I've heard.
|
| Autonomy. That's the thing. We have to let people do their damn
| jobs. Don't micro manage, don't second guess, don't interfere.
| Let people do their job.
|
| Let them.
| nsonha wrote:
| At the same time everyone wants to teach and sell courses, no one
| want to actually do things they're supposedly a guru at.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| As a European, it has always been perplexing to me how little the
| US invests in teachers and schools, given that we know how huge
| the benefits are down the road (educational attainment, income,
| pro-social behavior, life satisfaction).
|
| Watching how large parts of the political spectrum embrace
| hardship as a societal teaching tool, I begin to understand that
| the expectation may always have been that kids ought to figure it
| out by themselves. It's almost as if our "invention of childhood"
| (as a protected phase in life) is being rolled back.
|
| Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't believe kids can until they are
| quite old. On the contrary, I expect the emotional and
| psychological scars to demand a significant toll in the future.
|
| [edit] PS: There have been quite a few very heated recent
| discussions where dang sternly warned against incisive political
| scorn. I agree, and my comment is intentionally worded carefully
| and as objectively as possible.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > As a European, it has always been perplexing to me how little
| the US invests in teachers and schools, given that we know how
| huge the benefits are down the road (educational attainment,
| income, pro-social behavior, life satisfaction).
|
| 1) European perspectives on a lot of American problems miss one
| of the biggest differences between us: you have a lot more of a
| homogeneous population. There's numerous differences between
| designing a school system for basically all Hungarian or all
| Norwegian kids, for example, and figuring out what the hell you
| can do with a school mixed with Latinos, Asians, Blacks, and
| Whites with all different levels of interests, drive, and
| ability.
|
| 2) You've made a few statements of objective fact here without
| backing them up. Does the US actually invest little in
| education? I suspect that a lot of the money is of course
| wasted, but they do spend a crapload of money, and I'd bet
| dramatically more than many other countries. As another thing,
| does increasing spending (as the only variable that changes)
| lead to dramatic differences in educational outcomes? To a
| point, I'm sure it helps, but at some point, I think it
| doesn't. As an example, a young Forest Gump might be able to
| pass Basic Arithmetic in his elementary school if given a
| private tutor who gave him their full attention and effort, but
| there's no universe in which Forrest Gump gets an A+ in
| Advanced Calculus even if he's given 1,000 of the best teachers
| in the world to personally tutor him 24/7.
|
| 3) There's an age old debate about Nature vs. Nurture, which of
| course will not be settled here today. But I'd like to point
| out that if "Nature" is generally the most important variable
| in success, then beyond a certain point, there's a level of
| diminishing returns with education spending and simply throwing
| money at schools is not a wise course. Just throwing more money
| at a problem is, I suspect, the path we've taken up until now.
| [deleted]
| Ekaros wrote:
| 1) Do those really have that big difference? Should they? I
| could see a point if we were discussing first or second
| generation immigrants. Specially not those from highly
| educated parents.
|
| Coming from Finland which did rather well with much less
| hours spend it might as well be systematic issue. Maybe
| process of the teaching itself has something wrong.
| mantas wrote:
| It's not much better in many parts of europe... :(
| paganel wrote:
| Especially the teacher-pupil relationship, which has been
| transformed into a teacher-parent relationship where the
| teacher is seen as a service-worker and the parent sees
| him/herself as a client/customer. I've heard this first-hand
| from a close friend of hours who works in the education
| system for French expats' kids.
| mantas wrote:
| One of the issues in my country is ,,student's money" where
| public schools get paid per-student. ,,2nd year" if student
| performs very poorly vanished as a result. 3 decades ago it
| was pretty common for kids to repeat the curriculum. Now
| parents just threaten to transfer the kid to another
| school. Administration lets the kid move on to the next
| grade for the sake of EUREUREUR. At the end of the day, kid
| never catches up academically..
| 627467 wrote:
| "as european"... Just like teachers/teaching situations in
| federal US is hard to generalize so is in confederal Europe.
| You should probably read about the yearly teachers strikes in
| many southern European countries.
|
| Teaching is a precarious job - particularly in early career in
| public sector schools. And just like many comments already
| mentioned: There's a global social trend expecting teachers to
| be some kind of social workers. And older teachers in many
| countries public sectors are basically grandfathered into
| previledged conditions that Young professionals will never
| attain.
| tinsmith wrote:
| When you're actually from the US as a Millennial or Gen Z'er,
| it's not hard to see what happened. The previous two
| generations taught us nothing, but expected us to know
| everything they did, as though by virtue of being a living
| human this knowledge is just granted. Our parents never had the
| time to show us how to budget, care for a home, etc, so we had
| to learn from the Internet.
|
| But why?
|
| I posit that Boomers and Gen X had such an easy go of it, they
| assumed we would, too. Born to an economy that was thriving,
| they had to know relatively little themselves because there was
| always someone else who could do it. In short, that translates,
| over time, to less value placed on teaching the next generation
| to thrive and looking at things like school milages as "my tax
| dollars not benefiting me directly."
|
| These previous generations also operate under the illusion that
| they somehow had it harder than we do now. This is perpetuated
| by the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" attitude that most
| of them seem to have adopted while having to ask for help
| operating a smart fridge or iPhone. It's really a failure of
| self-awareness, if we remove all the fictional swagger they've
| built their lives around, and it has left us a nation that is
| crumbling under its own ignorance and stupidity.
|
| Now people my age (late 30's - early 40's) are living paycheck
| to paycheck, trying to figure out how we can afford to fix the
| problem so our children can do better than us, and we are
| utterly failing to find a solution because we are operating in
| a system that was designed to cater only to the selfishness of
| our parents and grandparents.
| jleyank wrote:
| Did this happen because the kids didn't listen or because the
| parents were overly protective or some combination of the
| two? Helicopter parents denied their children the chance to
| fail safely and so calibrate the good and bad portions of
| life. By scheduling their kids time and removing all risk
| they prevented growth.
|
| You never did chores for your spending money? Had to help out
| with minor repairs or maintenance of a domicile? Never had a
| part time job? I suspect not, again, as the now revealed as
| misguided effort to give their kids the best ("better than we
| had it") was crippling. It's not hard to do what is mentioned
| in the first paragraph.
|
| Look up the shit that went down in 1968 before you repeat
| that previous generations had it easier. There's no draft,
| although the Cold War and risk of nukes are coming back. You
| have computer and communication resources that exceed st:tos
| (damn near), uni has toys that were inconceivable in the
| 70's, .... Google what opscan forms and #2 pencils were -
| that's years of organizing courses and drop/add.
|
| The only thing that really sucks now is that std's can kill.
| gedy wrote:
| > Gen X had such an easy go of it
|
| Please, economy and real estate prices has been boom and bust
| for Gen X too, 3-4 serious recessions, pensions lost before
| 401k were a thing, etc.
|
| Maybe look at who you vote for and blame them, not normal
| people 10-20 years older than you.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Seems like US spending is slightly higher than European
| countries. We're not getting our money's worth here.
|
| https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
| mattkrause wrote:
| These cross-national comparisons are tricky.
|
| For example, US spending on education includes a bunch of
| healthcare costs, as the employers are paying something (as a
| benefit) and employee salaries need to cover the rest.
| Somewhere with single-payer healthcare will directly allocate
| the money to healthcare instead.
| tiahura wrote:
| That would assume the educational capabilities are relatively
| equal. The US has large demographic segments that have
| historically been difficult to educate.
|
| I wonder what the comparison would look like if limited to
| native born with two parent households?
| starkd wrote:
| It's not about money. Avg salaries are plenty above the OECD
| average. The U.S. has a strong tendency to just throw money at
| a problem. There are many urban school districts that have
| trouble getting 50% attendance rates ON THE FIRST DAY. And
| that's with going door to door to remind parents the day
| before. How can you even address it when the people don't even
| believe in the institution anymore?
|
| Let parents have some real choice of different school to
| attend. This will allow some experimentation from the ground up
| to happen organically. Parents who are the most invested in
| their child's success can have real agency in their future.
| This will also give teachers more flexibility in the kind of
| environment they want to work in. They could even start their
| own homeschooling pods and take in a set number of students
| from the area.
|
| Once again, the teachers union stands in the way of real
| progress.
|
| https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cmd.pdf
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Do you mean cost of living-adjusted salaries are about OECD
| average? And do you think above-average salaries are required
| for above-average returns? Just curious.
| starkd wrote:
| The stats on the page are from 2018, before inflation
| became problematic. It also does not include the pandemic-
| related problems that have made things worse. However, the
| main point about comparable funding still stands. We are
| not getting above average returns. The question should be
| where is all that money going.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| "K-12 schools spend $666.9 billion or $13,185 per pupil
| annually." - https://educationdata.org/public-education-
| spending-statisti...
|
| We invest plenty. We just don't get a great return on our
| investment.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I'm not actually sure that's "plenty".
|
| For comparison - we currently pay more per year to keep our 1
| year old child in daycare (roughly ~15,000/yr) and for
| daycare we literally only expect them to keep him alive &
| clean. And this is considered a "cheap" daycare. Most places
| in our area (the much cheaper south-west side of Atlanta)
| still charge more than 1600/m or almost 20k/yr.
|
| We certainly don't expect them to be significantly enriching
| his education experience (although the simple exposure to
| other kids will likely do that at this age). We also don't
| expect the employees to have any sort of
| educational/vocational training to excel at teaching, or
| expect them to perform any sort of off-the-clock work (ex:
| grading, class prep, parent-teacher meetings, etc). I expect
| them to be mostly high-school graduates with a background
| check.
|
| So I look at that number, and while it's certainly a large
| number if you're making 1 teacher manage 30 kids, I don't
| really know that it's a number that results in viable
| conditions to truly "educate" children.
|
| I strongly suspect that education is highly dependent on the
| family at home, and that's becoming harder to meaningful do
| as more and more families are forced to have both parents
| work full time.
| millzlane wrote:
| >I strongly suspect that education is highly dependent on
| the family at home, and that's becoming harder to
| meaningful do as more and more families are forced to have
| both parents work full time.
|
| This is a big part of it. Education doesn't stop when the
| school bell rings.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >For comparison - we currently pay more per year to keep
| our 1 year old child in daycare (roughly ~15,000/yr) and
| for daycare we literally only expect them to keep him alive
| & clean
|
| You cannot compare the per child costs of taking care of a
| kid who cannot go to the toilet themselves or eat by
| themself with a kid who is much more self sufficient.
|
| The person taking care of a baby (or 4 babies) might need
| to be much less qualified than an AP physics teacher in
| high school, but the labor (and liability) costs do not
| necessarily scale exactly with the minimum qualifications
| needed to be an AP physics teacher versus a daycare
| teacher.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I think comparing the costs between the 5 year olds in
| our daycare and the 6 year olds entering first grade is
| entirely fair.
|
| Our daycare gets _more_ expensive as the child ages - not
| less.
|
| > The person taking care of a baby (or 4 babies) might
| need to be much less qualified than an AP physics teacher
| in high school, but the labor (and liability) costs do
| not necessarily scale exactly with the minimum
| qualifications needed to be an AP physics teacher versus
| a daycare teacher.
|
| And this - this is _exactly_ what I 'm contesting. Why is
| it we're ok paying someone who should be able to teach
| complex and technical skills to children (high school
| physics) barely more than a high school grad who is only
| qualified to tend to infants? Worse - why do we let class
| sizes balloon to the point where one-on-one interactions
| are incredibly hard?
|
| One requires considerably more skills, considerably more
| education, and frankly much more work (and I'm not
| talking about the one tending the infants). Yet they're
| expected to effectively teach class sizes of between 25
| and 32 (which is the technical max for the state - but
| I've frequently seen this balloon as high as 45)
|
| Yet the daycare worker is making almost the rate of an
| intro physics teacher (17/h vs 19/h). And the very top
| most earners are making only 30/h. Being a manager at a
| McDonalds is FAR more lucrative (avg of 98k vs the avg
| physics teacher in GA at 43k). That should be a giant
| fucking red flag.
|
| The numbers aren't even that far off - There are ~500
| McDonalds locations in GA, and ~525 public high schools.
| Each McDonalds location has ~3 managers (shift manager,
| assistant manager, store manager) And they all make more
| than intro physics teachers. (from 50k to ~100k)
|
| When flipping burgers is literally more lucrative... I
| fail to be compelled by your argument.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Our daycare gets more expensive as the child ages - not
| less.
|
| I have shopped around daycares on east and west coast,
| and I have never encountered this type of pricing.
| Infants have always been more expensive than toddlers and
| pre K in at least 10 to 15 daycares I have priced.
|
| I also do not see the purpose of comparing prices for
| different prices of labor for justifying the prices.
|
| Physics teachers may very well need to be paid more to
| attract enough people to meet the desired teacher student
| ratios and quality of teacher , but it has nothing to do
| with how much daycare teachers are paid. It just depends
| on supply and demand of that particular type of labor or
| service, hence the futility of comparing per student
| costs of daycare and high schools.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to assume the money is evenly split.
| Public schooling must also support students who need much
| more support, ranging from ESL to a variety of disabilities
| with a variety of severity.
|
| If you think of specialized needs students the 13k number
| looks ridiculous. 13k is an alarmingly low amount of support
| for dyslexia, or autism, or diabetes.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > If you think of specialized needs students the 13k number
| looks ridiculous.
|
| You're comparing an average per student spend to a high
| needs minority. Average spend should be compared to the
| average student who does not have dyslexia etc. A larger
| than average portion will be spent on kids with special
| needs due to special facilities, smaller class sizes, and
| specialist teachers etc.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| But I think the $13K number includes those outliers, no?
| If I understand GP, they're arguing the average for 90%
| of students is probably significantly lower.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I'd argue $13K per student is quite low relative to the
| services expected. I mean, compare that to the price of
| college tuition.
|
| Now, college is too expensive and I certainly wouldn't want
| to replicate that problem in K-12 schools. But... well, in
| some ways colleges have it easier, because the students are
| older and can be expected to be more independent. You can't
| have a 100-person lecture in a K-12 setting (not that I love
| classes like that at the college level either).
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Fine, compare it to portion of GDP. Like healthcare, we
| spend a lot and get poor return if you measure objectively
| by things like standardized tests, unemployment,
| imprisonment, etc.
| [deleted]
| mattkrause wrote:
| Yup. $13k/year works out to about $10 per pupil-hour, and
| even less once you include costs like the building and work
| done out-of-hours (grading, lesson planning). I'm pretty
| sure I made something like that babysitting in junior high!
| prirun wrote:
| "Pupil-hour" makes no sense in a classroom environment.
| When you were babysitting, they didn't pay you $10/hr per
| kid.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Many people did, actually.
|
| The amount of work/responsibility definitely scales with
| the number of kids, and it's not exactly linear either:
| one will color quietly, two might play together--or
| fight, and three or more...yikes.
|
| I mentioned the rate because it surprised me it was so
| close. I'd expect that it costs more to actually educate
| a kid, and of course, the parents provided the house (and
| often ice cream and HBO), whereas that rate includes
| everything.
| prepend wrote:
| If you can get a job for $10/pupil/hour for 30 kids for 7
| hours a day, go for it. ($2,100 per day)
|
| I don't think that exists. So comparing babysitting for a
| few rich kids to teaching full time makes no sense.
| metadat wrote:
| This is effectively what is being allocated to the entire
| education system per pupil per hour.
| prepend wrote:
| Not to an individual to babysit. This includes all costs
| to provide education.
| [deleted]
| zmgsabst wrote:
| $13k per student is more than the cost of undergraduate
| education, at $12.5k per student for the University of
| Washington.
|
| https://www.washington.edu/opb/tuition-fees/current-
| tuition-...
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| It's $40K if you select "non-resident", which I assume is
| because the in-state tuition is taxpayer subsidized.
| [deleted]
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Why would non-resident apply to the comparison of local
| schools?
|
| My understanding is that you have non-residents subsidize
| things such as scholarship programs -- but that in-state
| is fairly close to costs.
|
| State money appears to be a relatively small fraction of
| their incomes -- and is smaller than the increase in
| their financial position.
|
| https://finance.uw.edu/uwar/annualreport2021.pdf
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Because that's the "actual" cost, not the tax-subsidized
| cost.
|
| For in-state, the state is paying approx $27k and the
| student pays approx $13k, versus in k-12 the state is
| only paying $13k and that's all they get.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I posted their financial report which makes it clear that
| state funding is not doing that.
| kevingadd wrote:
| By what standard is that actually "plenty"? Is that $13185
| enough to properly fund all the services a child needs for a
| proper education? And if it's not, why not? How much do you
| believe we should be spending per student?
|
| You can point at a big number and say 'that's enough' but we
| spend large amounts of money on all sorts of things, the
| number being large doesn't mean it's sufficient. There are
| _tons_ of children in need of an education out there and they
| 're frequently crammed into overcrowded schools in buildings
| badly needing maintenance, while teachers have to buy
| supplies out of pocket. Maybe the answer is that all that
| money is being siphoned away and we would be fine if we
| redistributed it correctly, but the premise that we're
| already investing enough seems pretty questionable to me
| without proof.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I mean, if you have a class of 20 students (which seems on
| the smaller end), that would be a "revenue" of over a
| quarter million per teacher, right? I feel like we should
| be able to do a pretty good job with that while paying a
| teacher a decent salary.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Not really.
|
| That class of twenty needs a building to take place,
| which in turn needs upkeep. It needs supplies and
| equipment (workbooks, computers, dodgeballs), and it
| needs _some_ level of administration[0]. The teachers
| presumably want benefits too.
|
| At a university, the "overhead" costs of research [1] are
| on the order of 50%: doing $100k worth of research
| require another $50k to keep the lights on, the building
| clean, and the library stocked. A fully-loaded salary
| with benefits is also about 30-50 percent higher than the
| take-home amount. Similar math gets you to about $100k,
| which would be a massive improvement but nowhere near the
| quarter-mil you might expect.
|
| However, the average also hides the fact that student
| spending usually isn't uniform: it's not the case that
| each student costs $13k; it might be more like 9k for
| 19/20 students and a lot more for the one student with
| special needs (who might require a FTE on their own).
| This doesn't scale nearly as well, but it's important if
| you want to give everyone a fair shot at success.
|
| [0] The right amount of admin is obviously debatable, but
| you clearly need _some_ level of management and
| organization: somebody needs to make class schedules, run
| payroll, etc.
|
| [1] These rates are negotiated with the federal
| government, and so theoretically reflect the actual costs
| pretty well. It's not obvious how well they translate to
| a K-12 environment: researchers need more specialized
| services...but also are a lot less likely to draw on the
| walls.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I did use the word revenue in scare quotes for a reason -
| I don't expect that all that money could be given
| directly to the teacher. On the other hand, the state
| should be able to achieve quite high economies of scale
| on administration and purchasing (whether they actually
| do is something else), and there's no profit to make at
| the end of the day.
|
| I was actually thinking 50% would make the math easy but
| probably be a bit unrealistic, but I arrive at about the
| same place as you I think. Also I'd imagine that most
| classes are larger than 20, but hopefully smaller than
| 30.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| By the standard that we're systematically mismanaging the
| funds we are spending. The bussing system is absurdly
| inefficient and wholly unnecessary. Neighborhood schools
| used to be a thing. Some school systems offer 'gold plated'
| healthcare plans where they include cosmetic surgery as a
| benefit to a school system that needs more money spent
| towards actual education.
|
| I'm not advocating doing away with the public education
| system, but we're being swindled. It's not the teachers'
| fault (obviously), but the system as a whole. Every little
| town has its own school system, administrative overhead,
| etc.
| mattkrause wrote:
| > Some school systems offer 'gold plated' healthcare
| plans
|
| So? If you want good teachers--or at, some point, _any_
| teachers--you need to offer working conditions that are
| good enough to attract them, just like any other job.
|
| Spending on benefits "instead of" education is a false
| dichotomy; in fact, I'd say that's the central thesis of
| the article.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| This was the school system I went to in a rust-belt city,
| the teachers were not 'good' on average.
| mattkrause wrote:
| But if you tried to hire teachers while offering _less_ ,
| would they have been better? My guess is no; they'd have
| been even worse.
| csa wrote:
| > As a European, it has always been perplexing to me how little
| the US invests in teachers and schools, given that we know how
| huge the benefits are down the road (educational attainment,
| income, pro-social behavior, life satisfaction).
|
| You may or may but know this, but the funding of K-12 education
| varies by locality and has quite a bit of variability
| (typically paid for by local taxes).
|
| If you go to the upper-middle class neighborhoods in the US,
| and certainly in the nicer private schools, you will see a high
| or very high level of investment in teachers and facilities.
| These investments typically have good to great returns. There
| is also often quite a bit of structured parental involvement
| (which is usually a good thing).
|
| There are a lot of interesting levels of inquiry into this
| phenomenon:
|
| - Do we need high quality _mass_ education as it is found in
| these higher quality upper middle class schools? As in, if you
| magically made these types of schools appear in low SES
| neighborhoods, would the outcomes /benefits be similar? If not,
| how would they differ?
|
| - If you take a few low SES students and place them into these
| better schools, do they get the same benefits as the locals?
|
| - To what extent do better schools and school districts get
| better results due to the schools, due to the inputs, and/or
| due to the values of the local community?
|
| People who are looking for good K-12 education in the US can
| find it, but it's not universal. Imho, this is due to the fact
| that the value of education in the US is not perceived
| similarly across communities.
|
| The article mentions that many parents see schools as child
| care while the adults do "real work", and I think that that is
| the dominant perspective in _most_ communities (note, not most
| HN communities, not most upper middle class communities --
| statistically most communities are low or mid-low SES where
| people are living paycheck to paycheck). As such, the community
| is sort of getting what it wants when it gets mediocre
| education results. I think that many people like the _idea_ of
| a having a better school or school district, but they are not
| able or willing to do what it takes to make that happen on an
| individual or community level to make that happen (e.g.,
| through parental involvement in schools, school boards,
| creating a good learning environment in the home, etc.).
|
| If you ever need a good litmus test for how this looks
| different across communities and across different SES levels,
| ask the parents if they read books with their children, and if
| they did/do, at what age. In most communities, they don't at
| all or very little. In the communities with better schools,
| it's almost always early and often. There are obviously
| exceptions (both positive and negative), but this heuristic is
| extremely telling in aggregate.
| jmugan wrote:
| As a father of 3 kids, one thing that gets lost in these
| discussions is the fact that some teachers are great and some are
| bad, like really bad. We need to give the good ones more money
| and freedom and the bad ones means and incentive to improve or
| find a new profession.
| jmugan wrote:
| I wonder if this also relates to police officers. One of the
| problems seems to be that society doesn't have the right
| leverage over their behavior. Some are heroic and some give the
| profession a bad name.
| samhuk wrote:
| I've always found the media coverage around this topic strange.
| You will hear almost nothing about it for months, then a huge
| wave of Unhappy Teachers articles, videos, news items, etc. will
| rise up, then it all evaporates away into nothing as quickly as
| it began.
|
| And little ever gets done. I feel like very few politicians want
| to touch the education beast out of fear, perhaps because last
| time they did ('member Common Core?) it went nuclear-FUBAR.
|
| I'm not sure if anyone has already linked it, but CNBC _just_
| released a new piece on this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlnspY2wOVw
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Teaching/training is quite difficult. I've done quite a bit of
| training (but not true _teaching_ -there 's a difference), over
| the years.
|
| My family is full of teachers. I have many friends that are
| teachers.
|
| It's amazing how "solutions" never seem to actually get around to
| simply paying teachers more, and maybe not expecting them to be
| child-rearers, in lieu of parents.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| As long as we have tenure and the seniority system we aren't
| going to see significantly higher pay.
|
| Virtually everyone else has a boss that judges his or her
| performance. Sometimes those judgments are wrong or unfair.
| Almost every institution has determined that's still better
| than nothing. But somehow not schools.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| > As long as we have tenure and the seniority system we
| aren't going to see significantly higher pay.
|
| There is no logic in this affirmation. There are no such
| direct links between tenure and pay.
|
| Saying that only confirms what the article says on the
| American public feeling about teachers' pay.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| The link is public opinion.
| magicalist wrote:
| Are you claiming seniority isn't a thing in many workplaces?
| That's just wrong.
| xbar wrote:
| I claim that starting teacher salaries have nothing to do
| with seniority--they are the universal starting salaries
| for a district.
|
| They are too low.
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| > It's amazing how "solutions" never seem to actually get
| around to simply paying teachers more, and maybe not expecting
| them to be child-rearers, in lieu of parents.
|
| In a neighboring town parents tried to set up a "hotline" where
| teachers would have to be available at night to intervene on
| google chat related social incidents. They just don't seem to
| get that at 3:15, the kid is your fucking problem again. Leave
| these poor teachers alone.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Hopefully, that went down like a bribed prizefighter.
| ekianjo wrote:
| paying teachers more is not going to solve the problem that
| most people do not appreciate teachers whether its kids or
| parents. It is certainly not a job for those who cannot stand
| being criticized the whole time.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Most people hate lawyers, but plenty of people still want to
| be one.
| orzig wrote:
| > Surveyed lawyers said they experienced burnout in their
| jobs 52% of the time
|
| https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/surveyed-lawyers-
| rep...
|
| If our goal is to shovel new people into the system as
| quickly as others are quitting, I suppose lawyers are a
| good aspirational example. But if we assume that the best
| teachers are ones who like their jobs and have been around
| for a while, we might want to try a different model.
| magicalist wrote:
| Lots of well respected people burnout too. I think we can
| safely assume being paid lots of money is not the
| underlying reason.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > but plenty of people still want to be one
|
| The much higher salary makes up for it, but you can't
| seriously expect teachers to get the same salary as
| lawyers.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| Why not ? I would argue that most teachers provide a more
| valuable service than most lawyers (For my definition of
| value atleast). Lawyers have strict licensing
| requirements while teachers don't, which would be one of
| the major differences
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Many teachers have better education than lawyers.
|
| One of the reasons that the NEA is such a powerful union,
| is that its members, are, by definition, educated to a
| Masters Degree, or better.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Nah I think most people like "the idea" of being a lawyer
| (or a doctor). But to actually be one it's much harder, and
| that's when they get a reality check
|
| Lawyers will mostly attest how divorce/family practice has
| nothing on actual criminal practice, and it might be even
| harder. Most people don't know about the long hours, the
| case studies, etc. They think it's the romantic view of
| what they see on TV
|
| Doctors have to know how to deal with bodly fluids. Of
| various kinds. They have to learn how to tell a family a
| dear person died. They have to literally survive residency.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Nah I think most people like "the idea" of being a
| lawyer (or a doctor). But to actually be one it's much
| harder, and that's when they get a reality check_
|
| Same with writing software. I get rather tired of running
| into people that obviously took it up for the money, then
| found they weren't particularly good at it. Being a good
| engineer (software, or otherwise) is _hard_.
|
| In my experience, these folks tend to be quite concerned
| about the "culture," as opposed to the actual art of the
| field. They look and sound great, but don't rely on them
| to actually _ship_ anything.
|
| _Delivering_ software is really difficult. I 've been
| doing it for my entire adult life, so it's become pretty
| much habit. It's always shocking to encounter folks that
| aren't able to deliver software, yet have been in the
| field for a very long time.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| No single thing will solve all the problems.
|
| But money is at least a big factor: even those who keep up
| with self-motivation and co-worker's appreciation can't go on
| if money isn't there. Paying them fairer prices is the first
| step in any attempt to make teachers come back.
| conductr wrote:
| It's education as a whole that isn't valued very highly.
| People just don't want to put in the work and it's easy to
| blame teachers on the front line doling out the work.
| a-dub wrote:
| there is a way of expressing respect in market economies,
| it's called money.
| sidlls wrote:
| Money will not overcome the "those who can't, teach"
| sentiment that runs quite strongly in the US. There is a
| very strong anti-intelligence (not merely anti-
| intellectual) sentiment in this country.
|
| It will help, and we should certainly pay teachers more,
| but it isn't the whole solution.
| XorNot wrote:
| Yes it will. Because if you pay teachers more, in fact,
| pay them well, then more people will want to move into
| the field.
|
| If teaching was like a FANNG tech job, with limited
| availability due to demand and salary, then it would be
| "discovered" to be prestigious and valuable and
| important.
|
| And moreover, everyone would be free to come up with
| their own performance management BS because you'd
| actually have the glut of incoming talent that supports
| failures removing people from the industry (or screw it
| up so bad that despite the money no one bothers - also a
| FANNG phenomenan).
| Retric wrote:
| "Those who can't teach" is a direct result of the low
| pay. A software developer might semi retire and start
| teaching, but it's a hobby at that point not a viable
| alternative.
|
| It's more complicated than paying more money
| automatically means better workers, but higher pay does
| let an industry be more selective.
| gbear605 wrote:
| More money will encourage more of "those who can" to
| switch to teaching, which will help to undermine the
| stereotype. There are already many "who can" who already
| teach, but they're almost exclusively the ones who also
| intrinsically value teaching highly. A higher pay will
| help bring the ones who would be good teachers but are in
| a situation where they need to prioritize money.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > More money will encourage more of "those who can" to
| switch to teaching,
|
| No, it won't, because in the private sector you can have
| a growing career. If you are teaching it's very likely to
| be the very same job until you retire.
| gbear605 wrote:
| I know some people "who can" who cared a lot about
| teaching and decided to be a teacher. I also know some
| people in industry who were on the edge of being a
| teacher but decided it didn't pay enough. More pay
| absolutely would draw in the people on the edge.
| tester756 wrote:
| >those who can't, teach
|
| because those who can go to industry for real cash
|
| I think.
| strken wrote:
| "Those who can't, teach" is the result of systematically
| underpaid teachers. There are two groups who go into
| teaching: those who like it so much they're willing to
| take less pay, and those who are drawn to the profession
| because the pay is competitive with the other jobs
| they're capable of.
|
| Money is not _sufficient_ to overcome the problem on its
| own, but it is _necessary_ , and not having enough of it
| _caused_ the problem.
| andyfilms1 wrote:
| If there was salary parity between teachers and workers,
| I think that sentiment would vanish. With the current
| disparity, the implication is teaching is a "final
| resort" for people who "couldn't cut it" in their
| industry.
| seangrogg wrote:
| "Those who can't do, teach" is almost exclusively about
| money, the idea being that in almost every industry you
| would be paid more to do than to teach. Thus, if you are
| teaching it's likely because you failed to be a doer.
| This isn't anti-intelligence, it's actually a fairly
| logical stance.
|
| It does miss that a person's desire to educate can far
| exceed their desire to ply the trade and they are willing
| to sacrifice their pay at that particular altar. But
| given most teachers do not seem irrationally excited
| about teaching or being teachers that line of thought is
| quite diminished.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Being a _teacher_ (as opposed to a _trainer_ , like me)
| is really difficult, and a great many people who are
| excellent engineers and scientists, are horrendously bad
| teachers.
|
| The best teachers that I ever had, were ones that were
| trained as teachers, and were not necessarily content
| matter experts.
|
| The _worst_ teachers that I ever had, were content matter
| experts. Almost universally, they had no patience for
| folks that had a hard time coming up to speed, or that
| weren 't already at a level beyond the class they were
| teaching.
|
| They would ridicule you for asking "stupid" questions
| (that's me -I ask questions that have the whole class in
| stitches, but by the end of the semester, I'm coaching my
| classmates). They would start from a baseline that
| actually assumed the student had already completed and
| passed the class they were taking.
|
| I would sign up for a class, because of the _bona fides_
| of the teacher, but would end up regretting my decision.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > it's called money.
|
| Money does not come from the skies, it's about what the
| market agrees the value actually is (when it comes to
| private education) or what the government decides (for
| public education). Public education is a problem because in
| many western countries it's already the largest budget and
| it's still a shitshow so you are going to have a hard time
| to convince everyone that injecting more money is going to
| make it better.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| Hedge fund managers make a killing and I have no respect
| for them whatsoever.
| atemerev wrote:
| Public schools are not a market economy. Even in the most
| capitalist country in the world, there will be obligatory
| free public schools, and they will be government-financed.
|
| The level of demand, however, can vary. Do Americans even
| want good public education? Or it is an afterthought?
| hattmall wrote:
| Market forces for schools are reflected in real estate
| prices. Houses in good school districts can go for 4x the
| cost of similar housing a few miles away if the schools
| are bad.
| atemerev wrote:
| That's right, but the schools themselves are not
| participating in the market feedback forces, their
| quality distribution is random (or worse).
|
| This very observation is telling us that the entire
| system is outside the market (why, for example, people
| from other locations cannot choose this particular school
| if it is better than others?)
| mantas wrote:
| Paying more will solve the appreciation problem.
|
| My wife is (ex)teacher. Parents would flat-out say that they
| can't respect her because of her salary. Along the lines of,
| if you're smart and can do stuff, why the hell are you
| working for such a low pay? Ergo teachers are dumb and
| parents (along with their kids) feel free to make fun of
| dumbasses who work in schools.
|
| On top of that, paying more would help with self-respect.
| It's damn hard to be an authority to kids when you live
| paycheck-to-paycheck. Especially in teens' world where
| appearance matters a lot.
| elevaet wrote:
| > Parents would flat-out say that they can't respect her
| because of her salary. Along the lines of, if you're smart
| and can do stuff, why the hell are you working for such a
| low pay?
|
| Damn, that is so gut wrenching to read. It's so short
| sighted that society does not value teachers more highly.
| The next generation is the ultimate investment.
| noasaservice wrote:
| It actually makes sense to deprecate teachers if you are
| one of the christian fascists in the republican party. We
| need only look at the recent string of laws, book
| bannings and similar to get an idea of what religious
| fascism does.
|
| Attacking the teachers have been a long term goal. School
| funds already are now allowed to be directed to parochial
| (religious) schools from the state school coffers. This
| starves the public school systems one by one.
|
| No Child Left Behind guaranteed that bad schools get less
| money, and get worse. This all but guarantees that low
| income areas have terrible school systems that are more
| just juvenile delinquency prevention and babysitting
| services.
|
| Book bans are pushed by the "right" (which they rarely,
| if ever, are), with obvious canards like "Harry potter is
| evil occult and should be burned". Naturally, with the
| exception of
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/epzv9j/texas-school-bans-
| the... , most of the bans are done explicitly by the
| christian fascists forcing their beliefs on others.
|
| Or, instead of more money and resources, we see Texas
| state legislature forcing schools to hang banners of "In
| god we trust."
| https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/18/texas-schools-in-
| god... . Again, it's the forcing of one myopic direction
| of religion on the masses. It brings the parochial school
| into the public piece at a time.
|
| All of these different directions have the ultimate
| effect - deprecate the "godless" education to something
| with their variant of religion in it. And naturally, we
| get pablum like "Noah and dinosaurs lived together", and
| other completely non-science garbage taught as fact.
| mantas wrote:
| Globally, the root cause is definitely not ,,christian
| fascists". For example in my country it's woke
| neoliberals pushing the notion of schooling
| freemarketisation. At the same time claiming that
| teachers' salary increase won't help with terrible
| students' performance at exams :)
| mantas wrote:
| True. We needs massive propaganda campaign to highlight
| teachers. And, of course, show respect by paying them
| accordingly.
|
| Another semi-related issue is school system used for
| virtue signalling first. For example ,,special needs"
| kids integration. It sounds nice on paper, but in reality
| one kids holds up whole class. And then smarter kids riot
| because they get bored. But hey, that's teacher's fault..
|
| IMO that will be the crucial piece for West decline. This
| is reverting the best bit in post-industrial-revolution
| welfare states. Teach the masses to fish out the
| brilliant mind from the whole pool. But now we're
| reducing the pool to those who can afford private
| schools. And loosing lots of talent in the rest of
| society. If that trend continues, soon we'll be back in
| nobility-peasants split with little social mobility.
| Which a loss not onlh for the society as a whole, but for
| neo-nobility as well. At first it may be cool to be
| richer-than-thou, but over time ,,richest in the room"
| will turn out to be poor at global scale.
| orzig wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that, but to counter-anecdote: Four of my
| family members are teachers at various levels. They all
| have strong frustrations but money (either in terms of
| perception or paying the bills) has never been one.
| borski wrote:
| Private schools or public?
| dwater wrote:
| Are any of them under 40 and completely self-supporting?
| Most of the coworkers I had when teaching who weren't
| bothered by the money had an external source of financial
| support. It took me a long time to realize it because
| those who are supported by others don't like to admit it.
| I referred to them as hobbyist teachers, and they were
| much much more likely to stay longer than 5 years
| compared to those who were doing it as a career.
| orzig wrote:
| Legitimate question, thanks. Two married to each other.
| One over 40. Last living in a nicer part of town than
| otherwise due to husband, but actually looked for non-
| teaching jobs and couldn't find higher salaries so
| stayed.
| [deleted]
| madsbuch wrote:
| I am considering how the demografic development shapes this.
|
| In the span of 40 years or so, we will from 6 / 1 working to non
| working to 2 / 1 conclusing in the mid 2030s.
|
| I mean, indifferent to what means of redistribution schema we
| use, we simply won't get more labor, and issues might need to be
| solved along other axis. Not expecting the same level of service,
| etc.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Great, let's move forward with some real online learning
| initiatives. The current system is antiquated and no longer makes
| sense from a purely educational perspective. For too long the US
| has used the school system as a baby-sitting service while both
| parents (or single parents) are at work.
| sidlls wrote:
| This isn't a problem software can fix.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| And turn back the inflation and hedonistic clock to when a
| single labourers salary could support the family. Freeing up
| the other person to teach.
| synthc wrote:
| The same problem is happening in NL, it's a downwards spiral
| really that concerns me a lot. The government is trying to
| improve the situation by increasing pay a little, but with the
| current inflation it is probably too little, too late.
|
| A relative of mine became a teacher after a career switch, and
| while she likes the work, there are many frustrations:
|
| - Parents have a 'the customer is always right'-attitude, and
| complain about everything, but their kids are perfect of course.
|
| - Some years ago NL decided to cut down on schools for kids with
| special needs, so every class now has a few very disruptive kids
| who have nowhere else to go. This is a very frustrating situation
| for everyone: the disruptive kids don't get proper guidance, the
| 'normal' kids get lower quality classes, and teachers have to
| deal with problematic behaviour.
|
| - The shortage of teachers makes it hard to find replacements
| when calling in sick, plenty of teachers feel pressure to work
| when sick. This is of course a bad combo with the whole Corona
| situation.
|
| - Teachers spend a lot of (unpaid) time grading and other
| administrative BS.
|
| - Management is out of touch, they don't listen to their staff
| and think up time-consuming plans that are doomed to fail. (well,
| this is not specific to education) - Management is very unstable.
| The schools my kids go to had a different director pretty much
| each year.
| jongjong wrote:
| This isn't surprising at all.
|
| Crony-capitalism is a zero-sum game. It literally rewards value
| extraction at the expense of value creation. Teaching creates
| value and it's terrible at capturing value because it offers very
| little negotiating power; teachers are fully reliant on big,
| powerful institutions for employment.
|
| Why would the big corporations with market monopolies (which
| control our governments) want to educate the masses? The big
| corporations don't want their competitors to be educated and they
| certainly don't want more free thinkers in society who can learn
| about our dysfunctional monetary system.
|
| Elite colleges churn out just enough graduates to keep the big
| corporate monopolies running. Graduates of all other schools and
| colleges are just fuel for the competition; they're a nuisance
| for big corporations; these individuals need to be kept
| incompetent so that they do not pose a threat to the existing
| order. Financially, it makes sense to dumb down the masses, pack
| them into tiny living spaces, feed them crickets, connect them to
| virtual reality and make sure that they don't have any children.
|
| Our monetary system ensures that our economy always caters to
| capital and the sources of capital (reserve bank money printers),
| not to people. It doesn't even allow for parallel economies to
| form when people can't afford to participate in the mainstream
| economy. It keeps everyone hooked until death.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Anecdote time: In June, I left my position teaching high school
| English after about ten years. Within weeks, I have increased my
| TC from ~50k to ~80k. Admittedly, I will have fewer vacation
| days, but I will work fewer hours with no additional labor or
| responsibilities in the evening/weekends.
| mynameishere wrote:
| This person is all over the map--it's the kind of rambling for
| which the awful five paragraph essay was designed to correct.
|
| Anyway, I am assuming that she is a public teacher and her job is
| to some extent supported by that fact (with respect to working
| conditions, salary, etc) as well as by a union. Many private
| schools, especially religious schools, actually do pay a
| "pittance" which probably more closely reflects the market rate.
| Such teachers often do depend on a spouse's salary, or live in
| real poverty. Public teachers benefits are usually much, much
| better.
|
| Of course, the big disadvantage of a public school: You get what
| you get. Only the very, very worst students are expelled so
| classroom behavior can be wretched, with correspondingly wretched
| parents (if any). The administration is politically motivated and
| the teachers get the short end there, too.
|
| Good districts have no trouble getting teachers, and never have.
| nvahalik wrote:
| Our kids attend a hybrid school. Home 2/3 days at school 2/3
| days. It's technically a private school but it leans way more
| classical.
|
| During orientation we learned a LOT of our new co-teachers were
| actually ex public school teachers. They were tired of the
| direction of the schools and didn't want to subject their kids to
| the conditions they saw.
|
| They want to teach. They love teaching. Just not in the public
| schools.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| "Teachers are underpaid, so let's spend more on education!"
| right?
|
| Wrong, or at least, a grade of Incomplete.
|
| http://usedbyeducatorsblog.com/education-spending-vs-teacher...
|
| _Colorado has enjoyed a 15 percent increase in spending per
| student from 1992 to 2014 when adjusted for inflation. Put
| another way, in 2014 Colorado public school students had 15
| percent more real resources spent on their education compared to
| students in 1992. During that same period, however, the average
| Colorado teacher's salary has gone down by 11 percent when
| adjusted for inflation_
|
| This is fairly universal, I'd surmise. Most commenters seem to
| assume that if we wanted to spend, let's say, $100M more on
| teachers' salaries, we'd have to increase the public education
| budget by $100M. More like $300M, I'd guess.
| ekianjo wrote:
| A teacher should know better than making blanket statements every
| 2 lines with "Americans think..".
|
| What a bad article.
| kcplate wrote:
| While I don't necessarily disagree with many of her points, the
| overly dramatic and staccato style made this irritating to
| read. She succeeded in having me walk away from the article
| frustrated, not with the problem, but with her article.
| justin66 wrote:
| It's not a paper, it's a blog post that was meant to be
| provocative. It appears to have worked.
| creamynebula wrote:
| Education is one of the most important things for human and
| economic development, yet teachers are severely underpaid.
| Quality and availability of education would improve dramatically
| if salaries were higher.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| As a former high school teacher, it is also no mystery to me why
| people are leaving the profession. It's by far the hardest job
| I've ever done. I journaled my experience here, for anyone who
| cares to read: https://acjay.com/a-former-teachers-story/
| zackmorris wrote:
| The fix for this by the way is to pay for school with federal
| funds instead of state and local. That way rich and poor children
| receive the same funding.
|
| This is also the reason to ban private school vouchers. That way
| rich children get taught alongside poor children, which prevents
| disparities in education quality. It also allows people with the
| means to afford private schooling to pay for an underprivileged
| child to still get an education via those tax dollars.
|
| If what I'm saying doesn't sound right to you, then we have an
| opportunity for a teachable moment. Don't feel bad, I just
| learned this yesterday. Let me introduce you to horizontal and
| vertical philosophy:
|
| https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-horizontal-issue-in-the-cont...
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/to-unite-a-divided-nation...
|
| Horizontal ethics/politics/philosophy is concerned with the
| overall well being of the whole. It tends to focus on stuff like
| justice.
|
| Vertical ethics/politics/philosophy is concerned with doing right
| within a hierarchy. It tends to focus on stuff like liberty.
|
| Both are required for a society to function. But the US has
| experienced mostly vertical politics since before the Reagan
| revolution. So quite candidly, the problems we experience today
| will most likely be solved through horizontal policies.
|
| HN and most major news sources tend to track with vertical
| philosophies IMHO. So I tend to have the minority viewpoint here.
| But that appears to be changing, and I suspect that the world
| will go more horizontal over the next 10-20 years. A related
| concept is how generations tend to oppose the policies of their
| parents, as covered in the book The Fourth Turning:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/670089.The_Fourth_Turnin...
|
| I wish I could say that I've read it, but I hear good things.
|
| Gen Z is coming online now as we enter what I like to think will
| be a new progressive era. It's facing tremendous opposition from
| entrenched interests on both the left and right though. So there
| will likely be deadlock for the next election or two until the
| last of the Baby Boomers finally retire and relinquish control.
| bell-cot wrote:
| s/to Teach/to be treated like shit for crap wages/g
|
| Not exactly news, these days.
|
| In much of America, local school districts still have quite a bit
| of autonomy. As thing keep getting worse, there _might_ be a
| district or few, here & there, where a different approach gets
| an honest try.
|
| Might.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| People keep saying crap wages, but put some real numbers up
| here. What do you consider crap wages?
| justin66 wrote:
| Let's just go with crap wages == whatever isn't sufficient to
| keep enough people in the profession, such that you need to
| start recruiting wildly unqualified people just to fill the
| spot.
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| You make the job bad enough, no wages will keep people in
| it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| You almost had me at "whatever isn't sufficient to keep
| enough people" but then dammit, you lost at "wildly
| unqualified people"
|
| If you mean "having an education degree" or "getting a
| grossly irrelevant teacher's certificate" then no, those
| are not "qualifications." Those are just the teacher's
| union contract provisions.
| justin66 wrote:
| There are some problems with the system you're objecting
| to, but the "veterans and random college students"
| qualification some places are moving to is... worse.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| no argument there.
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| The same could be said about the UK. Anecdotally, every single
| teacher I know has either quit or moved into the private sector,
| with the exception of those with partners in a better paid
| profession. I'm genuinely surprised that anyone will do the job.
| indymike wrote:
| My wife teaches elementary school ESL and Spanish as needed.
|
| The school day is 8 hours of solid work, plus 2 hours of grading
| and two hours of planning. The minimum number of hours for most
| teachers is 60 hours, plus extra time for maybe coaching, or
| being and advisor for an extra-curricular (which are a dying
| bread of program in many schools). This is for doing the same
| thing you do year after year. Changes in academic guidelines,
| school policies, textbooks, academic fashion, technology and
| student aptitude variance from year to year force you to re-
| invent everything, every year.
|
| It's a horrible job not because teaching is horrible, but because
| we've turned our schools into the intersection of social
| engineering and politics. For every child there's at least one
| highly protective parent, with some political hot button. It's
| just a nightmare. For example, my wife teaches ESL and Spanish
| and had to go to meetings with a parent that thought her class
| was part of a "critical race theory" conspiracy. Another parent
| wanted my wife to teach Spanish without gender in the language.
| Still another was upset about having first graders sing, because
| the kinds might be "too judgey."
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Judging from this thread, my opinion on this is not going to be
| popular, please don't massacre me for it, just discuss it with me
| if you want, I won't be mean (unless you are) but I will be
| candid.
|
| Good. I'm glad nobody wants to teach anymore. The less teachers
| we have the better. That's for everyone, including the teachers.
| A surefire way to get paid more is a shortage of professionals.
| If you are so important as to be indispensable to society, maybe
| prove it by withholding your services. If you're so indispensable
| they'll pay you to get you to come back, and if they don't, fine,
| they'll find out just how indispensable you are.
|
| Teachers, at least in the US, are in fact glorified babysitters.
| The amount of stuff a kid in public school learns in 13 years
| that they actually use could be taught in 5. Public school is
| subsidized daycare so that the US could double it's labor force.
| This is not how I want it to be, I want kids to actually learn
| things, and only go to school to learn and not to be herded. _I
| want overworked teachers to work less, much, much less._
|
| I have no doubt many of them are overworked, treated badly, and
| go into it at least because they care about children learning.
| But maybe it's like that because it's the only way an economy and
| society can justify the expense. Maybe the role they play is not
| worth as much as they think it is. Maybe they should stop
| teaching.
|
| I think most teachers have an overinflated sense of their
| contribution. Ask yourself, if they'll hire anyone off the
| street, that means anyone off the street wants to teach. That
| should tell you something about teaching, and if they really
| wouldn't last a week then don't sweat it, they're no threat to
| you, they'll be gone in a week.
|
| My big problem with education is not the teachers, it's the giant
| all encompassing bureaucracy that teachers and students have to
| constantly navigate. It seems to me like teachers by and large
| aren't that interested in simplifying that bureaucracy, even
| though from their complaints it's the largest source of their
| problems. I wonder why they don't attack it directly? I'm curious
| why they haven't all quit too. I want most of them to quit.
|
| Put your money where your mouth is. Show us what we all stand to
| lose without you. Don't tolerate this bullshit anymore. Quit.
| Find a profession where you're treated better. If you're right,
| we will beg you to come back. Make us beg. Make us grovel. Show
| us what it feels like. Rub our faces in it.
|
| I don't think teachers are "essential workers." I think that they
| don't quit because if they did, we (and they) would find out that
| we don't actually need them as much as they tell us we do.
|
| Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, it wouldn't be the
| first time. You're wrong until you learn, right? Educate me.
| epgui wrote:
| Education is a public good. It's precisely the kind of thing
| markets are not great at on their own.
|
| That doesn't mean that education as we have it now is perfect,
| but you also don't need to throw the baby out with the
| bathwater and return to the middle ages in order to try solving
| some of its problems.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I disagree. I find it funny, when libertarians and free-
| market advocates say "if you classify something a public good
| you turn the workers in it into slaves" that the same people
| who disagree with that often complain that essential workers
| in those fields aren't paid enough. I think markets could
| sort this out beautifully: if it's really so essential they'd
| get paid more.
|
| The teachers are essentially saying "treat us better and pay
| us adequately or you're going back to the middle ages, like
| it or not, it's not our doing, it will be your doing and your
| undoing." They don't like that some of us don't believe that.
| Well, if it's true, show us. Quit.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I think it depends upon what US State the teachers are in.
|
| Some states, if a teacher says some phrases they could, get
| fined, loose their job or maybe in rare cases face jail time.
| This may even spread across the Teacher's life style. Not to
| mention in many places the pay is not worth it.
|
| Forgot to mention, some states also require a Masters Degree even
| to teach very young children, the expense of getting that degree
| is not worth it.
| etempleton wrote:
| This is the real issue. Most states require a master's or
| credit hour equivalent to retain your teaching credentials, but
| the pay is bad, laughably bad in some areas. So bad that
| someone who has been teaching 10 years will make more doing
| almost anything else at an entry level position elsewhere. A
| lot of teachers are being recruited to do sales because they
| can speak well extemporaneously.
|
| Should I get paid less and get kicked, bit, and punched all day
| and then be told it is my fault for not properly simulating
| their angel child? Or should I just get a job where I can work
| from home and make more money?
| orzig wrote:
| Can you point to an area where a teacher with 10 years of
| experience, working full-time, earns less than an entry-level
| position? Teacher contracts are mostly public and you can use
| $15/hr for entry level, shouldn't be hard to find and example
| if it exists.
| etempleton wrote:
| Many entry-level sales jobs, which often require no
| specific college degree, though typically a college degree
| is preferred, earn 50-70k /year. Entry level sales,
| specifically, can easily net over 100k a year if you are
| good at what you do as you work at least partially on
| commission.
|
| Teachers, companies are discovering, are desirable sales
| reps because they are experienced at being high energy,
| talking extemporaneously, and may have some domain specific
| knowledge that is valuable, such as a chemistry teacher
| going into pharmaceutical sales.
|
| Most teachers will never make 100k in their entire career.
| Some districts pay well in high COL areas, but this is the
| exception not the rule. Entry level pay for teachers is
| actually pretty good, but your salary does not scale as it
| does in most other careers. It typically takes 20+ years to
| get to six figures if you can at all.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| Partly because nobody wants to learn. Its all about getting a
| grade.
| poorbutdebtfree wrote:
| It's not money. Everyone is afraid to say the quiet part out
| loud. 90% of the kids in urban schools simply don't want to be
| there and make life hell for teachers, administration, and the
| other 10% with actual potential. Half measures dont work!
| yonaguska wrote:
| > States banned math books for being too woke.
|
| > being asked to breathe children's germs
|
| Ok.
|
| This article is basically a long rant, and this kind of teacher
| is exactly what contributed to the burning out of my wife as a
| teacher. She wanted to teach math, but was being asked to teach
| social justice math.
|
| > I mean, they're letting anyone in the classroom now. I'm
| surprised they haven't started recruiting the homeless.
|
| Is this a dig at the latest Desantis bill to fast track veterans
| into teaching roles?
|
| Another complaint, my wife went to one of the highest ranked
| schools in the country, and was just shy of the minimum gpa
| requirement to go into the public school system right out of
| college. Instead she went and taught at charter schools, and her
| students regularly outperformed other schools in the network with
| math scores. But she wasn't qualified to teach math until she did
| a graduate program that had nothing to do with math. She quit the
| graduate school program because she was being graded on her
| ability to be inclusive in the classroom and it was a rubric
| designed for pushing equity and social justice, when again...she
| was trying to teach math. She would have been just "anyone" being
| allowed to teach in a classroom.
| atoav wrote:
| What would "social justice math" look like? Serious question, I
| can't even imagine. Here in Europe math education hasn't
| changed a ton in the past decades at all.
| rayiner wrote:
| [deleted]
| Tomte wrote:
| The rallying cry seems to be that "2+2=4 is racist".
|
| Expanded a bit, it seems to be that insisting that some
| answers are "wrong" disregards students' differing
| backgrounds and diverse avenues to solve problems.
| yonaguska wrote:
| Some of it was also that she shouldn't expect students to
| do homework, or she was expected to try and use word
| problems with narratives.
| ekimekim wrote:
| Those...sound like reasonable things?
|
| Many students aren't going to learn by rote memorization
| of completing homework. It it helpful to support
| different learning styles.
|
| A big problem with math education is that it's too
| abstract. It's hard to relate mathematical concepts to
| real life. "When are we going to use this?", people ask.
| Phrasing your questions in terms of real problems with a
| narrative can help students learn.
| Tomte wrote:
| Homework usually isn't rote learning (unless we're
| talking foreign language vocabulary - and there rote
| learning is important!), but practice.
|
| Students get to practice what the teacher (tried to)
| showed them with different problems, so both they and the
| teacher can see if they mastered the topic.
| status_quo69 wrote:
| > The rallying cry seems to be that "2+2=4 is racist".
|
| Source? This is such a wild claim it has to be made up. A
| cursory google search brings this article:
| https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teaching-math-
| throu...
|
| Which is distilled down to "teachers teach math in a way
| that is topical to the current environment, such as BLM
| protests which is really nothing new. You might disagree
| with it, sure, but to say that this is "the wokes" teaching
| 2+2=fish, that's frankly ridiculous.
|
| In fact, the only thing I can find reporting on
| "2+2=racist" is this Washington Examiner article deriding a
| math teacher from NYC for her tweets (article here:
| https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/math-professor-
| claim...) which sounds _awful_ but it's a single person
| tweeting, and it seems to be in relation to using "math is
| pure and objective so it always must be neutral" as a
| defense for situations where data/statistics/algorithms
| presented show a clear bias. Which I think generally is an
| agreed upon phenomenon-- depending on the sampling and
| interpretation of the data, folks can come to _wildly_
| different conclusions, especially if data was accidentally
| omitted.
|
| Best example of this phenomenon is facial recognition
| software, which can perform very badly when deviating from
| the sample data. https://www.nist.gov/news-
| events/news/2019/12/nist-study-eva...
|
| > For one-to-one matching, the team saw higher rates of
| false positives for Asian and African American faces
| relative to images of Caucasians. The differentials often
| ranged from a factor of 10 to 100 times, depending on the
| individual algorithm. False positives might present a
| security concern to the system owner, as they may allow
| access to impostors.
|
| ...
|
| > However, a notable exception was for some algorithms
| developed in Asian countries. There was no such dramatic
| difference in false positives in one-to-one matching
| between Asian and Caucasian faces for algorithms developed
| in Asia. While Grother reiterated that the NIST study does
| not explore the relationship between cause and effect, one
| possible connection, and area for research, is the
| relationship between an algorithm's performance and the
| data used to train it. "These results are an encouraging
| sign that more diverse training data may produce more
| equitable outcomes, should it be possible for developers to
| use such data," he said.
|
| All the other sources I found on google were either think
| tanks, facebook posts, or spam sites.
|
| ETA: even in the most pessimistic reading of those tweets,
| I'm personally hard pressed to find that one person
| tweeting means that all math teachers everywhere are trying
| to take math down to "2+2=racist"
| Tomte wrote:
| > Source?
|
| For example the Wall Street Journal. And hundreds of
| similar articles.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-california-2-2-4-may-be-
| thou...
|
| > This is such a wild claim it has to be made up.
|
| This is against the site's rules.
|
| > I'm personally hard pressed to find that one person
| tweeting means that all math teachers everywhere
|
| Funny how you build up a straw man. I never claimed any
| of that.
| didibus wrote:
| I'd have to agree with OP, it does seem to be bad faith,
| because the entire time, instead of discussing the
| proposed changes at face value, they seem to try and
| ridicule it as if someone says that 2+2=4 is racist, yet
| they don't quote anyone actually saying that or anything.
|
| I've read the whole article you linked, and I'm no
| smarter in understanding what the problem is, and the
| suggested changes are which they're making fun of.
| status_quo69 wrote:
| > This is against the site's rules.
|
| I apologize, that was a knee jerk reaction because I've
| never seen the assertion that 2+2=4 is racist before,
| only that math can be used inaccurately (purposefully or
| by accident) in racial contexts. I was a bit taken aback
| by the assertion and should have engaged differently.
|
| > Funny how you build up a straw man. I never claimed any
| of that.
|
| This isn't a straw man, I'm not building up some
| contrived argument here; the original comment was that
| "2+2=4 is racist" is a rallying cry for [some not
| insignificant number of math teachers].
|
| > For example the Wall Street Journal. And hundreds of
| similar articles.
|
| I did find this Opinion while googling, and read the
| parent Op-Ed (https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-
| leftists-try-to-canc...) and then followed through to the
| framework but I just don't see anything about the manual
| they were talking about in that Op-Ed in the works cited
| (seems like all references to the manual have since been
| removed). So I dug up the wayback machine on the page to
| see the context in which they were using the "A Pathway
| to Equitable Math Instruction" manual.
|
| > A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction
| (https://equitablemath.org/) is an integrated approach to
| mathematics that centers Black, Latinx, and
| linguistically diverse students in grades 6-8, addresses
| barriers to mathematics equity, and aligns instruction to
| grade-level priority standards. The Pathway offers
| guidance and resources for immediate use in planning
| their curriculum, while also offering opportunities for
| ongoing self-reflection as they seek to develop an anti-
| racist mathematics practice. The toolkit "strides"
| (above) serve as multiple on-ramps for educators as they
| navigate the individual and collective journey from
| equity to anti-racism. It is a collection of resources to
| help grades 6-8 Black, LatinX, and linguistically diverse
| students thrive in mathematics education.
|
| Ok so generally seems like they're recommending the usage
| in primarily POC or mixed classrooms where the
| considerations for teaching might be a bit different due
| to a multitude of factors.
|
| Now digging into the manual a bit, the titles are
| definitely inflammatory but the content is honestly
| fairly humdrum (quotes taken from the first chapter
| https://equitablemath.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...)
|
| * Teach rich, thoughtful, complex mathematics. * Teach
| rigorous mathematics, understanding that rigor is
| characterized as thorough, exhaustive, and
| interdisciplinary. * Use mistakes as opportunities for
| learning. * Recognize mistakes as miscommunicated
| knowledge. * Allow for engagement in productive struggle
| * Teach students of color about the career and financial
| opportunities in math and STEM fields. * Encourage them
| to disrupt the disproportionate push-out of people of
| color in those fields. * Invite leaders and innovators of
| color working in STEAM fields to meet your students. *
| Rely on teamwork and collaboration as much as possible. *
| Teach mathematics through project-based learning and
| other engaging approaches. * Provide multiple
| opportunities for students to learn from and teach each
| other. * Intentionally include mathematicians of color. *
| Expose students to mathematicians of color, particularly
| women of color and queer mathematicians of color, both
| through historical examples and by inviting community
| guest speakers. * Teach students of color about their
| mathematical legacy and ancestral connection and mastery
| of math. * Honor and acknowledge the mathematical
| knowledge of students of color, even if it shows up
| unconventionally. * Give rightful credit to the discovery
| of math concepts by mathematicians of color. Reclaim
| concepts attributed to white mathematicians that should
| be attributed to mathematicians of color.
|
| Which all seems fairly reasonable here to my eyes. I will
| 100% agree with any assertions that the titles are very
| standoffish and even straight up accusatory but the
| content of the manual really seems like something good
| teachers should strive for. So to conclude I don't think
| that 2+2=4 is racist is really a rallying cry, the
| literature cited everywhere seems to talk mainly towards
| the teaching methodologies employed.
| scarmig wrote:
| The vast majority of this does not belong in a math
| classroom. Math classrooms do not primarily cover the
| history or sociology of mathematics; they cover (or, at
| least, should cover) how to do algebra.
|
| Perhaps those things could enrich curricula once students
| were actually being taught math, but schools fail at
| that. And some districts (e.g. SFUSD) have taken to
| banning the teaching of algebra in middle school because
| it's "inequitable."
| rayiner wrote:
| > Is this a dig at the latest Desantis bill to fast track
| veterans into teaching roles
|
| Her comparison of veterans to homeless people speaks volumes
| about where she is coming from. As I understand it, the
| DeSantis bill allows veterans who have 60 credits and pass a
| subject exam to get a provisional teaching certificate while
| they complete their degree:
| https://flgov.com/2022/08/17/governor-ron-desantis-
| highlight.... That sounds like a great idea.
| civilized wrote:
| And there's no evidence that these graduate degree requirements
| are needed or beneficial for quality teaching. They're just as
| baseless as requiring people - many of them poor and
| marginalized - to spend tens of thousands of dollars and do
| months of coursework before they're "licensed" to cut hair.
|
| Well-intentioned rank-and-file teachers must realize that their
| union superiors advocate for some of the reasons their
| profession burns them out.
| onos wrote:
| I'd pay a premium to access teachers like your wife. I'm not
| against my children having whatever politics they come to
| through their experiences, but am very weary of biased
| presentation and indoctrination.
| grendelt wrote:
| > It's definitely about the money.
|
| This. It's all about the money. I left the classroom and
| literally shed a tear in front of my principal. She asked what
| she could do for me to stay and I said "I need more money. I have
| bills to pay." You can't pay a mortgage with thank you notes,
| certificates of appreciation, and hugs.
|
| I taught high school Computer Science, a needed subject area with
| countless CS training initiatives and resources, but the pay
| still wasn't (and still isn't) there. I have a family and can't
| afford to stay in the classroom if I want to stay in my house,
| own a car, have a cell phone and internet, and pay off student
| loans.
|
| I clicked the article because it says nobody wants to teach; I
| _want_ to teach, I just can 't afford to.
| lordnacho wrote:
| What do you do now? Coding?
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > Nobody wants to teach
|
| Counterpoint: the internet is full of people who want to teach.
| The first school of YouTube is overflowing with educational
| content on everything from merge sort to patching dry-wall. A
| large portion of my social circle hold teaching/mentorship as a
| career goal. I don't think this is pedantic. When I look around,
| I see a surplus of people that want to learn and want to teach.
|
| What I don't see is people storming the gates for a horribly
| broken system that robs many humans of their best years while
| inflicting lifelong trauma. A position that is horribly underpaid
| relative to the demands of the job (so you aren't doing it for
| money) and isn't allowed to meaningfully improve things (so you
| aren't doing it to "make a difference" unless you think putting
| on a smile is going to substantially change the outcome, which it
| sometimes does.)
|
| I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. If you can provide
| a service at any standard of quality, list jobs at any standard
| of quality and pay, and the demand never dries up; there really
| is no incentive to fix things. At some point the education system
| in its current form needs to collapse.
| carapace wrote:
| This. The Internet obviates most of our current educational
| system. E.g., textbooks are absurd in a world where every child
| has a radio-networked pocket supercomputer.
|
| The daycare aspect of schools is broken, obviously, but that's
| a deep societal problem far beyond the ability of teachers to
| fix.
|
| The educational aspect of schools is (mostly, but not entirely)
| redundant to the resources available for free on the Internet.
|
| Perhaps we should separate those aspects from each other? (I
| dunno. I don't have children so it's not (immediately) my
| problem.)
| dorchadas wrote:
| > The educational aspect of schools is (mostly, but not
| entirely) redundant to the resources available for free on
| the Internet.
|
| I think this overestimates it. What I've found from internet
| 'learning', myself and others (and the students I used to
| teach) is that there's more often the _illusion_ of learning
| than any actual learning. Let 's not equate watching a
| YouTube video and thinking we understand it to actual
| learning. I've been victim to that myself when trying to
| learn pure math, and with kids it'll certainly be worse.
|
| And the same issues will carry over to any online textbook
| too. Teachers are there to actually assess what the kids
| really learned, not what they think they learned, or what
| they can google to get past the next question on their
| assignment. The internet just fosters the illusion of
| learning (and let's not even get to critical thinking from
| it).
| carapace wrote:
| I've heard a proverb (I want to say Pacific Islands but I'm
| not sure of the source), "Knowledge is only rumor until
| it's in the muscle."
|
| When I say "mostly, but not entirely" redundant what I mean
| is that the things that schools can offer over and above
| the information on the Internet are a small subset of what
| they're doing now, and the industry that supports them is
| largely a relic (e.g. the textbook industry.)
|
| Schools can still offer in-person mentoring and tutoring,
| and lab facilities with supervision, but if you take away
| the daycare aspects of schools I think that's about all
| that's left (of the educational aspects.) The regimented
| scheduling, most of the buildings and school bus systems,
| etc. are the now-unnecessary bits.
| juve1996 wrote:
| People with kids will tell you how well "internet education"
| went the last 2 years...
|
| This isn't a technology problem. Kids are still kids.
| Fortnite will still be more fun than doing math, whether
| that's on a computer or in a classroom.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Online school went pretty well for my kid. No doubt in my
| mind that she was learning way more than during in person
| school. The key was probably that she was next door to me
| the whole time and I had some time to help her with
| homework that I didn't before remote. Honestly my child and
| I both wish they'd go back to remote.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > People with kids will tell you how well "internet
| education" went the last 2 years
|
| We had a bunch of school districts with little to no
| experience running distance education, with a vested
| interest in return-to-classroom, all attempt to implement
| an online curriculum practically overnight. I don't
| consider it fair to consider that "online learning" or an
| earnest attempt at a successful home schooling curriculum.
|
| To drive that point home, a family I know in Washington
| State had two kids in the school district during that
| disaster. The school district shifted a tone of
| responsibility onto parents and kids. The parents were fed
| up and switched to a for-profit homeschool program. Their
| kids are still home schooled - they never went back to the
| school district after COVID ended.
| juve1996 wrote:
| The problems aren't technology related. No amount of
| curriculum change will make a parent be able to WFH
| forever or provide enough attention for their child
| because they're too busy putting food on their table and
| working to the only metric that matters above all else
| for their outcomes: money.
|
| > To drive that point home, a family I know in Washington
| State had two kids in the school district during that
| disaster. The school district shifted a tone of
| responsibility onto parents and kids. The parents were
| fed up and switched to a for-profit homeschool program.
| Their kids are still home schooled - they never went back
| to the school district after COVID ended.
|
| Yea, we get it, some people can afford homeschooling and
| have time to do it. That doesn't scale nationwide.
| carapace wrote:
| > People with kids will tell you how well "internet
| education" went the last 2 years...
|
| As I said, I don't have kids, so I don't have first-hand
| information, but from what I've heard we got the worst of
| both. I don't think we can draw too many conclusions from
| the hot mess of the last two years, not yet anyway. In any
| event, I hope it's obvious that I'm not advocating for more
| of that.
|
| What I mean is that the raw material freely available on
| the Internet is more than enough in terms of information,
| so it seems to me that long hours of mostly-rote learning
| from approved textbooks, etc. don't make sense anymore (if
| they ever did.)
|
| Instead it seems like schools (for education, not daycare)
| could provide direct, in-person interactions with mentors
| and tutors that would be an important part of any re-
| designed educational system, to help kids learn to teach
| themselves.
|
| > Fortnite will still be more fun than doing math, whether
| that's on a computer or in a classroom.
|
| Well, to me the whole concept of "battle royale" is a
| symptom of modern depravity, I'd never let my kids play
| such a messed up game.
|
| But I reject the idea that playing video games with your
| friends is more fun than e.g. building a robot IRL with
| your friends, eh? I mean starting with magnets and wires
| and, like, an Arduino. You'd have to learn mathematics in
| the context of electronics, mechanics, software and
| hardware, sensors, etc. An integrated context where you're
| immediately applying what you learn to your robot.
| Apreche wrote:
| This is the one. If I have to work (i.e.: not just live a life
| of luxury on the beach) my top pick would be to teach computers
| to children. So why am I not doing that job today?
|
| 1) The barrier to entry to getting that job is very high. I
| would probably have to go back to school and learn education,
| and it won't even be free! The barrier to entry for a job in
| the private sector is low, requiring no special certification.
| If you can do the job, you can get the job.
|
| 2) The teaching job comes with vastly more bureaucracy and
| bullshit than a private sector job. The thing I actually want
| to do, teach computers, is actually only a small portion of
| what the actual job of a teacher entails. That other stuff is
| absolutely not how I want to spend my brief time living on this
| planet.
|
| 3) Given 1 and 2, the compensation for being a teacher is
| orders of magnitude lower than just working in the private
| sector. There's no reward for putting in the extra work and
| tolerating the hassle.
|
| I have indeed considered on many occasions becoming a teacher
| at the school of YouTube. I've been a student there longer than
| I have at any other institution.
| obscurette wrote:
| Youtube is about lecturing, not about teaching.
| seibelj wrote:
| People do want to teach and get paid to do it. It's called
| private schools. They charge what the market will bear for their
| quality and location, and they pay what the market rate is for
| teachers of the requisite quality that let them charge the rates
| they need.
|
| What confuddles people in education is the same thing that causes
| endless articles about housing, healthcare, inflation... it's
| called "basic economics". Just because education is heavily
| regulated by the government and full of people ideologically
| predisposed to pretending economic rules don't apply, doesn't
| mean supply and demand is false and the normal rules of gravity
| are suspended.
|
| I myself have children and live in Boston, Massachusetts. The
| per-student funding here is $25,000 per year. Yet excluding a few
| meritocratic public schools that you have to test into (which
| they are making ever harder for my Asian children to get into as
| they reduce the seats allocated to tests and give away to
| "underprivileged" races, aka not Asians or whites) the schools
| are dog shit and anyone with a few bucks avoids them like the
| plague. So money is not the problem in Boston, it's the horrible
| nature of the public school system.
| Aunche wrote:
| I partially agree with you, but private school teachers often
| get paid less than their public school counterparts. Private
| schools get a flood of applications from humanities PHDs who
| don't have the certifications required to teach in public
| schools, so it's very much a race to the bottom in terms of
| salary. Private school's biggest advantage for teachers is that
| the parents treat education seriously, so they are less likely
| to treat teachers like babysitters.
| seibelj wrote:
| That is another vector on the spectrum of decisions for why
| quality teachers choose to work at private schools. No one
| takes a job purely on salary - a decision like that is based
| on many things.
|
| Isn't it obvious that good teachers want to teach children
| with parents that want them to learn? And punish their
| children when they are disruptive? And the school can kick
| out bad kids?
|
| The current vogue of reducing everything in education to the
| lowest common denominator - eliminating gifted programs,
| enabling disruptive kids to ruin classes, removing
| suspensions and expulsions - is exactly why private schools
| are growing. I don't want education to optimize for the worst
| kids who won't go to college and into intellectual pursuits
| anyway. I want to optimize education for the kids who will
| actually get value out of it.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| "Isn't it obvious that good teachers want to teach children
| with parents that want them to learn? And punish their
| children when they are disruptive? And the school can kick
| out bad kids?"
|
| Perhaps, but that kind of school is doing a different "job"
| than one tasked with ensuring a base level of education for
| _all_ young people.
| seibelj wrote:
| There is a place in society for schools that will treat
| you like cattle and babysit you all day. There is also a
| place for academically challenging schools that provide a
| strong education. I don't want to ban the latter in order
| to improve the former.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Those are the choices, huh?
| seibelj wrote:
| Please, put your children in terrible schools out of some
| sense of social justice or whatever. I myself will do
| what is actually good for my family. Given the school
| down the street from me had its Vice Principal of Gang
| Violence execute a student he recruited to deal drugs for
| him, our local high school my children would be
| automatically zoned into is sadly not an option despite
| my tax dollars paying for it.
| https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2015/03/05/former-
| bos...
| lr4444lr wrote:
| There's an unspoken benefit of private schools though: kids of
| teachers get to attend for free or at a hugely discounted rate.
| When I was at one, just about every teacher left after their
| kids graduated. The ones who stayed either had some nice admin
| role, or their spouse was the main breadwinner.
| nkingsy wrote:
| This is no longer the case in the two schools I'm familiar
| with.
|
| I went for cheap 20 years ago, but my younger siblings did
| not. Not even a discount
| mnd999 wrote:
| That's a societal decision we have to make. Should all children
| have access to good education - i.e. should we invest in public
| schooling? Or should it be dependent on your parents ability to
| pay in which case lets go all in on private.
| seibelj wrote:
| In my opinion, the voucher system is correct - keep funding
| public school through tax dollars, but give the parents a
| voucher for the amount to spend where they wish. If every
| parent in Boston received a $25,000 voucher to spend at the
| school they wished, competition would force public schools to
| improve or shut down as every school vied for the vouchers.
|
| Unlike many on the left, who despise monopolies in business
| and ruthlessly hunt them down, yet worship monopolies the
| government has (like in public education), I think public
| dollars should be allocated to the parents to make decisions
| they feel are best for their children. Saying "just move if
| you don't like your public school" betrays the reality of how
| difficult it is to relocate for the non-tech elite who can't
| just work from anywhere.
| powerhour wrote:
| > competition would force public schools to improve or shut
| down as every school vied for the vouchers.
|
| I don't know how to fairly evaluate a school's performance.
| I guess we could ask if the students perform better in the
| job market 10-20 years later, but that's not obviously not
| helpful or useful information on which to make a decision
| now.
|
| I get why the voucher system is appealing on first glance.
| After all, you often can evaluate the quality of goods and
| services. You can, say, estimate that a shirt you find at
| the mall will last a few years or that it will fall apart
| in a month. I just don't think you can do the same for
| schools. I have a feeling most people will evaluate
| education based on their beliefs (religious, etc) and the
| grades their kids "earn".
| seibelj wrote:
| You don't seem to know how to evaluate them, yet everyone
| agrees Harvard is better than your local community
| college, and there is literally a private school half a
| mile from my house that charges $60,000 per year. So
| clearly some people know how to distinguish a bad school
| from a good school and allocate their money
| appropriately.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Most importantly, everyone knows a very _bad_ performing
| school when they see one. The role of vouchers is first
| and foremost to reward schools that don 't screw things
| up too badly. Quality can then be a secondary factor.
| powerhour wrote:
| College is pretty different than grade school. It's a lot
| easier for adults to understand whether or not they're
| learning well and to see where people end up following
| graduation. You'd have a hard time convincing me that the
| way an 8 year old is taught today will lead to better
| results in better outcomes decades later (after those
| that ran the schools have retired and have thus left the
| market).
|
| Further, how many Harvard-level grade schools do you
| think we can run as a society? Given that private school
| pay is substantially worse than public school pay on
| average, how could one say that private schools, again on
| average, would outperform public schools?
| mnd999 wrote:
| I would just ban private schools and home schooling
| entirely, and make everyone go to public schools. The
| standards would improve in no time.
| seibelj wrote:
| Thank goodness in America we have the constitution to
| prevent such authoritarian activity.
| d_e_solomon wrote:
| I disagree. Private schools self select their student
| population. Most private schools do not take students with
| special needs or students with really difficult home lives -
| and those students deserve education. Once private schools have
| to accept every student regardless of need, will their quality
| remain? I doubt it.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Problem is two things: one, Americans strongly believe that
| every child should have access to an education. Two, not every
| family can afford 25k per child. Hell many cannot afford one
| child at that rate.
|
| You've got a point - quality schooling does exist, if schools
| can pay well and offer sensible class loads. However to apply
| that to the current public school system requires significant
| dollars long term, and a lot of people don't want to pay for
| that - think retired people whose children are out of school,
| or couples who have no children.
|
| I don't agree with that, but I'm simply stating some different
| positions from people whom I've talked to about this topic.
| ehnto wrote:
| Do you feel that the private system is taking all of the good
| educators and administrators? America isn't the only country
| with a private/public school ecosystem, yet other countries are
| able to maintain quality public schooling while it seems
| America struggles.
| seibelj wrote:
| A lot of Western non-US countries honestly don't have a lot
| of attractive private sector businesses. Small nations with
| strong public education are very unique. For example Norway
| only has 5 million citizens, extremely low immigration, a
| mono-culture and mono-ethnicity, and earns a huge amount of
| money from selling fossil fuels which are then funneled to
| public use. Yet the left in America pretends the Nordic model
| can apply here.
|
| America is unique. A lot of our public services are quite
| expensive and quite low quality. Our system is organized
| around the private sector and the more we embrace the private
| sector the better things are.
| re_norway wrote:
| Re: Teaching in Norway
|
| https://rebekahjbuchanan.com/2018/10/21/teaching-in-norway
|
| The environment Rebekah describes seems like a modern US
| tech business. Everyone is expected to be where they're
| needed, treat each other with respect and focus on their
| work. Sometimes I wonder why successful businesses can
| create the environment schools can't and then remind myself
| that businesses (and private schools) can easily exclude
| troublemakers, malcontents and people who don't fit in for
| whatever reason. Also some of the things you mention (e.g.
| mono-culture) make it easier to create an environment
| suitable for learning.
|
| It shouldn't be a priori to honor the private sector and
| shit on the public sector but as long as we do we shouldn't
| be surprised at the results. Teaching and education simply
| needs to be valued more than it is. We shouldn't have to
| beg people to do the job. Instead we should reward and
| honor the profession so well that we can set high standards
| for teachers and still have a surplus of applicants.
|
| Perhaps if we compensated teachers more like police or
| firefighters and required advanced credentials as more
| successful countries do our schools would be better.
| rhexs wrote:
| Or perhaps if we had the demographics of Norway our
| schools would be vastly better in every single category
| except "diversity".
|
| Like it or not students are not born genetically equal.
| Throw in poverty and lack of effective parenting and
| there's no hope that endless funding will somehow fix
| that situation.
| docandrew wrote:
| There are some very good public schools out there too - but
| you're going to pay tuition in the form of housing costs in
| expensive neighborhoods.
| krony wrote:
| That depends on where you live. In the Midwest, most (if not
| all) parochial private schools pay teachers substantially less
| than the public schools pay teachers. And it isn't like the
| public school teachers are making enough either. But to say
| private school teachers get paid well is very incorrect for the
| large midwestern cities
| 8jef wrote:
| That's a great thing happening. No one knows how to teach anyway
| anyhow. It's a lost art, a forgotten knowledge, which have given
| way to formatting, somewhere in the last Century. Preparing young
| souls for Life: _teaching_ is very different from telling people
| how to do things and stuff: _formatting_.
|
| We are forced to go full circle now. Throwing out garbage, as we
| can't keep up. That's a good thing.
| mantas wrote:
| The garbage is education system, not teachers. The art is not
| lost. But people who want to be Teachers get forced out of the
| system. Too much paperwork, too strict rules, too much content,
| too many students... No place left for performing the art of
| teaching.
|
| Some private schools (many focus on making parents happy in
| short term..) and tutoring is the last refuge of the art of
| Teaching.
| baazaa wrote:
| Schools are just a place for warehousing kids; even people who
| take no interest in education know this from personal experience
| back from when they were a kid.
|
| Exactly 0 of 627 college students can answer simple questions
| like 'What is the name of the mountain range that separates
| Europe from Asia?' or 'What is the last name of the author of The
| Brothers Karamazov?'.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2013/09/10/...
|
| The striking thing is that the dismal career prospects hasn't
| stopped bright ambitious people trying to get into academia.
| Whereas In Australia you can just look at entry-scores for
| teaching degrees to see that only people who did poorly in school
| go into teaching nowadays.
|
| So sure, pay and conditions have some influence but it's not a
| sufficient condition to explain what's happened in teaching.
| Pretty sure if researchers could get the job security and
| entitlements of teachers we'd have no problem finding bright
| people trying to get into research. But that's because research
| is more intrinsically rewarding and higher status.
|
| Child-minding just fundamentally isn't a job which requires much
| talent, the job is steadily degrading to the status and pay which
| one would expect for a semi-skilled occupation. The teachers'
| unions are doing a valiant job fighting a rear-guard action to
| prevent that decline, through rampant credentialism to buttress
| the 'professional' status of the job. But it's an uphill fight,
| politicians aren't going to push for tax hikes to fund teacher
| salaries when every voter knows full-well that regardless they're
| still going to have to teach their kids themselves or get
| tutoring if they want their kid to actually learn anything.
| [deleted]
| xwdv wrote:
| > Exactly 0 of 627 college students can answer simple questions
| like 'What is the name of the mountain range that separates
| Europe from Asia?' or 'What is the last name of the author of
| The Brothers Karamazov?'.
|
| These simple questions that are just recitation of facts are
| worthless. I don't even know the answers to these.
|
| The only questions that measure anything useful are critical
| thinking type questions, consider simple things any CS student
| should be able to answer such as "Describe the design for a
| roles based authentication system" or "Describe an
| implementation of a communications bus between multiple systems
| in a micro services architecture"
| mhb wrote:
| [deleted]
| imglorp wrote:
| I'd like to introduce a sensitive subject as neutrally as
| possible.
|
| For root causes, the morale environment is largely politically
| induced in a coordinated attack on public education that goes
| back to the 80's. For some examples...
|
| * cuts on school lunches
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup_as_a_vegetable
|
| * voucher programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_voucher
|
| * vast finanical aid cuts
| http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N2/budget.02n.html
|
| These policies have persisted off and on since then.
| aninteger wrote:
| Well on school lunches, California is at least trying to make
| things better: https://www.schoolmealsforall.org/
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Exactly. They want to replace public education with a for-
| profit system. Once that transition is in place, the vouchers
| will become harder for _certain_ people to get, then eventually
| vouchers will go away and people will be solely responsible for
| their children 's education. This means, yet again, the poor
| and middle class get the shaft.
| analog31 wrote:
| The US has always experienced relentless political activism
| against public education. This creates a climate where teachers,
| and the institution they work in, are actively hated by a wide
| swath of the public. This is due in no small part to proponents
| of religious education.
|
| It's true that teachers receive an above-average salary, but that
| can be both a blessing and a curse. The curse is that your wages
| are a matter of public record, and more than half of voters earn
| less then you, though teaching their precious children should be
| a privilege.
|
| A second thing is that schools are the repository of social
| problems that they can't solve, including poverty, racism, the
| proliferation of firearms, and rise of violent rhetoric.
|
| My state outlawed the teachers' union several years ago, and a
| lot of senior teachers took early retirement or went into other
| jobs. Most were old enough that they had settled into their
| lifestyle, and weren't going to get rich by changing careers. The
| word they used the most was "respect." My neighbor, one of the
| best teachers in the district, is now working as an engineer. His
| spouse is a mid six figure executive.
| epmatsw wrote:
| See the federal government in general. People like my dad elect
| politicians who actively want the federal government to fail,
| and then use the government's failures to justify that: "see,
| they were right all along!"
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > The US has always experienced relentless political activism
| against public education.
|
| Lol we spend almost 3x more on k-12 public education now
| (inflation adjusted) than we did in 1960. I really doubt the
| relentless political activism was on the side _against_ public
| education. Really, the cost to educate a child should have gone
| down substantially relative to inflation given new technologies
| that make teaching easier and faster.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| https://www.mrt.com/news/article/In-Midland-a-political-
| dono...
|
| https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/power-issue-
| tim-d...
| juve1996 wrote:
| Did you adjust for population?
|
| > Really, the cost to educate a child should have gone down
| substantially relative to inflation given new technologies
| that make teaching easier and faster.
|
| None of the technologies solved any problems, really. Math is
| still math. Reading still requires reading. Technology hasn't
| done anything but perhaps provide more access and information
| - if you're motivated, you have great options, but most
| children are not motivated like this.
| analog31 wrote:
| "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of
| our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches
| will have taken them over again and Christians will be
| running them." -- Jerry Falwell
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Falwell
| rayiner wrote:
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I realize this piece is more of a rant, and I won't hold it to a
| data accuracy standard it never pretended to have, but they pay
| issue is really misconstrued. Salaries in large urban districts
| are often well above area median, and when accounting for
| benefits and pension, quite impressive. In South Dakota and a
| number of states in the south and rural districts, yes it is
| another story, and it is bad. Also, teachers NEVER want to
| discuss pay differentials by anything but years of service. I'm
| sorry, but most qualified high school physics teachers have way
| differently valued skillsets in the labor force by alternate
| employers than most kindergarten teachers.
| brohoolio wrote:
| Starting salaries for many districts for jobs that require a
| masters is pathetic.
|
| Many suburban schools pay decent, but often urban centers pay
| poorly.
|
| I know one person who was offered under $30k for teaching young
| special Ed folks. This is someone who has a masters and extra
| certs on tops of that.
|
| Your argument about physics teachers being more sought after is
| interesting but misses the point. As a society we want our
| children to have the best outcomes, providing them with the
| best education at early ages provides that.
|
| To have the best education you want to pay well and attract the
| best candidates. Not have those teachers splitting their time
| with Uber so they can afford rent.
|
| There was a study that showed the value of great kindergarten
| teachers and it's over $300k a year.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/07/28/128819707/the-...
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Nobody is ever paid for the value that they create. Software
| engineers are estimated to be worth several million dollars
| per year in value.
|
| Also, the average kindergarten teacher probably generates a
| lot less than $300k per year.
| MarcScott wrote:
| Do software engineers just spontaneously come into
| existence? Or do they begin their education with
| kindergarten teachers, and progress though to the
| professors that teach them at college?
|
| If a software engineer is contributing millions of dollars
| in value each year, they are doing it on the backs of the
| giants that taught and coached them to get to where they
| are today.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| You totally missed the point though. The value you create
| has almost nothing to do with how much you're paid.
| That's just the most you could possibly be paid. You're
| paid the amount your employer thinks it would cost to
| replace you.
| 8note wrote:
| And you're arguing that that's a good thing?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I think markets are generally good, yes. If someone wants
| to do your job for cheaper and they're just as good they
| should get the job. Either way, I don't think it makes
| sense to talk about things like this as good or bad, they
| just are the way the are unless you're talking about a
| complete revolution.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| If you want to follow the value chain all the way down,
| why not attribute the value of that software engineer to
| the professors who taught those kindergarten teachers to
| be good teachers? Or the kindergarten teachers who taught
| those professors?
|
| The truth of where the value to society comes from is
| somewhere between the "shoulders of giants" myth (that
| everything is obvious in light of what came before, and
| nobody really creates any value) and the "lone genius"
| myth (that value is created solely by bright
| individuals).
|
| Some component of the value that we attribute to a person
| likely comes from their teachers, but it may be 0 (or
| negative - lots of teachers demoralize their students
| too). However, a significant portion comes from them.
| 8note wrote:
| The shoulders of giants and the lone genious myths are
| the same myth. The giants in question _are_ the lone
| genii
|
| Some ultrabight people did the hard work, and you're just
| using their stuff. There's no spectrum between 1 and 1
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| A lot of the people who espouse the "shoulders of giants"
| myth use it to discredit the idea of the "lone genius"
| (without thinking about who the giants are). They believe
| that the giants represent societal knowledge, not
| individuals who made great contributions.
| noasaservice wrote:
| metadat wrote:
| 100% false, special Ed is a spectrum from high functioning
| to low functioning. Some kids need extra attention and
| support to find their element and become successful.
|
| The diaper-changing-babysitting end of things is probably
| the most difficult job in the school. Think about it, it's
| one step away from working in a mental institution.
|
| The whole USA teaching system exploits nice salt-of-the-
| earth types, chews them up, then spits them out. The system
| makes it difficult to even stay in it as a teacher, the job
| is littered with madness compared to many other government
| and private sector jobs.
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| Many teachers work very long hours. Ones I've dated did a
| minimum of 60 hours. They would work their day shift and then
| go home and work more, and work on weekends, and then do
| tutoring for extra cash.
|
| Do you know how frustrating and exhausting teaching is? _Very._
| They also don 't get hazard pay for working in dangerous
| schools. One teacher I knew literally stopped teaching and
| became a kind of official bouncer (I don't know what it's
| called); when kids would get violent his job was to restrain
| them. The reason he switched was the kids' disrespect and his
| own desire to see them improve was crushing his soul.
|
| Many teachers use their own money to buy their students' class
| materials.
|
| If you're a teacher in New Jersey, you have to also live in New
| Jersey, a state with a ridiculously high tax rate.
|
| The years of service thing is a fair yardstick because it's
| comparing apples to apples. We are not paying them based on
| what a _different job_ would pay them, we pay them based on the
| job we want them to do.
|
| Benefits and pension are wildly overblown. Half of teachers
| don't even qualify for pension and benefits vary greatly.
| https://www.teacherpensions.org/blog/what-average-teacher-pe...
|
| It's not enough money.
| aetherson wrote:
| How old were the ones you dated?
|
| In general, the hours spent teaching diminish over time. At
| the beginning of a teacher's career, they spend a lot of time
| outside of class building lesson plans and creating tests and
| homework assignments. These legitimately take a lot of time.
| And they aren't perfect, so the teacher often sees that they
| need to make big changes after those lesson plans and tests
| and homework assignments hit the students.
|
| But after a few iterations, they have those tools, and at
| that point things settle down a lot. The material only needs
| to be updated infrequently. Most of that time that in the
| first few years was spent building those things is freed back
| up, and it's not replaced by anything.
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| The teacher in that example had 13 years of service and
| worked in one of the better paying public schools in New
| Jersey. She said she was paid pretty highly at around $60K
| (iirc). I do remember there was a kind of pecking order
| where more entry level teachers would make lesson plans,
| but the senior teachers still had to help the younger
| teachers learn how to do it, and sometimes do it themselves
| when nobody else could (teachers might trade between each
| other what extra work they needed).
| eigenhombre wrote:
| I know three teachers well (Chicago area; two quite senior,
| the other recently retired). Hours might have once
| diminished over time as you suggest, but their experience
| as told to me contradicts this trend: curricula have been
| changing so quickly in response to administrative decree
| that every few years everything gets thrown out and
| rebuilt. When you add to that decreasing resources for
| classrooms and increasing student-to-teacher ratios, it is
| not surprising to me that they work more hours than anybody
| else I know.
| taneq wrote:
| However much they're paying teachers, it's clearly not enough,
| because not enough people are willing to do the job for that
| amount of money.
|
| Assuming you had all the skills required to be an effective
| teacher, would YOU put up with everything they put up with for
| that salary? Because I sure as hell wouldn't.
|
| (As an aside, it's different depending on where you are but in
| Australia, comparing teacher salary can be difficult because
| "they get 12 weeks of holiday a year" and "they only work 6
| hours a day" but also they do 3+ hours of unpaid marking and
| lesson planning a day, they're expected to show up at the end
| of those 'holidays' prepared for whatever courses they've been
| assigned for the next term, etc. A close relative is a teacher
| and it's insane what they have to deal with.)
| throwaway9870 wrote:
| > However much they're paying teachers, it's clearly not
| enough, because not enough people are willing to do the job
| for that amount of money.
|
| The problem is that the scope of the job has changed and you
| can't pay people enough to do it. Here are some issues,
| straight from teachers I was talking to last week:
|
| * Admin who constantly wants teachers to do more with no
| additional resources so they can get credit for it and
| advance their career. They were very frustrated by this.
|
| * Teaching evaluation based on absolute standardized scores
| rather than relative. So you can have a bad class, lift them
| a lot, but still be viewed poorly because on absolute terms,
| they are still weak. You might say that evens out over time,
| but it doesn't because some teachers are better with
| difficult students, so they get more than their share of
| these issues.
|
| * Special needs students mainstreamed - kids with emotional
| issues that flip desks and yell out constantly, physical
| issues such as seizures if they bump their head, but parents
| will not let them wear protective gear because they will
| stand out, elementary school kids who are constantly in
| physical altercations with other kids.
|
| * Kids come to school not having eaten since the day before,
| cloths that haven't been washed in days, etc.
|
| * Unable to give accurate grades because parents fight back
| and so teachers are forced to pass kids even though they know
| they are just pushing a big problem on the next teacher.
|
| * Zero support from parents and in many cases, outright
| hostility.
|
| * The classroom is a minefield regarding what can be
| discussed and cannot be discussed. Everyone has an opinion on
| how it should be done, but almost none of them have ever
| actually taught.
| aantix wrote:
| The earlier a skill is learned, the greater the ROI.
|
| What's the ROI on properly learning to read vs learning that
| force=mass*acceleration?
| 8note wrote:
| What should the salaries for educators be though? I'd expect it
| to be in the top 2% of all salaries, not the top 49%
| justsocrateasin wrote:
| > Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area
| median, and when accounting for benefits and pension, quite
| impressive.
|
| I'd disagree. Some anecdotal evidence - I'm from a HCOL
| suburban area with a nationally ranked public school system.
| Teachers here are generally considered "well-paid" by teacher
| salary standards. Many of the teachers in my area literally
| cannot afford to live here, and have to commute 30-40 minutes
| in.
|
| My mom was a teacher there. She was making about $80k a year at
| the end of her career, with 2 masters degree and 20 years of
| experience teaching (so she was pretty much maxed out on her
| salary). Her pension is something like $20k a year (also maxed
| out due to her YOE). My dad was in between jobs for some time
| in there, and my parents, who are frugal people, struggled to
| make ends meet on just my moms salary, borrowing against their
| mortgage for the year while my dad was unemployed.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I went to Chicago public schools. Most of my teachers had
| graduate degrees from degree mill schools, some even had phds
| that they loved to talk about even though I doubt they spent
| more than a few days to get them. That ended up meaning they
| all made around 110-120, with full pension after I believe 30
| years. Certainly not an amazing salary, and they all worked
| much harder than I ever have, but nothing to laugh at I'd
| say.
| justin66 wrote:
| > when accounting for benefits and pension
|
| That many teacher's pensions require one to give up social
| security benefits makes the decision to teach more difficult, I
| would think, especially for those who are later in their
| working lives.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| > That many teacher's pensions require one to give up social
| security benefits
|
| Patently untrue unless maybe you work for the Dept of Defense
| or something. Teachers can collect SS like any other
| employee.
| jwlato wrote:
| This depends on the state. For example, teachers in CA and
| TX aren't eligible for SS.
| https://www.fool.com/retirement/2018/10/07/why-does-
| social-s...
| MarcusGunnz wrote:
| justin66 wrote:
| There are many ways to compensate teachers [1], but in
| general, you really shouldn't make categorical statements
| on matters you are _completely_ unfamiliar with. I help
| manage the finances of someone who is in the position of
| being unable to collect _any_ social security benefits from
| the relatively brief time she had a regular job which paid
| into social security prior to becoming a teacher, and is
| also unable to collect her spouse 's Social Security
| survivor benefits (she literally receives zero dollars from
| Social Security, though if she had never worked a day in
| her life, she's be able to collect her spouse's survivor's
| benefits). You've made quite a few comments in this thread:
| how many of them are as badly informed as this?
|
| "Windfall Elimination Prevention" and "Government Pension
| Offset" are things you can google if you're interested in
| learning a bit about this stuff.
|
| [1] States whose teachers participate in their own pension
| plans instead of Social Security include California and
| Texas, so it's not like these are rare concerns
|
| https://www.socialsecurityintelligence.com/teachers-
| retireme...
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I'm not above learning something. Texas seems to be
| district-dependent, and CA is statewide: https://www.trs.
| texas.gov/Pages/active_member_social_securit...
| https://www.calstrs.com/social-security
|
| This is not the case for NY, and not in WI and PA as I
| have heard from teachers there.
|
| In cases where they don't receive it though, they're not
| paying into it either. I can't comment as to whether that
| is a good or bad thing, because I don't know those cases.
| Maybe the union membership by in large doesn't want to?
|
| For the benefit of others, I post this authoritative link
| from the USDOE: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/mapED/storym
| aps/TeacherSocialSe...
| justin66 wrote:
| > In cases where they don't receive it though, they're
| not paying into it either.
|
| If the "it" you're referring to is social security, this
| is, to use your phrase from above, "patently untrue." It
| would be comforting if that were the case, but there are
| cases where a person who has paid into social security
| will not receive anything from it, and will not receive
| their spouse's Social Security survivor's benefits, under
| WEP and GPO rules. As I explained above, I know one of
| these people and help her manage her money.
|
| To the original point in my grandparent post: just having
| to do the math on this stuff could be deterrent to
| someone trying to make a decision about whether teaching
| is a smart career move.
|
| > Maybe the union membership by in large doesn't want to?
|
| WEP and GPO are a matter of federal law, although "maybe
| the unions want this thing that is obviously hostile to
| their members" is certainly... a thought a person could
| have. As it happens the American Federation of Teachers
| is lobbying to eliminate WEP and GPO, and I assume there
| are other unions who are acting similarly:
|
| https://www.aft.org/resolution/repeal-windfall-
| elimination-p...
|
| https://sports.yahoo.com/congressional-bill-may-soon-
| end-194...
|
| (some potential disinformation in the second link, but
| the point is, this is a pretty active debate)
|
| edit: It occurs to me that maybe you meant "maybe they do
| not want to pay into Social Security," which is probably
| true. To keep this in perspective, these teacher pensions
| which were considered an alternative/supplement to Social
| Security are a lot older than the WEP and GPO, which came
| along to kick those with these pensions in the nuts in
| the late seventies and early eighties. The teachers and
| their unions were already committed to the path they were
| on when the federal government changed the rules on them.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Not disagreeing with what you just wrote above,but do you
| have a source for
|
| > If the "it" you're referring to is social security,
| this is, to use your phrase from above, "patently
| untrue."
|
| ? Because everything I am reading suggests those states
| whose teachers whose work years only go to pension and
| not SS eligibility are not having their teachers pay into
| SS.
| dwater wrote:
| Comparing teacher pay to the median wage isn't an apples to
| apples comparison because the average teacher has between a
| bachelor's degree and a master's, a state certification with
| regular training and renewal requirements, and a good amount of
| professional experience. I was a high school teacher and when I
| left my salary went up by 50% on day one, passed 100% increase
| within 2 years, and tripled within 5 years. The median wage
| earner in a large city is probably paid hourly for service
| work.
|
| I do agree that the single pay scale across all public school
| teachers is an issue. You will never get someone to teach high
| school math, science, or tech if salary is a significant
| consideration.
| treis wrote:
| It's pretty close to the median worker having a bachelor's
| degree so that doesn't really skew the comparison
|
| Ultimately teaching salaries are fine. The median teacher
| makes about the median salary. But it comes with great job
| security, benefits, and significantly more time off than the
| median job. The benefits are high enough to attract enough
| teachers.
|
| The problem are parents and administration. And more recently
| kids missed a couple years of school due to Covid and went
| feral. It's gotten to be a significantly worse job. Solution
| is to cut the bullshit. Not pay more to incentivize people to
| put up with the bullshit.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Ultimately teaching salaries are fine. The median teacher
| makes about the median salary. But it comes with great job
| security, benefits, and significantly more time off than
| the median job.
|
| I know 3 public school teachers, in CA/NYC/NJ. Their 6 to 8
| weeks off in the summer (if that, due to ongoing training),
| is nowhere near enough to offset the low pay per hour and
| most importantly, having to deal with garbage parents and
| their misbehaving kids.
|
| They also work many extra hours at home during the school
| year doing grading or prepping exercises or whatever. If we
| have a get together, the teachers will pretty much
| guaranteed to be working all or some portion of the
| evening.
|
| > The benefits are high enough to attract enough teachers
|
| Only if you think 30+ kids per class is acceptable. I would
| want no more than 20 kids per class.
| treis wrote:
| Average teacher salary in California is $84,000. Official
| working days total out to about 12 weeks of vacation.
| Realistically less than that but still much more than
| your typical worker.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why are they being compared to typical workers?
|
| The question of if teachers are sufficiently paid is
| answered by asking if current classroom sizes are
| sufficiently small and staffed by sufficient quality
| teachers. Whatever price that makes that happen is the
| appropriate price, regardless of what people in other
| jobs are earning.
| treis wrote:
| >Why are they being compared to typical workers?
|
| Who do you want to compare them to?
|
| >The question of if teachers are sufficiently paid is
| answered by asking if current classroom sizes are
| sufficiently small and staffed by sufficient quality
| teachers. Whatever price that makes that happen is the
| appropriate price, regardless of what people in other
| jobs are earning
|
| Like I said before the solution is to cut the bullshit.
| Not pay more for people to tolerate it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Who do you want to compare them to?
|
| For the purposes of determining appropriate prices, why
| is it necessary to compare their price to anyone? Supply
| and demand determine appropriate pricing.
| orzig wrote:
| This is the best reply so far. In the US, things (good and bad)
| vary dramatically between school districts, but everyone talks
| about "teachers" as this monolithic group.
|
| In the Boston area it's absolutely possible to exceed $100,000
| salary. The pay scales are public, look it up yourself. I'm
| willing to believe many teachers are underpaid, and that those
| in Boston have legitimate gripes too, but we need to be clear
| about which context we're discussing.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I find the reply to be lacking in justification for why the
| price of labor for teaching is related to the median price
| for all labor.
| xbar wrote:
| Are you a teacher in Boston? How many years teaching and how
| much education above a bachelor's degree does it take you to
| get to $100,000?
|
| My experience is that the grids have $100,000 sitting out
| there like a Cadillac, but 99% of teachers get steak knives.
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| My anecdata- friend last year just crossed $100K in about
| her 15th year teaching in Boston suburbs. She didn't have
| to do any of the "add-ons" like sports team coaching,
| curriculum work, tutoring, etc. to get to that number.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| It's still not worth the money. Ive spent time in the classroom
| in a large urban district and the job was twice as hard as my
| current software engineering job (for me) for literally half
| the pay
| vostok wrote:
| > Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area
| median
|
| Is the median the correct benchmark? The median household
| income in NYC was $67k in 2021 [0]. Why would someone choose to
| be a teacher making around the median [1] when you could be a
| software engineer and make 3x as much?
|
| It's not just a matter of trinkets and baubles. That difference
| allows you to comfortably afford a nice family sized apartment
| [2] in a safe area with a convenient commute.
|
| [0]
| https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newyorkcitynewy...
|
| [1] https://teachnyc.net/about-our-schools/salary-and-benefits
|
| [2] https://streeteasy.com/building/15-gates-avenue-brooklyn/h
| pnf wrote:
| That assumes someone qualified to be a teacher is also
| qualified to be a software engineer. Have you met a lot of
| urban public school teachers?
| jensensbutton wrote:
| Yes. And most wouldn't make a statement this dumb.
| [deleted]
| vostok wrote:
| This post doesn't assume that, but I have met urban public
| school teachers who could have been software engineers
| since you asked.
|
| My post does assume that the career would attract more
| highly qualified candidates if the pay was higher.
| prepend wrote:
| I've met some too, but I'd say that most are incapable.
| Or they are the same proportion of the population that is
| capable. I don't think teachers are any more or less
| likely than a typical person.
|
| I'd guess I've met and spend significant time with 100
| teachers. And a handful were capable of being a
| professional programmer.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They spend all day herding children, so they are at least
| qualified to be Project Managers.
| prepend wrote:
| You jest, but this is my suggestion to anyone who wants a
| career change. You can study and get a PMP or Scrum
| certificate and get an entry level job fairly easily.
| And, if successful, can be making 100k within a few
| years.
|
| Of course you have to be a PM, so there's that. I'd
| rather literally herd cats or manage a kindergarten
| class.
| gumby wrote:
| What has "urban" to do with it?
| prepend wrote:
| There are more urban teachers than rural. And pay is more
| for urban than rural.
| pharmakom wrote:
| True but rarely more than the difference in cost of
| living.
| bendbro wrote:
| What has "what has 'urban'" to do with it?
| bee_rider wrote:
| What?
| bendbro wrote:
| Huh?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Well this interaction was confusing enough that I had to
| check your profile. I suppose that's a hobby.
| asdjfhjlaksdhf wrote:
| Who's profile?
| simon_o wrote:
| christophilus wrote:
| I've never heard of "urban" being a code word for
| "black". Is that a thing? I assume they mean "urban" as
| in "city" where you're likely to have many other forms of
| opportunity vs "podunk" where you're kinda stuck in one
| career because there's nothing else around.
| macintux wrote:
| It's very much a thing.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/06/10/here
| s-h...
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I think a more diverse student body, likely one with a
| wide range of parental income and possibly including some
| kids who are members or gangs or is just more likely to
| have a few actually violent (,mentally ill, narcissistic,
| borderline personality disorder, etc.) kids, with a
| higher student to teacher ratio, will be much more
| challenging than a small high-school with 400 kids that
| more or less fall into "middle class and above with a
| spattering of low income."
|
| EDIT: found an interesting "day in the life" article by a
| self-labeled urban teacher.
|
| https://theeducatorsroom.com/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-
| teacher-...
| aetherson wrote:
| People might want to be teachers rather than software
| engineers because teachers get enormous amounts of time off,
| have extremely high levels of job security, plus all the
| usual reasons that not everyone is in the very highest paying
| profession.
|
| Why aren't you a hedge fund manager?
| danaris wrote:
| > teachers get enormous amounts of time off
|
| Anyone who's actually been or known a teacher knows this is
| false.
|
| During the school year, in the time they're not actively
| teaching, teachers are
|
| - Coaching sports
|
| - Overseeing other student extracurricular activities
|
| - Making/updating lesson plans
|
| - Presiding over detention
|
| - Tutoring students who need more 1:1 time
|
| - Serving on school committees (especially in larger
| districts)
|
| During the summer, teachers generally spend a large
| percentage of their time laying out the curriculum for the
| coming year. This is especially true for those in _smaller_
| districts, where one teacher has to teach three or four
| different levels of the same subject (or even multiple
| completely different subjects!).
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I mean, I guess it's all relative. I'm a software
| engineer at a startup. On average I work about 50-55
| hours a week. I get 3 weeks of vacation a year.
|
| I certainly don't deny that teachers spend a lot of time
| working on their "time off". But that said, I've known
| more than a few teachers personally, and yes, they still
| _do_ get enormous amounts of time off. Heck, a bunch of
| them will even admit _it is the biggest perk of teaching_
| (because otherwise there aren 't many).
|
| Teachers have _plenty_ of real, valid complaints about
| the environment of teaching, and more importantly, it 's
| clear with the current teacher shortage that something is
| really broken. Still, I don't think it wins them any
| supporters when teachers try to deny that most of them
| have vastly more time off than other professionals.
| MarcScott wrote:
| When I was teaching I worked a 7am to 6pm job, 5 days a
| week. That was actually in the school building, so that's
| 55 hours right there. The two hours in the morning and
| two hours in the afternoon, when I wasn't looking after
| 35 teenagers in a small, hot and unventilated classroom,
| were spent marking, planning lessons and writing reports.
| Have you ever had a job where you literally have to plan
| how much you drink, so that you don't have a full bladder
| in the middle of a double Science lesson?
|
| Most weekends I'd dedicate around 5 or 6 hours to work,
| so that puts me up to about 61 hours a week. Of course we
| got those amazing holidays. Holidays when you were still
| expected to answer emails, mark work, write reports, plan
| assessments and lessons. One year, I remember working
| from September through to August, and my total time off
| was Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In August the exam
| results come through, so I was expected to be in school
| to coach children on their options, and then write a 15
| page report on the reasons my department had performed or
| under-performed.
|
| I appreciate that this has turned into a rant, but don't
| ever think that your job is harder than a teacher, if you
| are a software engineer. It's not. I can testify to that.
| Teaching involves understanding your subject,
| understanding pedagogy, being a parent, councilor and
| sometimes prison warden to children who are often going
| through the most difficult times of their lives. You have
| to do all of that, while basically performing on stage
| for 5 hours a day, and your lunch break is spent ramming
| food down your throat so you can get out to the
| playground on time to supervise the kids out there.
|
| An ex-colleague of mine has asked me to go back into
| teaching in his school. My response was "okay" can you
| pay me 150K, because I wouldn't do it for anything less.
| thisarticle wrote:
| I'm curious about what you're doing now. I hope it's
| healthier than what you described as your experience as a
| teacher.
| MarcScott wrote:
| Still in education, but now I work for the Raspberry Pi
| Foundation in the charitable sector.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I feel that this scales largely based on subject mater,
| experience, and past history teaching a particular
| course. I know a number of teachers and there are a lot
| of differences. Expectations vary by district, school,
| and parents. There have been many top down changes over
| time, mostly for the worse increasing workload.
|
| When I was in HS, it was not uncommon to have lecture
| most days and a graded assignment once a week or even
| less. This is obviously a lot less work for teachers. In
| the best cases it can be a 7--4 job with summers
| completely off.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| > Making/updating lesson plans
|
| Why? Are they really better than khan academy at doing a
| lesson plan? Isn't this like a software engineer
| complaining they have to write their own database driver
| in their spare time after work?
| nerdponx wrote:
| > Are they really better than khan academy at doing a
| lesson plan?
|
| Yes
|
| > like a software engineer complaining they have to write
| their own database driver in their spare time after work?
|
| No
| bobthepanda wrote:
| In general, it is a good idea to personalize lesson plans
| based on how well people did or didn't react to the last
| one, and khan academy certainly doesn't do anything like
| that, nor does it work for everyone.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| The entire point of khan academy is that it is
| individually tailored to the student and can decide what
| lessons need additional practice vs those that can be
| skipped. It sounds like you aren't at all awqre of how
| khan academy works.
|
| Are you claiming teachers can personalize a lesson plan
| for each individual student in a class? To a granularity
| finer than what Khan Academy can do?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Unless you are suggesting a teacher can clone themselves
| to however big their class size there is, the
| individualization is not a realistic prospect given that
| you have to teach a few dozen kids in a 30-45 minute
| period. And given that current funding levels are having
| a hard time keeping teacher retention even at these
| levels, significantly increasing teacher numbers to make
| real individualization possible is not within the realm
| of reality.
|
| Also, individual teaching methods don't work well in
| certain subjects; as an example, you need a few people to
| put on a theatrical production, perform ensemble music,
| or have Socratic discussions.
| 8note wrote:
| Can you do that over summer without frequent contact with
| the students?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Lesson plans vary by the day, so I'm not sure how exactly
| you would do that without the data from the previous day.
| Jensson wrote:
| Teachers aren't paid to personalize lessons though, if
| you work overtime to do that then you can only blame
| yourself. Teachers are paid to hold standardized lessons
| and answer questions help students with problems.
|
| You could argue it would be better if teachers were paid
| to personalize lectures, but they aren't. Maybe some
| document somewhere says they should, but in practice
| nothing will happen to you if you just use standardized
| lectures so that is what most will do and that is what
| the expectations of the job is built around.
| [deleted]
| JackFr wrote:
| > Why would someone choose to be a teacher making around the
| median when you could be a software engineer and make 3x as
| much?
|
| Is that a serious question?
|
| Why indeed? Maybe because a union job with a state pension
| (yes, defined benefit pension) that starts at 62K and has an
| advancing pay scale based only on education level and
| seniority (yes - job performance unrelated to pay) and _very_
| high job security ain't bad place to be if you can get it.
|
| (And also I suspect that a lot of the people getting those
| teaching jobs simply would not be able to get 200K software
| development jobs.)
| prepend wrote:
| > Why would someone choose to be a teacher making around the
| median [1] when you could be a software engineer and make 3x
| as much?
|
| Isn't the answer to this quite obvious? It's harder to be a
| software engineer. And there's more risk to the profession.
|
| Programming is interesting as you can be self-taught and be
| great. And it doesn't require any formal training. I started
| as a college dropout (from a different major nothing to do
| with programming) and there's lots of boot camps.
|
| Anyone with the inclination can do what you suggest. But I
| think programming is hard so many are incapable.
| erdos4d wrote:
| Most teachers couldn't be software engineers, they just
| aren't smart enough.
| viraptor wrote:
| > most qualified high school physics teachers have way
| differently valued skillsets in the labor force by alternate
| employers than most kindergarten teachers.
|
| Do they? I read that as implying that physics teachers could
| potentially get some stem jobs. But is that actually true? If
| you can do math, you can teach yourself enough physics to teach
| in high school. But that gets you nowhere near the knowledge
| necessary for applying non-trivial physics at work.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Whether you could or couldn't self study to be a competent
| physics teacher is besides the point if you need a physics or
| very closely related STEM degree plus test of content
| competency as a condition of getting the job by the
| regulations if most US states. That limits the pool of
| applicants to people who can command better salaries
| elsewhere over their whole career arc for arguably a lot less
| stress. Thus an exceptional shortage within that specialty is
| more prone to happen. Lowering the standards of qualification
| is an option, but the author doesn't seem thrilled with that
| idea. So we are pretty much left with discussing a pay
| differential within the profession, which is a third rail
| topic among most teacher unions.
| sidlls wrote:
| "If you can do math, you can teach yourself enough physics to
| teach in high school."
|
| No, you can't. Even at the high school level there is jargon,
| historical methodology, and domain-specific nuance that isn't
| accessible to the self-taught. That's true for almost any
| subject one might think of, in fact.
| viraptor wrote:
| To be clear, I didn't write "be an exceptional physics
| teacher with knowledge of history, nuance, etc." - I agree
| that's not a trivial thing and a very desirable one. But if
| you need "just a physics teacher" for a given spot, I stand
| by my opinion.
| sidlls wrote:
| I mean, if you're talking about the happy path where
| every student understands the material on the first pass
| or can work out issues on their own then maybe. But
| that's not how teaching or learning works for anyone,
| including super geniuses.
| srdone wrote:
| What prevents anyone from learning all they need about any
| subject on their own? If someone is capable of reading, it
| seems to me they could teach themselves any subject using
| books. Of course, having a good teacher to guide them in
| which sources to read, etc, would greatly speed up the
| process of learning. However, I don't see any reason
| someone cannot learn any subject on their own.
| sidlls wrote:
| Books provide the basics required to understand the
| field. They don't help develop intuition, methodology,
| collaboration, and other skills necessary to truly
| understand the field _or_ teach it to others.
| falcolas wrote:
| The physics knowledge isn't the important part of being a
| physics teacher. The "teacher" part is. Teaching is its own
| discipline for a reason.
|
| Or, the ability to explain physics to one person is not the
| ability to successfully teach physics to 30 teenagers in a
| high school setting.
| diognesofsinope wrote:
| > In South Dakota and a number of states in the south and rural
| districts, yes it is another story, and it is bad.
|
| I suspect this is because teaching is arguably the most stable
| job in rural areas.
| sanderjd wrote:
| The thing to compare to is the jobs the teachers could do if
| they weren't teachers. All of them have college degrees, many
| have masters degrees. The comparison point should be generic
| white collar office jobs, which are pretty much all easier (and
| _especially_ , less annoying), higher paying, and more
| respected.
| prepend wrote:
| Generic office jobs don't pay that much. At least the kind
| that require education degrees. And they lack security.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| sanderjd wrote:
| Sure they do. The "that much" here is a low bar.
| docandrew wrote:
| A few random thoughts:
|
| 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be
| grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the
| budget. Where does that money go?
|
| 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve
| than others.
|
| 3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are unappreciated,
| yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why do people come
| up to them and say they hated school rather than "thank you"?
|
| 4. Many school problems are caused by disruptive children.
|
| Disruptive children are caused by parents who frankly just don't
| give a shit. Throwing more money into schools won't ever fix this
| problem.
|
| 5. Schools are just too darn big. Thousands of kids in a big
| prison-shaped building and we wonder why everyone is alienated,
| miserable and dehumanized?
| username223 wrote:
| > parents who frankly just don't give a shit
|
| They exist. What are you going to do with their children?
| Teachers are the people who have to answer that question.
| weatherlite wrote:
| > 3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are
| unappreciated, yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why
| do people come up to them and say they hated school rather than
| "thank you"?
|
| Well many students hated school, it is what it is. If you get
| beat up on a daily basis or are bored out of your mind (because
| let's face it, most of the material IS boring) I don't see why
| you should feel obligated to thank your teachers. It's not
| their fault but they also don't really deserve a thank you. Yes
| most teacher do what they can but it doesn't change the fact so
| many students are generally unhappy in school.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I agree that there are reasons someone would hate school, but
| it doesn't make sense for it to be a cultural norm to say
| that to teachers. No one ever says "wow you murder people for
| Uncle Sam for money?" to someone who was in the military,
| they say "thank you for your service". I think that's what
| the author was getting at. It's not just low pay; teaching is
| thankless, even looked down upon.
| Spivak wrote:
| Bet the victims of the US military aren't saying thank you
| for your service. It doesn't even matter if the person
| isn't directly responsible, they still dedicated their time
| and energy to the system. That's the difference. It's
| thankless because it's awful. It's the exception rather
| than the rule to have a teacher that made a real
| difference, and the most common difference teachers make is
| protecting kids from harm they wouldn't be experiencing if
| not for school.
|
| Exceptional teachers help kids survive, not thrive.
| [deleted]
| weatherlite wrote:
| It's a chicken and egg kinda problem. People who on average
| don't have lots of motivation or other options go to
| teaching. They then get burned out by the chaotic classes,
| low pay and thanklass routine. In turn they on average do a
| mediocre job (or less) of educating and teaching, which
| causes the students to pay even less attention and show
| less respect...which causes the teachers to get more burned
| out...anyway I think you see where I'm getting at.
| vkou wrote:
| > People who on average don't have lots of motivation or
| other options go to teaching.
|
| I'm not sure where you're from, but every single teacher
| I have known, both as a student, and as an adult, has
| been incredibly motivated to teach.
| borski wrote:
| I agree with the rest of your post, but:
|
| > Disruptive children are caused by parents who frankly just
| don't give a shit.
|
| This isn't necessarily true; sometimes the parents simply don't
| have the proper info or education themselves. Example: parent
| of a kid with ADHD who has no understanding of what ADHD is or
| how it presents, and thus that their kid even has it.
| millzlane wrote:
| This goes back to the parents who aren't taking their child
| to doctors for health checkups for any myriad of reasons.
| Early and often checkups should catch these issues. In your
| example I wouldn't say parents don't give a shit. But as
| someone who had ADHD but didn't cut up in school or wasn't a
| class clown, I had discipline at home. Sure I would talk
| during class and my mind would wander. But I wasn't being so
| disruptive class couldn't be taught.
|
| Almost always in the examples of why teachers don't want to
| teach anymore. The focus is always on pay, testing, and
| administration. But who wants to come to work and teach
| children that are so disrespectful and so disruptive that
| class can't be taught. My salary wouldn't be the deciding
| factor here.
| troelsSteegin wrote:
| As a parent, you can be well very well informed on the issue,
| and still not be able to solve it in your kid. I'd venture
| that this kind of futility is more prevalent than ignorance.
| blooalien wrote:
| On the flip side of that coin, you sometimes have the parents
| who _do_ know all about their child 's ADHD and how to (help
| their child) manage it effectively, and then you get these
| meddling teachers or principals who genuinely believe _they_
| know _better_ than _everyone else_ about how "problem
| children" should be dealt with (all while utterly _ignoring_
| the _actual_ problem children, like bullies for example).
| They hear that a child has "a diagnosis" and it's like
| painting a target on that child for some screwed up
| teachers/principals, no matter how _actually_ well behaved
| that child is in practice. Sometimes those vile people even
| go _beyond_ "too far" and _ruin lives_ with their meddling.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| 1. Parasitic administration salaries
|
| 2. Depending on the state you may not even need one
|
| 3. It's the parents, not the kids that make them feel this way.
| Kids typically love their teachers
|
| 4. 100%
|
| 5. Building a new school is 10-100s of millions typically. Why
| it costs so much is worthy of debate, but plunking down new
| schools these days is far more costly than in the past.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Large schools (which is the problem) cost 10s(?) of millions
| of dollars. (Do some schools really cost 100s of millions of
| dollars?)
|
| You lose some efficiency of scale with smaller schools, but
| they'll be cheaper individually.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| LOL at this idea of "kids typically love teachers".
|
| Hell no. What made you think that? Kids like teachers that
| are likeable and hate those that are hateful.
| randomdata wrote:
| 1. Automation. Teaching in its rawest form has been automated
| away, leaving it to be a valueless human endeavour.
| "Teaching" in the context of children survives because it has
| become a childcare service. But babysitting is not able to
| charge much as its cost must remain under the income
| potential of parents, else parents will take the
| responsibility themselves.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 1) Has it really? I'm sure the potential exists for video
| lectures or whatever, but I think the teachers still
| ostensibly at least teach.
|
| 2) How little do you pay babysitters? At, say, $5 per kid
| per hour, a teacher of 20 would be doing pretty well, and
| that's on the low side of class sizes these days I think.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Has it really? I 'm sure the potential exists for
| video lectures or whatever, but I think the teachers
| still ostensibly at least teach._
|
| Yes. Gone are the days that you would hire a teacher to
| teach you something. These days you turn to automated
| teaching services. The fact that the word teacher is now
| synonymous with the K-12 school teacher further
| emphasizes that the career in general has effectively
| disappeared. As before, "teaching" has survived as a
| career where childcare is the actual service offered.
|
| _> How little do you pay babysitters? _
|
| In my case it is $3 per hour for a daycare provider that
| cares for no more than five children at a time. If the
| babysitter cared for more children I would expect to pay
| less as I would get much less value for my dollar. The
| quality of care and attention declines as the number of
| children increases.
|
| Large class sizes are accepted because we are going for
| bang for our buck over quality of care. If teachers were
| charging on the same order per child as other daycare
| providers providing higher quality care, indeed it would
| be good money, but there would be a shift to putting
| children into those better care facilities and so it
| wouldn't last. Why pay the same amount for lesser care?
| batshibstein wrote:
| $1 per student in a 25-student classroom for 30 hrs/week
| for 36 weeks is like 27k, the base salary isn't much
| higher than that. So that's assuming a worthless teacher
| with 0 added value. The added value is probably at least
| 3x even for a subpar teacher up to 10-20x for a top
| performer and the actual time variables are all probably
| higher than listed above.
|
| I would imagine the 10-20x value-adders aren't
| incentivized and are probably actively de-incentivized in
| the faculty senate/union dynamic unless they literally
| love the job that much which is debunked in the OP post.
| thisarticle wrote:
| Do you have any evidence that teachers are all using
| "automated teaching services"? I've never heard of such a
| thing.
| randomdata wrote:
| Teaching as a career basically doesn't exist anymore
| outside of schools for children. It is not that teachers
| are using automated tools, but students are using
| automated teachers instead of hiring human teachers. When
| was the last time you hired a human teacher instead of
| consulting an automated teacher when you wanted/needed to
| learn something new?
|
| Like I said before, we don't even recognize the existence
| of general teachers anymore, with the word under typical
| use now only referring to those who work at schools for
| children.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I've never heard of an automated teacher. I've heard of
| tutors and I've heard of books.
| randomdata wrote:
| Books provide a primitive form of automated teaching,
| although we've expanded on the concept considerably since
| the advent of the book.
|
| You have not heard of automated teaching as a thing
| because we invent names for automation. The automated
| kitchen servant isn't called an automated kitchen
| servant, it's called a dishwasher (among others).
|
| Likewise, automated teachers are not called automated
| teachers. They are given names, depending on the teaching
| method at play. Automated teacher is used here as a
| generalization as the specific automation is immaterial.
| downboots wrote:
| > Teaching in its rawest form has been automated away
|
| Wishful thinking. If kids magically taught themselves there
| would be no schools. Some do. Most don't.
| randomdata wrote:
| Of what relevance are kids? We're talking about adults.
| When was the last time you hired a teacher instead of
| turning to YouTube (or whatever)? That's where teaching
| is effectively dead, lost to automation.
|
| Children require care. Again, "teaching" survives when
| children are present because childcare is the functional
| service offered. There is no impetus to move to
| automation here as childcare is not easily automated,
| necessitating a warm body anyway. However, the value of a
| teacher is constrained by the value of childcare as there
| is no longer market value in teaching alone.
|
| Like I said in the other comment, teaching outside of
| schools for children isn't even recognized in the word
| teacher anymore because the career, as a general one,
| effectively no longer exists. You've proven my point.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Anything to do with the general public costs a lot because of
| legal liability, especially when dealing with kids.
|
| Any loss that occurs, no matter how low probability it is,
| get litigated and once litigated gets incorporated into
| expected losses by insurance companies and mitigations for it
| get stipulated into the insurance coverage.
|
| Fire, handicap accessibilities, school shootings, tornado,
| earthquake, trip and falls, sports equipment injury, etc.
|
| If an entity does not cover its ass head to toe on "known"
| risks, and lets a loss happen due to negligence, then it is
| on them. The response to this is lots of protocols and code
| requirements, and lots of additional bureaucracy to
| continuously check if those protocols and code requirements
| are being followed.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| I'm definitely stealing "parasitic administration salaries",
| because it describes a wide array of administrative bloat.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| 6. Teachers are often completely out of touch with technology.
|
| Math teachers could be using Jupyter notebooks and decent
| plots. Instead they are using their poor drawing skills.
|
| Everyone should do what 3b1b is doing.
|
| They could be using cool physics simulations, but instead
| everything are lame poorly drawn arrows.
|
| Technology that exists for education often has developer art
| level UX and bad usability.
|
| 7. Art used in school material is cringy as fuck. What artists
| think kids like and what kids actually like has nothing to do
| with each other.
|
| 8. There could be a github or reddit of class material that
| teachers could use, saving teachers' time and improving the
| learning experience.
|
| 9. People in the department of education are fucking bozos and
| should all be fired. Their job is to neglect education so that
| politicians can keep using better education as vote bait.
| amelius wrote:
| The main problem with teachers is that the price for them is
| not controlled by quality. A teacher who performs better than
| other teachers (e.g. a 10x teacher) will not be worth more in
| the current system. And with the quality/price relation
| missing, there is nothing a teacher can do about the price, and
| consequently their wages will be as low as possible.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Quality is hard to prove. Everyone thinks they're "quality."
|
| The fact is most people are average. We freak ourselves out
| about these very few super teachers or super devs but most
| are not these people and they still need jobs and perform
| valid functions.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Even at the high level, teacher salaries aren't very high
| compared to industry.
|
| Couple that with high licensing requirements and bad working
| conditions, neither of which are secret, and of course the
| best and brightest do not consider it a real option.
| balderdash wrote:
| Could you support #1, it's my understanding that teachers are
| actually quite well compensated when you adjust for pension/LT
| benefits and three months of vacation. Points 2-5 seem spot on.
| chadash wrote:
| > Disruptive children are caused by parents who frankly just
| don't give a shit. Throwing more money into schools won't ever
| fix this problem.
|
| I was a disruptive child and my parents were the opposite of
| people who didn't give a shit. Both of them highly valued
| education and spent plenty of time with me. they just had to
| contend with a child who wasn't well behaved at school and it
| was genetics more than anything they did. They spent thousands
| of dollars on therapists and medicines and it didn't help that
| much. Luckily for me, puberty seemed to turn things around and
| I ended up doing well in high school and very well in college
| (at a good school). Now I've got two little trouble makers of
| my own and it's pretty obvious to me where they got those genes
| from.
|
| I agree that dealing with problematic kids is a pain in the ass
| for teachers and I do try to thank them when I see them, and I
| even agree that parenting is often the issue, but a lot of it
| is genetics and luck.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Dude, are you me? I'm the same way. Highly educated parents,
| very supportive. I was a major disruptive shithead all
| through school - in retrospect probably because I was bored.
| I was not any better as a teenager, but calmed down post
| university graduation.
|
| Now I have a highly disruptive 2-year old that Preschool
| calls "behavioural issues" and wants psychologists involved.
| And I'm like "yes, we're willing to have those
| conversations", but secretly I think "He'll have the same
| journey as me - I will need to make sure he's sufficiently
| physically and intellectually stimulated for the next 20
| years, and everything will turn out fine." Of course it's not
| fair to place that burden on others - his peers, or educators
| - and I will do as much as I can in extracurricular time,
| BUT, there's only so much my partner and I can do.
| veltas wrote:
| Yup this was me in school as well, hope to have kids and not
| looking forward to this aspect!
| phonescreen_man wrote:
| I thought it was well known that disruptive kids are often
| unrecognised creative/smart kids who are challenging the
| authority/leadership of the teacher. There has been some
| research on this in the UK, look into some of the work by
| David Price around creative test answers.
| [deleted]
| D13Fd wrote:
| That's not what he said.
| docandrew wrote:
| That's valid, there are different kinds of disruptive kids.
|
| A good friend of mine at high school was very bright, kind of
| a troublemaker, diagnosed with ADHD, took prescription
| Ritalin, was a bit of a pain in the ass with his teachers,
| but had parents who cared and he ended up graduating and
| doing fine.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I never formed good habits and I really wish my parent
| prioritized that (Ritalin) over growing big and tall for a
| minuscule chance of making it in pro sports.
| irrational wrote:
| > a minuscule chance of making it in pro sports.
|
| I've asked this question of some acquaintances that
| prioritize sports above all else. Their kids play
| different sports all year around and are on all these
| traveling teams. I've asked them if they seriously think
| their kids will be good enough to get a college
| scholarship or play pro sports (I've seen them, they
| won't be). They just shrug. I have to presume this is how
| they were raised and so they are doing it to their own
| kids.
| bena wrote:
| "The sieve" is insane. And it begins early. While there
| are plenty of people who get to play professional sports
| who weren't in peewee, who didn't do travel ball, etc. It
| does not hurt.
|
| Because in order to even get a shot to play
| professionally, you have to play well in college,
| preferably at a notable school. In order to get a shot to
| play well in a notable college, you have to play well in
| high school. That means you have to make varsity, play on
| the team, be a starter. And that usually means you have
| to be ready to play when you get to high school. And the
| best way to do that is to play peewee, travel ball, etc.
|
| You'll find out if the kid is coachable, if he can be
| made coachable, if he's got aptitude, etc.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > over growing big and tall
|
| How does a parent prioritize their kid growing tall?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Hold them back a year or two so they are bigger than
| everyone else in class and are a grown man/woman by the
| time they are high school sophomores.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| I volunteer with kids, and I see parents who prioritize
| sports where they have to pay a lot of money for fees
| over more scholastic and much cheaper programs for the
| smaller chance of getting a sports scholarship/career
| than more plentiful academic scholarships.
|
| I don't know if they think their children just aren't
| capable intellectually or what.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There are some parents with delusions about their kids
| being pro athletes, but many are just providing their kid
| the opportunity to do something he likes, and can afford
| to do it.
|
| There is a whole industry around youth sports that is
| designed to extract money from parents. That doesn't mean
| that the kids don't enjoy it though.
| falcolas wrote:
| At least in my case, sports was my parent's opportunity
| to socialize. It was never really about my interests or
| well being, they didn't want to lose their contextual
| friends and contacts. It was so bad I was disallowed from
| doing speech and debate in high school.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Agreed on the point that bad parenting makes teaching
| difficult.
| dorchadas wrote:
| As a former teacher from the States (and maybe will go back to
| it one day, either internationally, or in another country
| permanently, depending on how life works out), I'd live to give
| my answers to some of this.
|
| Note, I'm biased. My undergraduate degree was _not_ in teaching
| but in physics. I did a masters programme in teaching to
| transition to becoming a teacher. I enjoyed teaching, but just
| ended up finding it boring teaching the same thing six times a
| day, so when an opportunity to do a new masters came along, I
| took it. I didn 't leave because I got burnt out or hated it, I
| just wanted something a bit more challenging.
|
| 2) They are. The masters I did for teaching was a joke. I've
| seen high schoolers with better writing abilities than half my
| professors. And these are people with 'educational doctorates'.
| Also, this might be different at better universities, but at
| least in my state several are propped up by their online
| teaching masters (the state requires a masters) and they exist
| just to pump them out. If you don't get a 4.0 something is
| wrong. I've heard similar issues with the undergraduate
| programmes in the state.
|
| 3. Kids don't want to be at school. They want to be out doing
| kid things, which we are limiting more and more in school. They
| also don't want to necessarily sit and learn the stuff they're
| supposed to learn. It's a complex issue, but that's my take on
| it a lot.
|
| 4. Yep. This is, in my opinion, the number one issue facing
| American schools, and why private/charter (sometimes) do so
| much better. They can be picky about the students they take --
| thus they only take those who are well behaved and who want to
| be there and have active parent involvement. Parent involvement
| is a huge predictor of school success. Until we fix that --
| including the issues of poverty and not social safety net --
| some schools won't improve. Kids need a safe place at home and
| at school if they're to truly learn and achieve what they can.
| Sadly, nobody talks about this issue, nor are any steps taken
| to change it or the culture around education. I'm from a rural
| area, there's people _proud_ they dropped out and didn 't get a
| degree and even more proud they didn't get a college one. It
| gets passed on.
|
| 5. Absolutely. It's incredibly difficult to teach 30+ kids at
| once, of various levels. Especially when they refuse to create
| differentiated classes. I had some classes that ran the gamut
| from kids who needed extra assistance and had learning
| disabilities to kids who would literally be in the running for
| valedictorian and had _all_ accelerated classes in the subjects
| that had it. If I spend time on one subset of those kids, it
| immediately hurts the other. Now, this is a school-specific
| problem and lazy guidance counselors and a principal who just
| didn 't give a shit about academically gifted students, but I
| had a cousin leave the school just this year because they don't
| care about academics because they're too worried about passing
| the weaker ones ( _not_ catching them up, but just making sure
| they can squeak by with the bare minimum). Not entirely the
| dehumanisation and alienation you mentioned, but I think it
| leads to it when the classes can 't be catered towards them.
|
| This is the one thing where I think more money _could_ help --
| get more teachers and get smaller class sizes. It 'd also be
| nice I think to have a teacher go all four years with the
| students in high school, unless there's major issues, so the
| students get to truly know the teacher and feel like they can
| trust them. It could work in my state, except for science
| because each subject has its own certification as opposed to
| just one for 'math'.
| docandrew wrote:
| Why are differentiated classes such a taboo?
|
| I feel like a more trades-oriented approach with kids who
| don't have the desire, motivation or aptitude for college
| would lead to more engagement and give those kids a better
| chance at success.
| treis wrote:
| Because of racial disparity.
| Macha wrote:
| > Why are differentiated classes such a taboo?
|
| The concern is that they become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
| You get sorted into the lower grade, perhaps because of
| maturing more slowly in the early years, or a home
| environment non-conducive to study due to two working
| parents, or just economic disadvantages like having to live
| further away from the school and therefore spending time
| commuting that other kids are spending on study. (and in
| the US there's a correlation with race for the structural
| disadvantages because of more outright historical racism).
|
| So students end up in a lower grade of class, don't get
| taught as complex versions of their subjects, and finish
| school with a lesser educational attainment, thereby
| setting the seeds for their next generation to be in the
| same place.
|
| Even without seperated classes, this does happen to some
| level between schools.
| grog454 wrote:
| > The concern is that they become a self-fulfilling
| prophecy.
|
| An effective education is ultimately the student's
| responsibility. If we could somehow teach _that_ at an
| early age, lot of these problems become irrelevant.
|
| As a freshman I was placed in a geometry class in high
| school that included several seniors that obviously came
| to class high and some that spoke 0 English. I asked for
| more difficult problems in class, unaware that an
| advanced geometry class even existed at the school.
|
| After taking a precalc class as a junior (which was
| _after_ I took a precalc summer class at a local
| university), I was told I would be placed in AP calc AB.
|
| I literally had to accost the teacher after class and say
| that was unacceptable. He said if I could convince the
| Calc teacher I should be in BC calc, I could take it. As
| luck would have it, the calc teacher was my former
| geometry teacher. I finished AP calc BC with an A and a
| 5/5 on the AP exam, but what if I hadn't been so lucky
| (knew the teacher) or so pissed off with my education up
| to that point that I had respected the precalc teacher's
| decision?
| dorchadas wrote:
| This was basically my experience as well. I had to fight
| against our idiotic guidance counselor to do so. This
| lady told, and is still telling (she's still there and is
| the one I've complained about in my other posts) to take
| whatever class is easiest, there's no need to push
| yourself, etc. She also actively discourages AP for dual
| credit, which is beyond useless if you actually want to
| study a subject in university; she also told 17 year old
| me that taking out 250k in debt is worth it for my dream
| school...Like wtf! There were three things that saved me,
| and pushed me more in high school
|
| (1) My mom was a teacher there, so she knew what classes
| were offered better than I did, and was able to help me
| plan stuff early on without the counselor.
|
| (2) The curriculum director used to teach beside my mom
| and got hired the same year (and they retired the same
| year even), and had known me my entire life. She often
| just went over the counselor's head to make sure my
| schedule lined up like I needed it to
|
| (3) I had an uncle who worked over at the central
| administration for the school. He got sent lots of
| information about summer camps, etc, and passed them on
| both to my mom and the curriculum director to advocate
| for them.
|
| All three of them are, sadly, retired now (though my mom
| keeps coming out of retirement because they can't find
| biology teachers) and there's not many at the school who
| advocate for the kids in the same way. The old principal
| (left at the end of the 2021 school year) was horrible
| too. I've heard the new one is better, and is slowly
| trying to re-rigourise the curriculum, but he's fighting
| against a lot of lazy teachers and our guidance office.
| It's a mess, but I truly hope he succeeds. It's almost
| made me want to go back to help push for that and for
| academically gifted kids, so they actually realise what's
| available.
| dorchadas wrote:
| For my case, it was _very_ school specific. Basically, our
| counselors were lazy and didn 't want to deal with the
| scheduling headache of adding accelerated classes for
| science. We also had a good attached vocational school,
| which did wonders for a lot of kids; I had some graduate as
| fully certified welders and go make more money than me
| right out of high school. But there were still the issues
| in their other classes, sadly.
|
| But, to answer the question more broadly, it's the
| 'equality' bit I think. I'm all for giving everyone equal
| opportunity, and the ability to move into accelerated
| pathways if you can prove you have the requisite knowledge
| to do so. But if you stick students with learning
| disabilities with accelerated students _nobody_ is going to
| have a good time. It doesn 't help either group and just
| harms them.
|
| And, again, I say this as someone who didn't think
| California's math updates were all that terrible. Pushing
| kids to do stats as opposed to just the whole "everyone
| needs to aim towards calculus" attitude is a great thing
| and I stand behind that. But if we can differentiate
| classes, we can serve _all_ groups of kids better and
| provide better outcomes for all. But the whole class needs
| to be differentiated; differentiation _within_ a set of 30
| kids is nigh impossible, especially when there 's such a
| gap between abilities. For a personal story, the smartest
| kid I ever taught was in my last year teaching. He worked
| hard, if there was something he didn't understand he asked
| for more help and practice problems. The lowest kid I ever
| taught was _in the same class_. The kid was a freshman in
| high school and _couldn 't add single digit numbers_
| without a calculator. There's no way that should _ever_ be
| happening.
| musingsole wrote:
| > But if you stick students with learning disabilities
| with accelerated students nobody is going to have a good
| time. It doesn't help either group and just harms them.
|
| This was explicitly the operating philosophy of my middle
| school. It was terrible.
| supertofu wrote:
| Help me understand the proud dropout concept. I cannot wrap
| my mind around it.
|
| My single mom worked three jobs to put me through private
| school and pay for my college. I grew up thinking that no
| college == bag groceries for the rest of your life.
|
| How could anyone be proud of depriving themselves of the
| tools to succeed in life? It's like being proud of gouging
| out your own eyes and walking around blind.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| It's like giving the finger to the man who wants to screw
| your over and take resources from you.
| supertofu wrote:
| But how do people get the idea that school/college are
| trying to screw them over?
| dorchadas wrote:
| Where I'm from, it's because of coal mines. They saw
| their parents and grandparents do reasonably well
| (financially; health is a-whole-nother story) in the
| mines without a degree or with only a basic degree and
| they accepted that school wasn't necessary. Now you have
| people telling them it is, and doing better because they
| had more education. It gets to the point where they see
| that as not trying to screw them over but as elitism, so
| they blame those people that the options of the past
| aren't there anymore, and look to try to make themselves
| feel better.
|
| Though lots of America is fundamentally based in anti-
| intellectualism. _Anti-Intellectualism in American Life_
| was an eye-opening read and helped explain a lot of what
| I saw around me in the rural Bible Belt.
| prepend wrote:
| > teachers seem to be grossly underpaid
|
| Is this true? It seems like teachers in the US [0] make the 7th
| highest in the world on average. Of course the US is big and
| has lots of diversity so there may be pockets that aren't paid
| more. But I think they are paid more than other countries.
|
| I think the issue isn't pay as they are paid more than the US
| median and mean for annual salary (since they aren't paid for
| their two summer months off). And they have more vacation days
| than any other profession with their 40-60 days of leave.
|
| It's an important profession, but it's pretty well paid and
| stable.
|
| [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-
| country-...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > Disruptive children are caused by parents who frankly just
| don't give a shit.
|
| I was disruptive. I had ADHD. Parents did a fantastic job being
| present and caring but strict. My brothers and I were in
| multiple sports leagues.
| Already__Taken wrote:
| Education and day-care shouldn't be coupled.
| wrp wrote:
| >...parents who frankly just don't give a shit...
|
| From my experience teaching in multiple Western and non-Western
| countries, I believe that this factor outweighs all the others
| put together.
| supertofu wrote:
| Yep. I'm biracial, black and Indian. My mother is Indian. She
| raised me alone, with no financial support from my father.
|
| My father is a black American who never went to college. He
| doesn't understand the point of education. He wanted me to a
| be a movie director or singer or otherwise "famous". He
| didn't give a crap about school and let me do whatever I
| wanted when I stayed with him a couple weekends a month.
|
| My mother, an Indian immigrant, sat me down every night and
| made me do my homework even though she worked three jobs. She
| paid for twelve years of private schooling. She told me every
| single day that my education was the only thing I would ever
| have that would let me survive in this world.
|
| Thanks to her obsession with education, I completed college
| and never stopped educating myself. I now work as a front-end
| dev and make six figures. I'm currently preparing to apply
| for master's programs. I live a happy and comfortable life. I
| have some savings in the bank. I am constantly working to
| educate myself. I don't have vague fantasies about becoming
| "famous" or winning the lottery to support myself.
|
| Education is truly the only guarantee for people of color to
| achieve a comfortable life in the US. I would never have
| understood this without my Indian mother's cultural drive
| towards education.
| dorchadas wrote:
| Same, to be completely honest. Generally, if the parents care
| about education and are involved the kids will do fine. This
| is complicated when mom wants her kids to do well but has to
| work two jobs and older brother watches younger sister after
| school, but in general it's an easily predicted trend.
| koolba wrote:
| > Many school problems are caused by disruptive children.
|
| Being able to fire your students is greatest advantage that
| private schools have over public ones.
| jltsiren wrote:
| > 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be
| grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the
| budget. Where does that money go?
|
| There are over 8 million people employed in primary and
| secondary education, which is about 5% of the workforce. Public
| spending on primary and secondary education is 3.2% of GDP and
| private spending is 0.3%. By the latest numbers, that's about
| $800 billion/year. If we assume that 2/3 of the costs are
| personnel and 1/3 are facilities and other expenses, that
| leaves just $65k for the wages and benefits of the average
| employee.
| rayiner wrote:
| > 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to
| achieve than others.
|
| Here is the problem. Teachers in America compare themselves to
| professionals, but their test scores are below the average for
| college educated people generally:
| https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-
| chalkboard/2017/.... Now 40% of college graduates don't even
| get a job that requires a college degree. Disproportionately,
| those are people with lower aptitude scores. Teachers as a
| group are right on the borderline above those folks.
|
| Teacher salaries are not low compared to jobs typically held by
| people with similar test scores--especially when you account
| for degree-required jobs that pay a premium for mathematical
| aptitude (accounting, engineering), or dealing with blood and
| body parts (nursing).
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| I'm sure that (1) anyone can come up with counter-anecdotes,
| and (2) there are different kinds of intelligence, and most
| of us couldn't begin to cope with a class full of kids.
|
| That said: practically every college student knows that the
| Education majors are the dumbest people on campus.
| Kye wrote:
| I don't put much weight in the judgements college-age
| people make of others. They're still in the mindset of the
| high school status game they just left.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| So do you have some other estimate of their relative
| intelligence?
| Kye wrote:
| At some point along the way I stopped trying to rank
| people by intelligence.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's very little that I know of on an SAT that would
| demonstrate the skills to teach a 10 year-old math. Somebody
| who teaches a 10 year-old math doesn't even have to be very
| good at math.
|
| So the problem I have with this argument is that it implies
| that virtually all of the essential skills (as I see it) that
| are required to be a good teacher shouldn't be compensated.
| Instead, teachers should be compensated for the skills that
| make them a good engineer or historian.
| msrenee wrote:
| Teaching pays nothing compared to CS, finance, basically most
| things you need a degree for. Those brilliant individuals who
| would like to teach have to decide if their passion is worth
| making less money than some warehouses are paying around
| here. Those who don't have the grades or abilities to reach
| for the higher-paid fields have less of a dilemma. We're
| actively selecting against the candidates who have more
| lucrative options. This is where the issue comes in where
| people start saying they should do it for the joy of
| teaching. That's easy to say when you're drawing a
| comfortable salary. Being tight on money sucks and passion
| doesn't pay the bills.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| I work in tech and would likely teach if it paid the same.
| My plan has always been to front load my retirement savings
| early in my career through tech so that I can take a lower
| paying teaching job when I'm older.
| tristor wrote:
| I'm in the exact same boat. One thing I enjoy doing is
| guest lecturing at local colleges in CS classes, around
| topics I have professional expertise in. If that sounds
| like something you'd like to do as well, I'd recommend
| getting involved in your local ACM chapter, as most
| college CS programs have an ACM tie-in.
| AnAnonymousDude wrote:
| Same position here, though I realized it a bit later in
| life. Currently mid 30s and hoping to be out of tech by
| 40.
| tptacek wrote:
| It depends on where you're teaching; teaching is a terrible
| deal in rural school districts and in some states, but
| teaching in urban and especially wealthy suburban school
| districts is a pretty fantastic deal: it's a white collar
| salary (every single teacher at the public high school my
| kids went to makes over $100k) with a defined-benefit
| pension plan, ironclad job security, and more vacation days
| than any other profession.
|
| It's not at all the case that teaching isn't competitive
| with other degree-requiring white-collar professions;
| depending on where you are in the CS/IT food chain, it's
| quite competitive with tech.
|
| Defined-benefit pensions have become so alien to private
| market jobs that it's easy to overlook how valuable they
| are, or to forget that a lot of people are very happy to
| work towards a strong retirement.
| greedo wrote:
| My school district is in a middle sized city with a
| dominant land grant university. A starting teacher makes
| $40k. Requires both a BA and a teaching credential. Hours
| are long, and teachers spend a decent amount of money for
| out of pocket supplies, especially at some of the schools
| that despite level funding seem to get the short end of
| the stick.
|
| IT in my area pays anyone with a pulse and basic computer
| skills $40k. A rookie developer from our land grant
| university can easily start at $60K with no experience.
| And that same developer can earn $100k with two years of
| good experience. Show me a 3rd year teacher pulling in
| $100k in my school district. No such unicorn exists.
|
| The city doesn't have a DB pension, just a 403k.
|
| Granted, the newbie teacher gets 1.5 months off in the
| summer, compared to 2 weeks PTO for the developer.
|
| After 10 years, even assuming the teacher gets a Masters,
| the pay differential is huge.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't deny that there are teachers getting shafted all
| over the US; I'd just want people to know that the deal
| in many (most? all?) major urban school districts is
| surprisingly strong.
| dadoge wrote:
| If we paid them more, it'd be easier to hold them to a higher
| standard
| jope12 wrote:
| Teacher unions don't want higher standards.
| sidlls wrote:
| They don't want higher standards _that are essentially
| arbitrary and capricious and imposed by boards,
| committees and other groups composed of individuals who
| have little or no expertise in teaching_.
|
| That's a bit more accurate than your comment.
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm all for creating a new salary band for teachers with
| 1300+ SAT scores and STEM degrees. I'll pay whatever taxes
| you want for that.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Is there any evidence to show that these people make good
| teachers?
|
| You don't need to be a genious to teach. You need to have
| good social skills with kids, care about doing a good
| job, and a mastery of the subject matter (which not very
| demanding for even average-intelligence adults, at least
| until the latter part of high school).
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Yes to all of those: necessary but not sufficient.
|
| You left out "willing to do whatever it takes for THAT
| kid, regardless of what the textbooks or principal or
| union says."
| educaysean wrote:
| So instead of putting in the work and weighing out the
| different qualities of an effective educator, you pick
| out the most arbitrary of criteria out there and want to
| make that the gold standard for evaluating teachers.
|
| I'm not a betting man, but I'd feel comfortable wagering
| that you are a STEM grad with solid SAT scores.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I am, and I'd make an awful teacher. Engineers are
| generally horrible teachers, I think because they've
| become so immersed in their subject that everything that
| is entirely alien to the learner seems obvious to them.
| I'm so impatient. I just want people to repeat after me,
| do the thing exactly like I said, and to show no
| initiative.
| rainsford wrote:
| That's not what that link says. In fact the source explicitly
| states that they are _not_ looking at SAT scores by major,
| they are just looking at average SAT scores for a given
| college and weighting those scores by the percentage of
| education majors at that college. That led to their
| conclusion that: "Graduates with education majors are
| disproportionately found at schools where students have lower
| SAT scores." That doesn't mean the graduates with education
| majors themselves have lower scores unless you make some
| unsupported assumptions about distribution of SAT scores at
| any given college.
|
| But even if education major SAT scores _are_ lower on
| average, it it seems like backwards thinking when talking
| about pay. The point isn 't that all current individual
| teachers deserve to be paid more; it's that teaching as a
| profession should pay more to attract talented people who
| otherwise pursue more lucrative fields, just like any other
| profession. If you paid doctors and engineers low wages,
| you'd probably fail to attract some top talent as well. But
| that doesn't then become a justification for those low wages
| since the low wages caused the issue in the first place.
| rayiner wrote:
| > That led to their conclusion that: "Graduates with
| education majors are disproportionately found at schools
| where students have lower SAT scores." That doesn't mean
| the graduates with education majors themselves have lower
| scores unless you make some unsupported assumptions about
| distribution of SAT scores at any given college.
|
| It assumes that education majors have similar SAT scores to
| other majors in a given school. That's an assumption, sure,
| but I think a pretty reasonable one.
| drbojingle wrote:
| "Disruptive children" are arguably dusruptive because the
| system is soul sucking and one size fits all. Its just not
| going to work for everyone. Forest schools all the way
| [deleted]
| hattmall wrote:
| 1. Curriculum. Instructional tools and all the things that for
| profit publishers can convince politicians, bureaucrats, and
| administrators they need.
|
| 2. They are, and there is a useless but direct correlation to
| pay and degree attainment. Having more degrees will get you
| more money, but rarely has any correlation to the quality of
| teacher.
|
| 3. As in most industries where the customer isn't the payer
| compensation does not correlate to performance. The worst
| teachers make the same as the best, or more if they have the
| degrees.
|
| 4. Equality, no child left behind and related concepts dictate
| that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Any efforts at
| exclusion are met with resistance, typically by unaffected /
| uninvolved parties.
|
| 5. The idea here is that consolidation of services will save
| money. The trend away from neighborhood schools to mega-schools
| / school complexes looks good from a burecratic view.
| erdos4d wrote:
| > 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to
| achieve than others.
|
| They absolutely are. I taught math as a university lecturer
| while I was finishing my PhD. I taught one Algebra course and
| one Geometry course to education majors. These were both
| literally just high school math courses and the people I taught
| were mostly not able to do the work. Yes, literally high school
| math and over half flunked the courses outright. That is just
| pathetic. I was told to pass 85% of the class, so most got
| curved right into a classroom anyway, against my wishes. This
| is what teaches your kids. I can also anecdotally report that
| they were clearly the dumbest people I ever ran into teaching.
| Bad English, can't think in a straight line, and ready to argue
| at the first sign that you might enforce standards and fail
| their pitiful "work". They were perfect for a bureaucratic job
| that rewards idiots.
| diognesofsinope wrote:
| > 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be
| grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the
| budget. Where does that money go?
|
| Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just backloaded in
| pension plans.
|
| > 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to
| achieve than others.
|
| Yeah, but cost is the same and cost is what's important.
|
| > 4. Many school problems are caused by disruptive children.
|
| Bingo. Half the success of 4-year colleges is that it's the
| first time the bottom 50% of the students are filtered out.
|
| Story time. I was an ESL teacher for 5 years in Asia and
| planned on coming home to the USA and getting my teacher's
| license in Math to teach at international schools. I am not
| currently a teacher, I'm a quant at a big bank.
|
| Why didn't I end up in teaching? The licensing requirements in
| Minnesota are insane. Counselor's straight up told me I'd have
| to borrow ~$50k from the UMN for a MS in Curriculum and
| Instruction before I could teach.
|
| The labor unions along with politicians have built a structure
| in which there is artificial scarcity of teachers. Not only is
| the profession filled with disrespect, but it's outrageously
| expensive and bureaucratic.
|
| Lastly, the Economics of Education field is wild. Clearly
| there's value to basic reading/math/science education, but it's
| not clear at all whether teachers are schools matter than much
| (wealthy communities/parents matter a lot).
|
| Edit: feel obligated to add that k12 education is financed and
| administrated at the local level, which means our experiences
| with this likely vary a lot. Mine are specific to trying to
| move back to the USA and become licensed in MN.
| bombcar wrote:
| I suspect that almost all of the success of private schools
| can be ascribed to being able to kick students out and not
| requiring fifty billion dollars in degrees to teach.
| danaris wrote:
| Almost all of the success of private schools is, in fact,
| the former. Being able to select who goes there basically
| lets them set their outcomes.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| To a degree. There's some sampling bias as well because
| the kind of parent that would choose a non-default
| education option probably cares more to begin with.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| You mean, the kids won the Genetics Lottery?
|
| Yes, getting born with parents who care about you is
| definitely a smart life hack.
| gshubert17 wrote:
| I taught computing for 13 years at a public charter high-
| school. It doesn't charge tuition (it's a public school),
| but does have a dress code, and a commitment to a
| curriculum based on E. D. Hirsch's core knowledge program
| in grade school and on classical, liberal arts great books
| in high school.
|
| Admission is by lottery if there are more applicants than
| places, not by cherry-picking applicants. They hire
| teachers with subject-matter degrees and experience: they
| have some PhDs and a couple ABDs (all but dissertation).
| Half-jokingly they said they didn't look to hire people
| with teaching certificates, but wouldn't hold that against
| them. I had a master's degree in computer science and
| worked summers to get another master's.
|
| The school was smaller (maybe 700 total students K-12; the
| class of 2022 graduated 26), which right there, I think,
| made for fewer behavior problems. There was a well-thought-
| out discipline policy which was enforced by the
| administration and backed up by the board and most parents.
| After all, parents had made a choice to not go to the
| regular district schools but enroll in this school instead.
|
| I agree that the odds are much better for school success
| with smaller sizes, a focused curriculum (whether it's
| International Baccalaureate, Core Knowledge, STEM, arts, or
| whatever), highly qualified teachers, and supportive
| parents.
| treis wrote:
| >Admission is by lottery if there are more applicants
| than places, not by cherry-picking applicants.
|
| Filtering out kids who's parents aren't willing or able
| to complete the application process is the cherry-
| picking.
| gshubert17 wrote:
| Yes, it's a big step for parents to leave the default
| neighborhood school, look over the various options, even
| staying in the same city, let alone moving to a different
| district. I agree with you there.
|
| The admissions people take some time to represent the
| whole story or big picture to prospective parents,
| because the school is not for everybody. I don't think
| it's cherry-picking to encourage parents to find the best
| school for their children, even if it isn't yours.
|
| The school accepted applications from parents who had had
| unsatisfactory experiences at former schools, who were
| willing to go through the extra steps to try to get
| better outcomes for their students. The school had its
| share of free-and-reduced-lunch students and students
| with individual education plans and such.
|
| I heard parents give heartfelt thanks to everyone at the
| school who had helped their child overcome what other
| schools termed learning disabilities. Is it the opposite
| of cherry-picking to accept a student other schools have,
| in effect, given up on? I believe the small size of the
| school and individualized attention helped many students
| in similar situations.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I don't think it's cherry-picking to encourage parents
| to find the best school for their children, even if it
| isn't yours.
|
| Why? Because "cherry-picking" is bad and the best things
| for children are good?
|
| It's, of course, exactly cherry-picking to find the
| children with the most interested and motivated parents,
| then filter them down to the ones that you like best.
| Fuck the kids with bad or no parents.
| scarmig wrote:
| If I'm a parent who is typically interested and
| motivated, am I committing a sin against social justice
| if I am interested and motivated in my children's
| education and work to provide opportunities for them to
| learn?
| vkou wrote:
| You're not sinning, you're just reacting to incentives.
|
| This isn't a moral condemnation of you, it's just the
| fact-based explanation for why schools that you have to
| apply to produce better academic outcomes than default
| public schooling. If those public schools could just drop
| the cohort of students whose parents couldn't be arsed to
| apply to a special school, their quality would also go
| up.
| irrational wrote:
| It still sounds like cherry picking. Is there bus service
| from all poor neighborhoods to and from the charter
| school? Or is it only wealthy families that are not
| working multiple jobs and can afford to drive their kids
| to and from the school everyday that can consider sending
| their children there?
| Teever wrote:
| So what do you propose, that they send out applications
| at random to households in the community?
|
| There is bias in everything, but at least they aren't
| adding more than needs there needs to be.
| treis wrote:
| I don't propose anything. I'm just pointing out that the
| point that kicked off this line applies to charter
| schools too.
| votepaunchy wrote:
| What part of the original "being able to kick students
| out" are you claiming is happening here?
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| I get a feeling the only way a school can satisfy your
| standard for "not cherry picking" are those armed with
| Omnipotence
| plorkyeran wrote:
| Pointing out that a bias exists is not always a call to
| eliminate that bias. The fact that merely requiring an
| application rather than being the default option improves
| average outcomes isn't a problem that needs to be solved.
| It's just something that should be kept in mind when
| comparing schools.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Right.
|
| At some point, some school is going to have to take the
| kids who don't bother applying, since we can't put 100%
| of schools behind an application and preserve its
| benefits, and we should not be surprised that such
| schools do worse, if the ones who do apply happen to be
| better.
| Jill_the_Pill wrote:
| Open lottery admission isn't the same as universal
| retention. Some charters and even magnets later "counsel
| out" admitted kids who act up, perform poorly on tests,
| or need expensive extra services, saying the school isn't
| the right fit for them. Traditional district public
| schools don't have this option and usually wind up taking
| back the kids who wash out of the choice schools.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| what about a child/family's socioeconomic situation? would
| that not be a factor? seems like a rich kid is already
| setup for success regardless of public school or private
| school. most of the rich kids from my public school are
| doing fine.
| danaris wrote:
| > Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just backloaded
| in pension plans.
|
| This is no longer true in most places, and was never a good
| enough reason to justify paying starting teachers poverty
| wages.
|
| New York State, which I think most will agree is a state with
| a strong teachers' union and all that goes with it, has been
| phasing out defined-benefit pension plans over the past few
| decades. My mother-in-law, who retired about 10 years ago,
| was among the last wave to get the "Tier I" full-salary
| pensions; if you become a teacher in NYS now, you get a much
| less generous package (I don't know offhand whether it's
| still defined-benefit, just less, or if they've switched to
| defined-contribution plans now).
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Counterpoint: teachers ' pay is great, it's just
| backloaded in pension plans._
|
| Counter-points to that:
|
| You still have to pay the bills before retirement.
|
| And this even assumes they get a good pensions, because a lot
| of states don't bother funding their public employee pensions
| properly (using current-year tax income for splashy
| announcements instead, kicking the liability down the road
| for the next politician):
|
| * https://vtdigger.org/2021/01/17/painful-cuts-proposed-in-
| pen...
|
| In various Canadian provinces teachers get decent salaries
| and good pensions: why can't US states do the same?
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > You still have to pay the bills before retirement.
|
| That's a valid point, but choices need to be made. Go to
| the teachers union and ask if they'd be willing to drop
| future pensions (and cap current ones to the benefits payed
| in so far) in exchange for a higher salary (based on the
| amount saved by not longer having pensions). My guess would
| be that they wouldn't even be willing to discuss it.
| swores wrote:
| You're talking as if "choices need to be made" doesn't
| extend to the question of whether or not they get enough
| tax dollars total, regardless of split between income and
| pensions.
|
| But actually, you're the only commenter I've so far seen
| in the thread who claims that their pensions are enough
| to make up for their salaries. Personally I think both
| salaries and pensions for (most) teachers should
| increase, in most countries including the US, and I have
| no problem with teachers' unions not being willing to
| have a discuss boxed into your opinion that they already
| get as much as they deserve.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > you're the only commenter I've so far seen in the
| thread who claims that their pensions are enough to make
| up for their salaries
|
| That is not true, given that I was replying to you, and
| you were replying to the person that said _this_.
|
| > Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just
| backloaded in pension plans.
|
| That being said, in some places the teachers make good
| money when you include their pension; in other places
| they do not. It's not consistent across the country.
|
| > You're talking as if "choices need to be made" doesn't
| extend to the question of whether or not they get enough
| tax dollars total
|
| That was not my intent. My intent was to indicate...
|
| If you think that teachers make enough when you include
| their pension, you can't complain that their pension
| causes a hardship early in their career; because the
| choice of a pension is likely not something they'd be
| willing to give up". If you think the pension causes a
| hardship earlier in the career and that that needs to be
| changed, then either 1) You do _not_ believe teachers
| make enough including their pensions, OR 2) You think
| pensions should be done away with (which I doubt will be
| supported by the teachers/union).
| andrewprock wrote:
| Teachers in the US get decent salaries and good pensions.
| It may be different from from state to state, but in
| California you can work for 25 years and retire without
| ever having to work again by the age of 50.
|
| You'll have to learn to live on a low salary for the first
| 5-10 years of your career. But pensions are paid based on
| your terminal salary, not your average salary. For
| elementary school teachers in my district the terminal
| salary was in excess of $100k as of 2017.
| jedberg wrote:
| > without ever having to work again by the age of 50.
|
| While that may be true, it's important to note that the
| pension is only salary (and usually only 80% of your
| terminal salary) and not benefits.
|
| So you'd spend a significant part of that money on
| getting health insurance.
|
| Most teachers who have earned full pensions wait to
| retire until 67 anyway so they can get Medicare (and not
| Social Security, because they don't qualify for it since
| they have their pension unless they worked another job as
| well).
| zdragnar wrote:
| Unless you're married and your partner continues to work
| and covers benefits for you.
|
| My aunt did exactly above, and felt it was a moral duty
| to let new younger teachers have the spot (nevermind it
| meant that she was going to draw a pension from the
| system for more years than she'd actually worked).
|
| Plenty of other teachers feel the same way, though
| obviously not all.
| jedberg wrote:
| Sure, if you're married and have a second income, then
| that second income is basically subsidizing education. My
| wife was a teacher and retired when our kid was born,
| because we could. Some time in her 50s she'll be able to
| draw her pension.
|
| But basically the only reason we can afford to live in
| the Silicon Valley is because I'm an engineer with a
| decent salary. A lot of her paycheck went right back into
| her classroom, and with the hours she worked, she was
| basically make $3/hr, despite getting some of the highest
| teacher pay in the country.
|
| And all of her coworkers were in the same boat -- almost
| every one of them, even the senior teachers, were married
| to engineers. The few that weren't either had family
| money or at least had parents who bought them a condo or
| house. Or a good friend. We let one of her young teacher
| friends live with us for a couple years until she managed
| to save up enough for a down payment on a small condo,
| and then got married and got a second job.
|
| It is basically impossible to be a teacher in Silicon
| Valley without a highly paid spouse or multiple side
| hustles.
| dionidium wrote:
| > But basically the only reason we can afford to live in
| the Silicon Valley is because I'm an engineer with a
| decent salary
|
| The existence of California -- and San Francisco, in
| particular -- makes discussions like this one difficult,
| because yes, sure, San Francisco is too weird to exist
| and is therefore basically _irrelevant_ in national
| policy discussions.
|
| I live in Rhode Island. East Coast. An hour from Boston.
| Expensive real estate, high-COL (top 10 or 15, depending
| on which numbers you trust), etc, etc -- and yet, we are
| just absolutely _nothing at all_ like California, which
| is its own very weird outlier that has nothing to do with
| the experiences of the almost 300 million Americans who
| aren 't Californians.
| jedberg wrote:
| 10% of America lives in California. Can't really call it
| an outlier.
| dionidium wrote:
| You're right. Outlier is a poor word choice. I just mean
| to say that increasingly we need separate discussions for
| the 10% of people who live in CA and the 90% who don't,
| because the experiences are really quite different.
| andrewprock wrote:
| When it comes to education pensions, CA is not an
| outlier. The precise terms vary, but I think most public
| educators have access to similar pension programs.
| jedberg wrote:
| I think you're right in that discussions need to be
| different for different parts of the country, but I think
| the split is urban and not-urban. A lot of California is
| urban, but so is a lot of New York, Massachusetts,
| Washington, Oregon, Illinois, etc etc. as far as where
| the population lives. And all have similar problems when
| it comes to education.
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| > San Francisco is too weird to exist and is therefore
| basically irrelevant in national policy discussions.
|
| Not SF, but more people live in LA County than in the ten
| least popular states. If only we could ignore them and
| their 20 senators as completely irrelevant when it came
| to national policy discussions...
|
| (We can't, and we don't.)
| dionidium wrote:
| I don't _actually_ want to ignore San Francisco 's
| problems. [0] I would just say that its existence makes
| national conversations more difficult.
|
| [0] I _would_ tell California that they need to permit
| about 10x as much housing if they want _any more_ federal
| help. The U.S. Government should not take on the role of
| dealing with the consequences of such an obvious self-
| own. "Our teachers can't find places to live and also
| it's illegal to build apartments on practically every
| single lot in the state -- what should we do?" is a
| question that answers itself.
|
| If you want to be in the Union, then one thing you have
| to do is allow internal migration, and by that I mean
| _actually allow it_ , which means you have to allow
| newcomers to build housing. If you're not allowing
| newcomers to build housing, then you are not actually in
| any real sense fulfilling your obligations to the rest of
| the country.
| balderdash wrote:
| If the general population were numerate enough, and there
| was enough transparency, there were would be riots in the
| streets over the NPV of retirement packages for public
| sector employees, these people are getting packages that
| are worth $2m,$5m,$10m at retirement (which could be
| 50ish!)
| Spivak wrote:
| It's good stuff. I turned it down because the work bored
| me to tears but I could have made $150k/yr and retired at
| 52 for $120k/yr for life.
|
| If anyone wants in on it, IT at a large public sector
| university.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just backloaded
| in pension plans.
|
| Pensions are cheap. I have a much better pension plan than
| the teachers in my state and the long term cost is about 16%
| of payroll - 8% from my employer and 8% from me. Hardly
| unreasonable cost, and yet I'll be able to comfortably retire
| around 55 and never worry about money again. That's not
| insignificant but it's not what is causing public schools to
| be underfunded.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The average teacher's pay in the US is essentially the median
| pay for _all_ college graduates. Many engineering disciplines
| pay only $10k /year more, without the benefits.
| riley_dog wrote:
| > The licensing requirements in Minnesota are insane.
|
| No they're not. We just want qualified people teaching our
| children. There's a reason why Minnesota has some great
| schools.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| germinalphrase wrote:
| "Why didn't I end up in teaching? The licensing requirements
| in Minnesota are insane. Counselor's straight up told me I'd
| have to borrow ~$50k from the UMN for a MS in Curriculum and
| Instruction before I could teach."
|
| I received my teaching license in Wisconsin and transferred
| to Minnesota by doing little more than passing the licensure
| exam. I did not have an MS at that time or when I started
| teaching in the Minneapolis suburbs.
|
| I believe you were somewhat misled.
| diognesofsinope wrote:
| I don't have a BS in Education (BA in Philosophy), which
| means you have to go through their M. Ed. program with
| licensure. You must take Educational Theory/Pedagogy core
| courses along with required courses in your field -- I had
| saved money and already taken the calc sequence, linear
| algebra and differential equations.
|
| Grad school at the UMN is ~$10k a semester
| (https://onestop.umn.edu/finances/costs/tuition). Would
| have been ~30 years old, $40k in debt as a beginning
| teacher in MN. Amazingly, none of that includes actual
| experience teaching lol.
|
| The teachers union has been waging a war against future
| teachers to benefit current teachers for 30 years and this
| is what that looks like after 30 years.
|
| Similar to housing and zoning, education is a government
| racket.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| > The teachers union has been waging a war against future
| teachers to benefit current teachers for 30 years
|
| this statement is presented as The Truth, do you have
| some information that backs this up?
| diognesofsinope wrote:
| The field of study of occupation licensing:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_licensing
|
| It's absurd to think someone needs to take a $1k
| 'Philosophy of Mathematics' class to teach 10th grade
| geometry.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of
| philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and
| implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the
| nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place
| of mathematics in people's lives.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics
|
| Considering that the primary complaint 10th grade math
| students have about math is often "How is this relevant
| to me and my life?", wouldn't studying the philosophy of
| mathematics help a teacher in addressing this concern?
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i'm aware of that, but can you give me a concrete
| examples where teacher unions in minnesota are causing
| the problem of occupational licensing?
| lostcolony wrote:
| > Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just backloaded
| in pension plans.
|
| Yet another counter counterpoint - there are still companies
| and government jobs with defined pension plans that pay far
| more than teachers. Even without those, there are still many,
| many jobs requiring a comparative amount of education, far
| fewer hours worked, and pay more even once you subtract
| maximizing 401k contributions yearly (let alone considering
| the added costs of buying school supplies).
| diognesofsinope wrote:
| Half the reason to be a teacher is because half the job is
| having fun. Most curricula is set in stone and requirements
| are nationally standardized (US and Asia). You more or less
| get summers off (there are conferences and summer school)
| and there are almost no jobs where you can take ~1.5 months
| off every year. Teaching is also one of the few steady jobs
| in rural America.
|
| I feel like most people haven't been in an actual ~5th
| grade classroom in a long time -- literally half of it is
| playing games/trying to have fun.
|
| And Youtube, good god has the educational content on
| Youtube evolved in the last decade.
| grapeskin wrote:
| Being around kids all day isn't fun. It's stressful. Part
| of the job is appearing to be calm and approachable to
| the children and it absolutely wears out most people.
|
| It's just like thinking enjoying having a pet means you'd
| love working with dozens of dogs all day. If you're lucky
| to have well behaved dogs, it's okay. But you're most
| likely going to have some barking all day, one's going to
| vomit, some are going to fight, and any time anything
| happens the owners completely blame you and will threaten
| you in every way they can imagine.
| fleetwoodsnack wrote:
| 5th grade education for my children has one 45-minute
| "play" recess (which doesn't involve direct teacher
| instruction) and one 1-hour Physical Education class lead
| by a gym teacher.
|
| The rest of their day 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM is composed of
| maths, language, science, history, and technology
| education all done on paper or at purpose-designated
| computers. Next year they will receive their own devices.
|
| The playing with blocks and Lincoln logs ended in
| kindergarten, with the introduction of spelling test and
| arithmetic quizzes in first grade, so I'm not sure if I'd
| characterize the work my childrens' teachers do as
| "literally half of it is playing games/trying to have
| fun" or that "[h]alf the reason to be a teacher is
| because half the job is having fun."
|
| Seems like it is hard work, with both practical
| instruction directed toward 20-30 children with varying
| levels of discipline, interest, and abilities, and
| management of just as many if not more parents with
| similarly varying levels of discipline, interest, and
| abilities.
|
| This is a public school in one of the largest state
| systems in the country (United States) so perhaps your
| experience is informed by something more niche.
| bena wrote:
| Professional sports. If you work in professional sports
| there is a baked in 1 to 2 month vacation for all
| players, coaching staff, and assorted player personnel.
|
| Teaching is work. I have the feeling _you_ haven 't been
| in a 5th grade classroom in a long time. Or any grade.
| People get into teaching because they want to help
| others. Especially if they get into special education.
| [deleted]
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| > Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just backloaded
| in pension plans.
|
| 25% of teachers in Minnesota leave the profession within
| three years [1] so they see no pension. This sort of weed out
| is common in a lot of professions and it's probably for the
| best, but weed out careers often combine high starting pay to
| attract a large pool of candidates. Public sector jobs
| exchange low pay for a pension and _stability_. Teaching
| doesn 't offer the latter.
|
| 1. https://www.educationworld.com/a_news/state-report-
| reveals-o...
| jwie wrote:
| I expect attrition is priced into the pension at some
| level, or worse, it needs these contributions to function
| at all. This is perhaps best for the profession, but it is
| systematic theft from another point of view.
|
| Even if you don't contribute to the pension with cash,
| capital is still allocated on your behalf into the fund
| that could have been paid to you directly.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >capital is still allocated on your behalf into the fund
| that could have been paid to you directly.
|
| For taxpayer funded pensions, it is more like future
| taxpayers' capital is allocated on your behalf.
|
| Meaning, the actuary will calculate the government needs
| to set aside $2 today, the government leaders will say
| change that to $1 so the taxes are low today, and will
| end up actually contributing $0.50 because some of the
| funds were needed to make up for yesterday's shortfall.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just backloaded
| in pension plans.
|
| Nonsense. Even the most basic look at the numbers shows you
| this is absolutely false.
|
| Let's take a rich liberal state first. MA. Average teacher
| salary: $60k. Average pension $43k. Teachers contribute 9.78%
| of their salary in order to get this pension! The state
| contributes 18.17% This is not all that different from a
| 401k.
|
| You're confusing teachers with police officers, where the
| average pension is twice as high.
|
| > Why didn't I end up in teaching? The licensing requirements
| in Minnesota are insane. Counselor's straight up told me I'd
| have to borrow ~$50k from the UMN for a MS in Curriculum and
| Instruction before I could teach.
|
| Then you got terrible advice.
|
| Because the licensing requirements in Minnesota are very lax:
| https://mn.gov/pelsb/aspiring-educators/portfolio/
|
| You take two tests and fill out some forms. You don't even
| need a Master's in education.
|
| They should really tighten that up. btw, you can definitely
| do that MS for <$20k online.
| andrewprock wrote:
| Pensions are typically not paid based on average teacher
| salary, but paid based on terminal teacher salary. Defined
| benefit pensions are quite different from a 401k.
|
| In our district, once you qualify for a pension you get 2%
| of your terminal salary per year you work. If you work for
| 40 years, you will be paid 80% of your last year's salary.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| I don't understand this reply.
|
| I quoted you the actual statistics for MA.
| https://www.teacherpensions.org/state/massachusetts
|
| Teachers pay into the system, quite substantially, at
| rates that are similar to what you would pay for a 401k.
| And their average pensions are quite low.
| hgs3 wrote:
| > 5. Schools are just too darn big. Thousands of kids in a big
| prison-shaped building and we wonder why everyone is alienated,
| miserable and dehumanized?
|
| Personal anecdotal: I started programming on my own freshmen
| year of High School and I wrote and self published a book
| sophomore year. When I showed my computer programs and a
| physical copy of my self-published book to my teachers, they
| basically gave me a pat on the back. I did not receive 1 point
| of extra credit. I was told to take my seat and learn about
| Microsoft Word (by my computer teacher) and to write a 3 page
| story like everybody else (by my English teacher). As I'm
| sitting in my desk, I'm thinking "Why waste my time with Word,
| clearly I'm beyond it? Why am I writing a 3 page paper, I
| already wrote a book!"
|
| What I concluded from this experience was that the education
| system is not designed for self starters. It's designed for the
| lowest common denominator. I don't dislike my teachers, rather
| I dislike the education system for being inflexible. I can only
| hope technology will allow students in the future to customize
| their educations to a degree beyond what I was offered. Another
| commenter mentioned schools being about churning out cogs. I
| don't disagree.
| bArray wrote:
| > 4. Many school problems are caused by disruptive children.
|
| > Disruptive children are caused by parents who frankly just
| don't give a shit. Throwing more money into schools won't ever
| fix this problem.
|
| Some. Most children I believe require an approach that the
| education system cannot adequately provide (for numerous
| reasons). Children are relatively malleable and in the right
| environment will thrive.
| Spivak wrote:
| The bend is an while for every kid there is an educational
| environment that will work for them, there isn't an
| educational environment that will work for every kid.
| supertofu wrote:
| Regarding 4:
|
| Not every kid should be going to high school. They and/or their
| families are not capable of supporting them through it. We need
| public vocational and alternative high schools.
| mjevans wrote:
| A good time for 'think of the children' rather than their
| parents. Maybe combined with better access to free
| contraception so that every child is a desired child. If the
| environment isn't good for the child change that child's
| environment (family). Yes, those systems probably also need
| more love.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Controversial opinion here (maybe?) but I think the purge of
| men from education has had a real impact on child behavior and
| learning.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/02/the-ex...
|
| "...men continued to make up most of the high-school teaching
| force until the late 1970s"
|
| Humans are still largely primal and male presence tends to
| instill respect and behavior changes in younger people; I
| suspect the absence of it has not helped the current situation
| in many schools.
| docandrew wrote:
| In that time I think we see a pretty big decline in the ratio
| of boys:girls graduating college too, no?
| trident5000 wrote:
| I think this is absolutely part of what causes the
| phenomenon. Broadly speaking boys need male mentorship.
| yojo wrote:
| On 4: I disagree that more resources cannot help with this
| problem.
|
| Some disruptive children have undiagnosed learning
| disabilities. Having more money for screening and special
| education can help get them the support they need.
|
| Class sizes are also going to matter. Many disruptive children
| are just seeking attention. With smaller classes teachers can
| spend more time with each student, which will help with
| behavior management.
|
| I don't know what the right level of investment here is, but
| from speaking with friends who are teachers it sure seems like
| classes are too big and special Ed is stretched incredibly
| thin.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| We know what percentage of children typically need these
| extra services. If we funded school special education based
| on how many they should statistically have. And incentivised
| them to find that many, then they would. If they miss some
| early amd are full that will be counterbalances by the number
| of parents who insist on "normal" education despite evidence
| that isn't what is best. Letting educators give feedback
| about the effects of medication levelsbwould also help I
| think.
| tristor wrote:
| 1. Administrators. We have insane administrative bloat,
| especially in higher ed. In some institutions there is nearly a
| 1:1 count of administrators to faculty.
|
| Ironically, given the social politics implied by the author, a
| significant amount of administration bloat is specifically tied
| to DEI.
|
| 2. Well, they are. A teaching certification used to only
| require two years of higher learning compared to typical 4 for
| other things. That said, most teachers are actually more highly
| educated than the average person because schools use
| educational attainment as direct basis for pay. My mother has a
| Master's and is shy only a few hours and a dissertation from
| being a Ph.D. This was relatively common, especially for
| special ed teachers or those who focus on a specific subject
| like Math or English.
|
| 3. Partly because school in the US is boring and designed to
| grind out individuality in favor of making good industrial
| cogs. We no longer have an economy that rewards industrial cogs
| so students resent their school experience in adulthood as they
| discover how illy prepared they are for the world. That and
| parents/social fabric encourages and allows anti-social
| behavior and viewpoints.
|
| 4. Yes, and parents not giving a shit isn't even a cause, it's
| a symptom of larger and more intractable social and cultural
| problems in parts of America. Fixing this is nearly impossible
| because those most motivated to fix it are even more heavily
| motivated to ignore significant amounts of critical data about
| the causal factors.
|
| 5. Yes. Scaling is hard, and we've roughly tripled the
| population since we built the institutionalization of education
| in the US. It's obvious a breakpoint exists somewhere and we
| failed to pivot.
| bergenty wrote:
| Special Ed is as stupid as doing open heart surgeries on 85
| year olds to give them 3 extra years. They're an enormous
| burden on the system and are ruining everything for almost
| all of us. Why do severely mentally handicapped kids even
| need to be educated. Just provide them with an amount of
| money to live their lives and make their time here as happy
| as possible. There is going to be a reckoning.
| greedo wrote:
| Special Ed spending is not just severely handicapped kids.
| Some of them have minor issues that require assistance or
| an IEP. My daughter for example had a stutter that required
| the help of a speech pathologist. After a year of help, she
| no longer stuttered, and graduated with an A average. Yet
| you see this type of thing as an enormous burden, where I
| see it as no different than a teacher tutoring a student
| struggling with a subject.
| bena wrote:
| Special education is exactly as well defined as that.
|
| Gifted children fall under the banner of special education
| as well. They also require resources average students
| don't.
| notch656a wrote:
| I'd also be against disproportionately spending on
| "gifted" children. I also doubt "gifted" are much of a
| drain. I was in all the honors classes and basically
| spent my entire day reading whatever I liked, ignoring my
| teachers and basically demanding no time from anyone.
| Teachers finally learned to leave me completely alone
| except to grade the test because I always passed with
| flying colors and had zero interest in interacting with
| anyone but the lunch lady. I'm not asking for extra
| spending at all for "gifted" children, only that spending
| amongst all children be normalized to be nearly the same.
|
| Meanwhile I saw nearly daily the math teacher spend 20
| minutes trying to console the girl in the previous period
| who would beat the chair I was going to sit in senseless.
|
| Personally I would have been much happier in 'gen pop'
| anyways and then there would have been even easier
| bullshit tests while I spent my public school time
| reading college CS and chemistry books.
|
| ----------------------
|
| >You were in "gen pop". Honors classes are just that,
| honors classes. Gifted classes are another thing
| altogether.
|
| My school was a country school, we didn't have anything
| beyond 'honors' classes. If you want to call yourself
| gifted and the people in my country school's honor class
| not, that's fine, I don't think we were particularly
| gifted. In my experience the student:teacher ratio were
| significantly tighter in these classes. I realize some
| people only consider 'gifted' as the very most
| challenging class in a large school system (not including
| 'honors' even if that is the highest available in the
| school) whereas others may call the gifted classes
| anything more challenging than the 'normal' core (I call
| gen-pop) curriculum.
|
| >If you agree with the guy I responded to, in that you
| wouldn't mind removing the mentally challenged from the
| school system entirely, boy, that's not a good look for
| you.
|
| I would think someone so eager to call themselves
| 'gifted' and the people they are speaking with 'not'
| would understand this is what's called a straw-man. I'm
| only asking for the gen-pop kids to be given roughly
| equal financial per-capita investment as special-ed.
|
| >ifted classes are like 5 to 10 students.
|
| Lower ratios to the extent you spend significantly
| disproportionately more than the average student are
| exactly the kind of special treatment I'm against when
| using public funds. If you want a private school for that
| where the student or their family pays for it, have at
| it.
| bena wrote:
| You were in "gen pop". Honors classes are just that,
| honors classes. Gifted classes are another thing
| altogether.
|
| If you agree with the guy I responded to, in that you
| wouldn't mind removing the mentally challenged from the
| school system entirely, boy, that's not a good look for
| you.
|
| Because the difference between the average student to
| those with severe learning disabilities is the same as
| the difference between truly gifted students and even the
| honors students. And here's how you can tell the
| difference. Honors classes are always a full class. I've
| not been in a single honors class that wasn't the average
| class size. Gifted classes are like 5 to 10 students. I
| personally knew every other gifted student in my high
| school. Grades 9 - 12, knew them all. There were not that
| many, roughly 30 any given year. Across all four grades.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Special Ed isn't just mentally handicapped kids. It is also
| deaf kids and dyslexic kids and adhd kids and more.
| int0x2e wrote:
| I suspect you haven't met too many people in these
| programs. I had a student in one of my university programs
| who was handicapped and could barely see 3ft in front of
| him. Guy had to ride in a motorized chair, get guided
| around campus, and use a super-zoom lens and a laptop
| screen that made everything 10x-50x its size to be able to
| read the whiteboard/presentations. I'm sure none of that
| stuff was cheap.
|
| But that guy was awesome, fun, and super clever. His lowest
| score was an A-, and he had a great character. I'm sure he
| had to work ten times harder than I ever did just to get
| into that position, but I never heard him complain.
| Personally, I think keeping a mind as great as his in some
| sort of hedonic trance instead of letting him learn and
| contribute would have been a great loss, and possibly quite
| cruel.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| He probably hasn't, but we have to look at total numbers,
| not anecdotes.
|
| What do countries with education systems that are
| superior to the US in almost every metric do with these
| kids? We need to look at the best way to handle it, not
| just how much we care in the abstract.
| notch656a wrote:
| >Guy had to ride in a motorized chair, get guided around
| campus, and use a super-zoom lens and a laptop screen
| that made everything 10x-50x its size to be able to read
| the whiteboard/presentations. I'm sure none of that stuff
| was cheap.
|
| Did the University pay for that? Or did that student /
| his family carry pretty much all those costs, except
| maybe the campus being built to ADA requirements? If a
| parent wants to spend 10x on their kid verse the
| 'average' kid I have no problem with that at all.
| vkou wrote:
| Just because people are claiming to be doing work that's
| vital for DEI doesn't mean they are actually vital for DEI.
| elforce002 wrote:
| This is true in almost every country. Education is a money
| pit.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Education is the opposite of a money pit, education is an
| investment. Even if it is managed poorly,you are better off
| than the country with a people that can't read.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Education is a money pit._
|
| How exactly do you mean this?
|
| The U.S. spent $90.5 billion for "Elementary, Secondary,
| and Vocational Education" in 2021* (a subset of "Education,
| Training, Employment, and Social Services"), which is 1.3%
| of $6.82 trillion in total 2021 government expenditures.
| Compare to $696.5B for Medicare, $754.8B for National
| Defense, etc.
|
| If anything, this illustrates how relatively unimportant a
| base level of education is in the U.S.
|
| * https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-
| guide/spend...
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The US government spends significantly more on education
| than the military, ~$800B on K-12 education alone. On a
| per student basis, the US spends more than almost any
| other country in the world. If US education is poor, it
| isn't for lack of government spending.
|
| Per the US Department of Education[0], the US spends 34%
| more per student than the OECD average. At the post-
| secondary level, the US spends _double_ the OECD average.
|
| [0]
| https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-
| exp...
| munificent wrote:
| You're only looking at federal funding here. Most public
| school funding in the US comes from states.
|
| My state of Washingon spent $17.5 billion on schooling
| this year, on top of that federal funding.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Thank you for making that very important point.
|
| That looks like ~28% of the state budget, and per-student
| spending appears to very high (the 4th highest in the
| U.S.). Washington is spending 1.5X per student as
| compared to California, and is apparently not seeing
| commensurate improvements. I wonder if there are folks
| working on debugging the apparent inefficiencies of state
| education systems.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's often not even state budget in the US. In the case
| of my town, while I believe some money comes from the
| state in the form of grants etc., about 60% of my town's
| property taxes go to funding the elementary school and a
| split (with two other towns) of the regional high school
| district.
| yourcousinbilly wrote:
| "Total expenditures for public elementary and secondary
| schools in the United States were $800 billion in 2018-19
| (in constant 2020-21 dollars). This amounts to $15,621
| per public school pupil enrolled in the fall of that
| year."
|
| https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
| balderdash wrote:
| Yeah except 1) discretionary spending (including defense
| is like 25% of total spending (with defense ~1/2 of
| that), so the 90b is a meaningful part of discretionary
| spending. 2) as others have pointed out, the vast
| majority of (80%-90%+?) is funded by state and local
| government.
|
| https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57172
| rayiner wrote:
| As explained below your numbers are off by an order of
| magnitude. But I'm shocked to see such a basic
| misconception about how our government works on HN of all
| places.
| moeris wrote:
| > 2. Well, they are. A teaching certification used to only
| require two years of higher learning compared to typical 4
| for other things. That said, most teachers are actually more
| highly educated than the average person because schools use
| educational attainment as direct basis for pay.
|
| Incorrect: it depends on the state, the subject, and the
| grade level. For secondary education of a core subject, in
| Michigan, for example, I had to take all of the classes for a
| normal 4-year degree in the subject, plus taking the
| equivalent of two years of education classes. Taking 18-20
| credit hours per semester, it took me five years to graduate.
| So the requirements can actually be much more difficult than
| a normal degree.
|
| When I taught Title I, there was an additional requirement
| that you had to be "highly qualified". That typically meant a
| 4-year degree out equivalent experience, no matter the
| subject or grade level.
|
| Many teachers have a master's not due to pay, as you claim,
| but because states essentially mandate it. In Michigan you're
| required to get continuing education credits. I believe the
| requirement drops off once you have a master's. So it doesn't
| make a lot of sense not to get one.
| prepend wrote:
| Administration seems to be entirely manually based and has
| lots of positions that should be consolidated or automated.
|
| For example, each school in my county has at least one person
| dedicated to managing iPads and tech equipment. This isn't
| the networking and server support or even desktop support,
| that's done centrally. This is just a human who hands them
| out, collects them, and processes warranty claims. The person
| knows nothing about the equipment and is basically just an
| asset manager.
|
| That's one of many examples of people who don't perform much
| value add and take resources from higher priorities. Why not
| hire a dedicated librarian who also manages devices but can
| help with organizing information, research, etc.
| munificent wrote:
| In many schools, the librarian _is_ also the ad hoc asset
| manager. But that 's yet another symptom of the problem the
| article talks about. Managing tech equiment _takes a lot of
| time_ , and foisting that problem onto the librarian means
| they either do a shittier job being a librarian
| (recommending books to kids, etc.) or they work longer
| hours for no additional pay.
|
| You might argue that managing inventory should be automated
| but... that's just not how systems involving lots of random
| people work. The reason it's a full-time job to keep track
| of iPads and laptops is because the people using those
| things are kids and distracted parents. Stuff gets lost,
| power adapters get yanked and broken, etc. A parent stuffs
| an iPad in a random bin in the teacher's classroom. They
| think they "returned" it, but no one knows it's in there.
| Someone has to do actual communication and legwork to sort
| all that out. It's a real job.
| prepend wrote:
| My point wasn't that asset management was easy. It does
| take time.
|
| My point is that hiring an iPad manager as a 100% human
| is a bad idea. I suggested hiring an additional
| librarian, not adding extra work to the existing
| librarian.
| greedo wrote:
| Librarians aren't just people who like books. They have
| specialized skills, and usually have a master's degree.
| Librarians in many school districts have a teaching
| credential in addition to a Masters. The idea of hiring a
| person as specialized as a librarian to manage iPads
| shows an extraordinary misunderstanding of librarians.
| prepend wrote:
| My kids have gone through about 9 schools. None of the
| librarians had masters degrees.
|
| The librarians in my city manage computers in the library
| and manage short term loaners of tablets and laptops.
|
| I work with librarians who have masters and phd and I
| don't work in education. It's an interesting job.
|
| I think I have enough of an understanding that it's fair
| that a librarian could manage the iPad distribution for a
| school. It's busy two times of the year and other times
| they could do more productive tasks.
|
| The current iPad wrangler is there all year and does
| nothing beyond hand out and collect iPads and coordinate
| the repairs (<5%/year).
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't get why kids have such things. Other than typing
| there really isn't anything kids need to learn that is
| better done with a computer until high school. (Even then
| everything could be done with paper, but word processors
| are useful for writing)
| kube-system wrote:
| There's value to technology in the classroom beyond "it's
| better than [x]"
|
| A difference in learning format that can be beneficial to
| some. It is helpful just to introduce children to
| technology as well. And for some it may spark interests
| that paper does not.
| rayiner wrote:
| > That and parents/social fabric encourages and allows anti-
| social behavior and viewpoints.
|
| This is under-appreciated. I don't know about other 1990s
| kids, but a lot of my teachers growing up pushed a "question
| authority" attitude. Like, painting the _Tinker_ anti-Vietnam
| War protestors in a positive light, etc. "Follow social norms
| without questioning them" definitely wasn't a thing we were
| taught. Is it really surprising then that you ended up with a
| generation who thinks Joe Rogen is a smart guy they should
| listen to?
| erdos4d wrote:
| Same experience here going to school in the 90s, but I have
| the exact opposite take. I was taught to question authority
| and think this was one of the few really important lessons
| I received from school. I think that's why I was
| instinctively able to see through all the flag waving
| conformism after 9-11 and the current MAGA death cult. The
| lack of critical thinking I see from so many of my peers
| didn't arise from being taught to question authority, it's
| because many of these people are just dumb as hell and
| didn't learn jack shit at all.
| tptacek wrote:
| School funding has accounted for a majority of the outsized
| tax levy in the suburb of Chicago I live in, for decades,
| predating the movement towards formalized DEI (in fact, we're
| only recently beginning to hire dedicated DEI people). DEI is
| not the reason schools are so expensive.
|
| (That's not to say DEI is necessarily benign or useful; the
| jury is still out for me.)
| meetingthrower wrote:
| Re #1) I was a school board member and did exhaustive
| analysis of our budget. For primary education through high
| school, admin is NOT the root cause.
|
| If you take any school budget, and strip away everything that
| is not an actual classroom teacher, you will find that ~1/3
| or less goes to "frontline" teaching costs.
|
| Another 1/3 goes to special ed and all that is attendant with
| that. I mean, my district BOUGHT a car and hired a FULLTIME
| driver for one student who had to be taken to special
| programs. You have 1:1 class aids for many kids. Special ed
| is < 10% of kids, and even then the huge costs add up for the
| 1%. This is a massively subscale operation where every school
| is legally obligated to deliver services.
|
| Then you have the last 1/3 which is everything else. Food,
| facilities, sports, admin, transportation, etc. Admin is
| actually a leaner slice than most unless you are getting into
| really small schools where you have a principal on top of the
| teachers and that adds significant salary. In bigger schools
| this fades away with scale.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I taught in Oakland, CA thirty years ago as a substitute,
| so I saw a variety of schools.
|
| I saw the corrupt administrators in certain schools
| effectively diverting funds for things like special
| education by hiring their friends for the well-paid jobs
| like special ed and resource specialist and then calling a
| substitute (me) to actually do the job.
|
| And that isn't saying this always happens (I imagine the
| smaller suburban schools with people involved would have
| less of this). But the existence of these special programs
| present a great opportunity for graft and so there's
| incentive to avoid making special education at all
| efficient.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Wife often gets kids who need to be in special Ed. Takes a
| few weeks or more.
|
| Basically most of her time is spent dealing with the one
| kid. Or the aftermath. Not fun calling parents telling them
| that Susan is bleeding from a thrown chair. Of John was
| assaulted in the bathroom.
|
| Lots of time spent chasing kid when he runs away.
|
| Never mind her own wounds. These are kindergartners.
|
| This year She's currently has 2 full time aids for
| basically 2 kids. She only got the aids because she
| threatened to quit on the spot.
|
| She deals with other 22 kids.
|
| Pay is crap.
| notch656a wrote:
| That and the special ed kids get a high allotment of cash
| vs regular student. In effect, the normal kid is robbed
| by the special ed kid who gets disproportional budget per
| capita.
|
| A lot of time and talk gets spent about equity between
| poor and rich kids, or white and black kids, but you
| rarely see talk of normalizing the spending differential
| between special and gen pop.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Somehow, in the US government it's only "benefits" that
| are considered. "Cost" never is.
|
| As I said elsewhere, I defy anyone to claim that Finland
| doesn't care about kids' special needs. They have the
| best education in the world. What percent do _they_ spend
| on it?
| poopypoopington wrote:
| Why don't you find out and share with us rather than just
| asking questions and having others do the work for you.
| If Finland is really significant to this debate then
| share some data.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| > Why don't you find out and share with us
|
| because it's hard to get, poopy. Even for the US.
|
| I can find their total spending & their general policies
| on special ed (which I did share), but not that. On the
| other hand, we do have some Finnish people on HN, so
| maybe they know.
|
| > If Finland is really significant to this debate
|
| If? They have what's generally considered the best
| education in the world.
| jedberg wrote:
| I read a book a while back whose main argument was that we
| spend so much on the bottom 1% (special ed), why aren't we
| spending an equal amount on the top 1%? Why don't the
| smartest kids get one on one instruction and special
| resources that no one else gets?
|
| To be fair the author was fairly balanced and presented the
| arguments against, such as that they tend to come from
| wealthier families that can provide that support, that they
| will be fine on their own without it whereas the bottom 1%
| need the support, and so on.
|
| But it was an interesting thought experiment none the less.
| What would our society look like if we spent as much on the
| top 1% of students as the bottom? Or do we already via
| college education?
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Good data, but it's static. How has it changed over the
| last, say, 30 years?
|
| I'm guessing "special ed" costs have increased the most.
| Why is that?
| varjag wrote:
| The society used to care a lot less about special needs
| people.
| notch656a wrote:
| There's a finite amount of tax money available, so
| disproportionately allotment to a few special children
| effectively robs the other children of resources.
| spoils19 wrote:
| Agreed. We also have to consider the comparative ROI.
| meetingthrower wrote:
| This data is REALLY hard to get. For me to do it, I had
| to go line by line through the budget.
|
| For example, all the classroom aids are typically
| assigned as teaching costs. But the reality is that they
| are assigned to individual students with IEPs (individual
| education plans), ergo, they should be categorized as
| special ed.
|
| Same thing in pulling out transportation. Or tuition to
| other districts. Admin dealing with special ed grants and
| recordkeeping. It goes on and on...
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| It IS hard to get, and that's why the former school board
| member's estimate is valuable.
| bena wrote:
| Education and social services are one of the areas where
| we really shouldn't be leaning _that_ hard on ROI. The
| return is a well taken care of populace. Yes, it may
| cost, but we pay that cost because we 're not assholes.
| scarmig wrote:
| Those are still returns, just not monetary ones. You can
| get plenty of buy in that educational outcomes are good
| in themselves, but schools fail at that basic metric.
|
| On the other hand, as a way to provide social services to
| underprivileged children they are pretty decent. But
| that's not what they're advertised as (school isn't known
| as an acronym for Social Care and Health Out Of a
| Location), and people end up pissed.
| [deleted]
| zuminator wrote:
| I would argue that ROI is extremely important in
| education. It's just that the "return" on our investment
| is not purely financial. Producing students who will be
| competent to effectively participate in and wisely run
| the society of tomorrow is a large part of the return
| that we seek. So, to that extent it may be that high
| special needs costs are worth it if they demonstrably
| help students become self-sufficient instead of dependent
| wards of the state. I can't say for sure that they _are_
| worth it, I 'm saying that the mere fact that they're
| expensive doesn't mean they aren't cost-effective in the
| greater sense.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Are you saying "whatever it costs, it doesn't matter"?
| Because I can't agree with that. Nor is it good public
| policy to just be "not assholes."
|
| The absolute dollar amount does matter, and it has
| nothing to do with being assholes or not. There are
| different ways to meet children's needs and spending an
| infinite amount of money is just not sustainable.
| kube-system wrote:
| The benefits to disability accommodation are primarily
| non-monetary, which is why market forces do an awful job
| of providing them.
| varjag wrote:
| It's not just the money. The attitude to special needs
| children (and disabilities in general) was a lot worse.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Number that would be interesting to have:
|
| In Finland and Singapore (two countries with education
| systems among the top in the world):
|
| 1) What's the percentage of education spending that goes
| to special ed?
|
| Looking at Finland, we can find their total spending:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/538122/general-
| governmen...
|
| and we can find ample evidence that they care just as
| much about special needs kids as the US does, if not
| more:
|
| https://www.heischools.com/blog/finlands-approach-to-
| special...
|
| What I'm having a harder time finding is: what _percent_
| of the education budget goes to special ed?
| kube-system wrote:
| Yes, disabilities are expensive to accommodate. That's
| why we have laws like the ADA. Because when given the
| option to disregard the disabled, many will choose do so.
|
| This in turn leads to building a society in which the
| disabled are discarded as an inconvenience to society,
| rather than as people with equal rights to public
| accommodation.
| notch656a wrote:
| >discarded
|
| If I give Johnny, Jimmy, and Karen an equal investment of
| $20 and 20 hours of labor each for their education, I
| haven't "discarded" Karen, even if she needs more money
| and more time to get the same equality of outcome. In the
| same vein, I don't at all want to "discard" special ed
| children, I just want any public funds provided to the
| other children to be a nearly equal monetary investment.
|
| >That's why we have laws like the ADA
|
| The period after passing of the ADA was associated with
| sharp drops in employment inclusion of the disabled [0].
| The ADA may have actually been one of the biggest drivers
| of the discarding of the disabled. Not only that, the ADA
| encouraged racketeering against business owners for
| disingenuous accommodation complaints (someone off the
| street runs up, asked to use your bathroom, you allow the
| public to use it just this once and _bam_ ADA complaint
| as they were secretly working for a lawyer checking for
| the "right" kind of grab bar) where businesses sometimes
| end up closing accommodations to the public. Personally I
| am heavily against the ADA as I believe eliminating these
| "protections" helps protect the disabled's inclusion
| within society.
|
| [0] https://economics.mit.edu/files/17
| kube-system wrote:
| An equal monetary investment for disabled children would
| mean they don't have a teacher. You might be able to
| teach 50 non-disabled children with 2 teachers that costs
| $100K each to employ.
|
| An equal $4000/student/year is not enough to hire anyone
| for a special needs student, who 1) won't be able to
| benefit from the economy of scale in a normal classroom
| and 2) has needs that require a larger portion of a
| person's time to attend to.
|
| You need many multiple times the investment to
| accommodate kids with special needs _because they have
| special needs_.
| notch656a wrote:
| If the school can't or won't educate the student with
| his/her equal allotment, then the school needs to return
| the monetary allotment to the parents for parental
| discretion on how to educate the child. If the state
| fails to provide the service with the allotment
| available, you don't just start taking from the other
| kids' pie.
|
| >An equal $4000/student/year
|
| You're off by almost 4x the average if you live in the
| US. For reference, for the $~16k spent per year, I was
| able to (privately) hire someone to take care of my
| infant over 40 hours a week (and all 12 months), an
| infant that needed around the clock care and couldn't be
| counted on to go unwatched for even a few seconds and who
| constantly irritated others with utterly mind-shattering
| screaming colic.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| I like this, because it would probably be better both for
| society _and_ for the kids.
|
| Let's say the state spends $15K per student with no
| disabilities. The state says to the parent, "OK, we'll
| give you $25K to take care of your kid."
|
| The parents grumble, but they find a school that caters
| to those kids and will take that voucher. Would it be
| _much_ worse than they 're getting now? I doubt it. If it
| is, the state can subsidize that school, and probably
| _still_ end up spending less than they are now.
|
| Now it's a question of money, as it should be for a
| state-wide program. Would the state say "we'll give you
| $150K to take care of your kid?" Probably not. Really
| extreme cases that _need_ that much money could be
| handled by other public & private organizations, but the
| state gains a measure of reasonableness for the school
| budget.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| "expensive" but everything has a limit. Even losing a
| limb or an eye has a dollar cost associated with it, if
| you look in the right tables. Pretending that there is no
| limit, or that the choice is a binary "no limit" vs.
| "don't give a shit" is just not responsible.
| kube-system wrote:
| I agree. The standard is not infinite accommodation but
| reasonable accommodations.
| azinman2 wrote:
| You say that like we're overspending on spending ed. I
| don't understand that position. Of course they require more
| resources than the average student - they're special cases,
| literally! To take that away would be devastating for
| society's most vulnerable, as most parents aren't equipped
| with the skills or resources to be able to do any different
| with their children. Some cases are extreme. Should we just
| let them either fail regular classes many years over or
| become extremely disruptive? How is that good for anyone?
|
| It's easy to say X is expensive or Y takes up Z part of the
| budget. We saw a lot of that with the whole defund the
| police movement. But no one asks what should X cost? Maybe
| it's already at the required level, or even less, despite
| it being such a large percentage of the budget?
| mjevans wrote:
| Speculation: Maybe they aren't funded from a distinct
| resource pool and are instead assumed to be a percentage
| of the whole that is too small to care about. However
| over the years the number or cost of providing service
| has gone up to the point where the current expectations
| are an undue burden on the rest of the group. If that is
| the case then the funding should be split off at the
| source into it's own portion and receive clearer
| representation in funding deciding bodies.
| meetingthrower wrote:
| It's said without (much) judgement. In the abstract, it
| seems exactly right to spend on it.
|
| But the reality is it a) very expensive and b) very
| disruptive. As some siblings mention, you will often have
| a class with 3-4 adults, only one of which is a teacher.
| And then several students who (through no fault of their
| own) can barely hold it together. For the 90% of kids in
| class, this is not helpful. And distributing it amongst
| many classes vs a more centralized special ed delivery
| system compounds the cost.
|
| We have aggressively used the school system as a
| distribution point of social services. Again, this seems
| logical. But this takes focus away from what the main
| _intent_ is for the school system.
|
| There are pros and cons to this approach. I don't exactly
| know the answer, but instead of blaming administrators or
| teachers, we should be looking at what else we are asking
| schools to do besides educate. I know personally that the
| principals and superintendents spent less than 20% of
| their time thinking about how to make education better
| for the 90%.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I do think that the special ed model is completely
| broken. I think public schools overspend on special ed,
| and a lot of that funding is about getting special ed
| kids into the same classrooms as other kids and reducing
| the disruptions that they cause.
|
| Instead, all students would be better served (and served
| more efficiently) if schools would admit that people
| learn at different rates, and segregated the children
| based on that. The disruptive special ed kids, who are
| often years behind, should have very small classes with
| other kids of the same level and lots of attention from
| teachers. Conversely, the kids who are good at math or
| reading should be put in accelerated classes.
|
| Unfortunately, this kind of separation makes parents
| unhappy: they want their kids to all be in the "super
| special" classes despite the fact that on average, their
| kids are average. Parents are the ones who vote for
| school board, so school boards are unlikely to do
| anything that makes parents unhappy.
| yardie wrote:
| I think you are assuming special ed kids are academically
| slower and I have to push back on that. Special Ed
| encompasses students of all types. Some are mentally
| handicap, some have physical disabilities. One of my
| friends was wheelchair bound and had to leave class 5
| minutes before the bell in order not to get stuck in the
| hallway. Others have respiratory issues that require
| classrooms with special equipment, special buses, etc.
| And then you have the deaf and blind students, hardly
| slower than anyone else, but they still require
| additional help that has nothing to do with being
| disruptive. Most of them weren't disruptive, just
| students trying to get a solid education like everyone
| else, and as guaranteed by the Supreme Court.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| My understanding is that special ed money is distributed
| according to a power law: most kids classified as
| "special ed" actually need very little help (and very
| little money), and don't disrupt things for other
| students. I had a friend in my middle school Latin
| classes who was blind, and while he needed special
| written materials and some private tutoring, he didn't
| need any other help. The same is true of people with
| dyslexia, people who are wheelchair-bound, etc. They need
| some accommodations, but they are not where most of the
| money is spent.
|
| Conversely, the kids who do need tons of resources are
| usually kids with severe mental or developmental
| disabilities. These kids usually have a 1:1 aide telling
| them what to do and trying to help them either understand
| the lesson or work through a totally different lesson
| (which also must be a humiliating experience - I would
| never want that for my child). I have seen both of these
| cases in public schools. These kids would certainly be
| better served by having a teacher who can pay attention
| to their needs instead of a teacher who can't and an aide
| who tries to keep up.
| userabchn wrote:
| I think your response reveals how accustomed you have
| become to the luxury of having plentiful resources. You
| ask how it is good for anyone to not spend substantially
| more on students with special needs, but in many of the
| poorer countries of the world this attitude would be
| baffling. In many cases these students will never be able
| to contribute enough to society to recover what was
| invested in them. Hard choices have to be made that cause
| sadness, but unfortunately that's the way it is. If your
| country becomes less anomalously wealthy in the future,
| you may also have to make such decisions.
| azinman2 wrote:
| The article was about the US. My response is about the
| US. I believe in a more just American society that takes
| care of the most vulnerable, not just those that
| contribute the most.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I agree with some of your points but I'd take exception to:
| _" Partly because school in the US is boring and designed to
| grind out individuality in favor of making good industrial
| cogs."_
|
| If by industrial cog, you mean someone who's suited for work
| in manufacturing, the US certainly isn't producing those at
| even the level it's reduced manufacturing base needs. It's
| hard to say what the exact aim of the US education system is
| though it does produce some amount of people sort-of
| competent for the jobs that are out. It's one of X many
| bureaucracy/industries that both produce stuff, that once
| produced stuff quite efficiently but become more and more
| characterized by an interlocked combination of
| administrators/pseudo-entrepreneurs who use their connections
| and framework of capital investment to soak a large portion
| of the funds going into the industry. I mean, aside from
| education, you have health care, the police/judicial/prison
| complex, the construction industry (note recent mention of $4
| billion _planning_ in the creation of high speed rail) and
| etc. You could say the special product of the US education
| system is people appropriate to be either petty bureaucrat
| such as social workers or people appropriate to be client of
| the petty bureaucrats. But of course, the education still
| does, to some extent, teach people ordinary skills for more
| ordinary jobs but in fashion abusive to both teachers and
| children and profitably to those in the rackets.
| bodhiandphysics wrote:
| 1) healthcare. 2) education degrees are a problem. They make
| becoming a teacher financially very risky. They also don't seem
| to actually improve teacher quality
| drnonsense42 wrote:
| At this point, I think people who can say 1. with a straight
| face are either intellectually dishonest or just repeat things
| others say.
|
| The majority of teachers make a median US wage fairly early
| into their career and plenty make a multiple of it later on, on
| top of great benefits. Their job is no more challenging than
| nearly all other professions. "But they have to"... yes,
| everyone else has shit they have to deal with. The fact that
| the Waltons, crypto lottery winners, etc. exist is a separate
| problem that doesn't mean teachers are underpaid.
|
| Education majors are easier.The sky is blue. If we even
| remotely believe in a meritocracy (liberals often really don't
| when you dig into their beliefs, granted) starting teachers
| should not make as much as a starting EE major. Nobody in their
| right mind would or should pursue an engineering career if
| teaching paid equivalently.
| [deleted]
| CivBase wrote:
| This title is absolutely false, at least where I live. My wife
| and many of my friends and family are teachers. There is a ton of
| competition and all of them have had a hard time getting a stable
| job teaching something they don't hate. Most of them have either
| moved across the country, feigned religious practice, or accepted
| positions nobody else would take with little opportunity for
| advancement just to get their feet in the door.
|
| My wife went the "positions nobody else would take with little
| opportunity for advancement" route and even amidst the so-called
| "shortages" she has been struggling and failing at finding a
| normal teaching position - both in her current district and
| nearby metro districts - even though she has a stunning
| reputation and 6 years of in-classroom teaching experience.
|
| There is no shortage. Teaching is an overcrowded job market and
| has been for a while, despite the poor pay and miserable
| conditions. I blame the education system itself for giving would-
| be teachers such unrealistic expectations for occupational
| outlook and work environment. The author said "Everyone secretly
| thinks they can teach because they watched Mr. Holland's Opus"
| and she's right, but one of my biggest frustrations is how the
| post-secondary education system does nothing to address that
| mentality.
|
| But there's more to this than just the title, so let's take a
| look at the other headers.
|
| > Almost nobody respects teachers.
|
| Also false. The majority of people respect teachers. When my wife
| wears anything indicating she's a teacher outside of work, she
| often gets compliments on her position, words of encouragement,
| and general appreciation from random passerbys. I've never once
| heard anyone make a snide remark about teachers to her.
|
| The difficulty my wife seems to have is with parents and admins.
| The admins love to micromanage and usually end up wasting time
| and making things worse. Most parents are fine (some are even
| great), but there's always a few that have unreasonable
| expectations and would rather blame teachers for their child's
| misbehavior than hold their child responsible. Those are the ones
| she talks about, but she admits they are a minority.
|
| > Teachers are beyond burned out.
|
| Absolutely.
|
| > Americans think it's "not about the money."
|
| Is that really true though? I've never met anyone who has
| outwardly expressed that. You have to have _some_ passion for
| teaching to bear with it, but I think most Americans realize that
| money is pretty important for getting by in life and teachers are
| no exception.
|
| > Teaching has become truly miserable.
|
| Yup.
|
| > It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
|
| I don't really understand this one. The author talks about how
| schools are accepting worse and worse teachers, but she doesn't
| really elaborate on how that is a "self-fulfilling prophecy".
|
| > America doesn't deserve its teachers.
|
| Don't we, though? I think we deserve exactly what the monstrous
| system we've created has given us - both the good and bad.
|
| I think there's a lot that can be done to fix the US education
| system. I think funding is part of it, but I also think starting
| there is a grave mistake. Putting more money into a bad system
| just produces more bad results. Fix the system, then invest more
| into it. I have lots of ideas on how to "fix" it, but this
| comment has gone on long enough.
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