Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record • Hacker News Board

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#131

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 2:01 AM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #71

lr4444lr wrote: post #53

Lots of comments to the tune of "pay teachers more." Teachers in large urban areas with strong unions tend to be paid quite well, especially factoring in benefits, and it doesn't necessarily correlate that well with various metrics of "success" in education (standardized test scores, on-time graduation rate, fewer violent incidents) once you look into individual cases and see through the administrative means by which…

In the area I taught, median pay was about $60k/yr. After 20 years and getting more advanced degrees, you could get to $80k/yr. Most of the teachers I worked with worked more hours per year than just about any software engineer I know. Only very lazy or very tenured teachers were getting the fabled summer vacation or winter break. I have more income, more vacation, and better hours as a developer than I ever did as a…

https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/EDFP_a_0013...

> Using data from the American Time Use Survey, I find that teachers work an average of 34.5 hours per week on an annual basis (38.0 hours per week during the school year and 21.5 hours per week during the summer months).

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#132

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

trevyn wrote: post #127

allcentury wrote: post #14

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

Seems reasonable; grades are only partially a function of raw potential — effort plays a huge role as well. If a student is good enough to get an A-, I see no reason why demonstrating a certain amount of additional effort (extra credit) couldn’t get her to an A.

The student demonstrated an adequate amount of effort to achieve an A-. Any "additional" effort should have been expended at that time. Alternately, the student can put that effort towards future assignments.

If the teacher wants to give out opportunities for extra credit (maybe because they feel the class is particularly challenging in general), they can do so. But students and parents are not entitled to extra credit, particularly those who already received a very respectable grade.

(I realize that for certain colleges, an A- isn't enough, but inflating everyone's grade doesn't help the situation.)

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#133

Post by dorchadas » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #126

dorchadas wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Currently a teacher myself, and I'm seriously considering quitting after this year. I enjoy teaching, but there's just so much BS crap that I have to deal with. Parents here (rural area in a Southern state) have no desire for education and often think their kids shouldn't have to do anything to pass. So I constantly get emails from Little Johnny's mother about his math grade when Little Johnny literally hasn't p…

> And then there's education classes. They're all jokes, and the "research" is so BSed it's not even funny. I knew someone who was taking these classes, they said the same thing. One time I saw a great takedown of education studies, but I could never find it again. Do you have any examples of or links describing the phenomenon how atrociously bad the education of educators is?

Unfortunately I don't, but I'd love to find that link you mentioned.

As to my own experience with them, they're all very generalized and often don't actually test how well a student has learned something. I see these a lot with tech use. Calculators help test scores, but do students actually learn how to do the math? No, take away the calculator and see; often they can't even do basic multiplication without their fingers.

Or you'll see studies generalized from groups of 10 students, without taking other variables into count. I remember one where 20 kids improved after a certain strategy in an upper middle class private school. Authors then said this is the wya to do things and it should be implemented in lower socioeconomic class schools too.

And then the results often aren't meaningful and often feel forced, and really depend on how students feel on a given day and such... A student can easily bomb a test if they couldn't sleep the night before, and that score shouldn't show that they didn't necessarily learn with the intervention tested or whatever.

And that's just the studies. The actual classes are worse. I've learned nothing about education theory, and it's mostly just random teachers pushing their philosophy of teaching on us, or spouting off the research that agrees with it. And half my classes have been irrelevant. I teach high school math/science, and at least half my classes have been solely dedicated to elementary school apps/content. The one sole HS class I've taught was a joke where the teacher just went into how good dual credit was and how all HS should basically become community colleges... Without realizing that it isn't that way everywhere (our school's, for instance, is a joke and half of them don't transfer to other schools in-state).

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#134

Post by labster » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #12

It is not mentioned in this particular article and my teacher friends say that dealing with parents is a constant pain. Of course, not all parents are a pain. Only a few. Teachers are not in the profession to listen to why little high school age Johnny did not get an A on his paper, not the least because you, the parent, helped him write that paper.

Teachers should stop assigning tasks that necessitate parent participation, then. I was assigned to write a novella in sixth grade, for crying out loud. I like creative writing now, but I didn't back then, and the assignment sure didn't help.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#135

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #35

allcentury wrote: post #14

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

Okay, I get that's more work, and sounds like a hassle. So this isn't a criticism of your mom. But on the A- and extra credit issue, I never understood the point of rigid grading schemes. I've taught at a college level, and I always give students the chance to improve their grades if they want to put in additional work. To do otherwise seems like saying "nope, even if you learn more and improve to the point of A-leve…

In the real world, you don’t get a chance to get “extra credit work” when you don’t do your job at the level the job expects of you.

Why should students be coddled instead of being prepared for the real world? I have a high school student who is always getting better grades because of “extra credit” and “make up tests”. I cringe every time he does it.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#136

Post by kokokokoko » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 2:09 AM UTC

allcentury wrote: post #14

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

If anyone has ever lived by the mantra "The worst that can happen is that they will say no.", this is what happens to a culture as a whole as more and more people behave that way.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#137

Post by randomdata » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 2:09 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #42

neom wrote: post #25

One of my favourite hypotheticals to play out is what would be like if we somehow paid public school teachers and emergency services/law enforcement professionals an extreme of today, a million usd a year, and increased the difficulty to attain this work. I usually end up in a pretty good place but I'd be curious what others think/why this couldn't work?

> I usually end up in a pretty good place but I'd be curious why this could not work? It would be fantastically expensive. Chicago has 21,000 teachers. Paying them $1 million per year would cost $21 billion, dwarfing the city's current $3.8 billion budget. Even paying them $100,000 per year on average would cost half the city's budget. And there is little reason to believe it would yield better results. American teac…

> And there is little reason to believe it would yield better results.

This is an important point. $100,000+ per year is not unheard of for teachers in Ontario (conveniently public sector incomes >$100,000 are required to publicly disclosed[1]), and they have problems with graduates not having even basic literacy and numeracy skills[2].

[1] https://www.ontario.ca/page/public-sector-salary-disclosure

[2] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-one-in-four-o...

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#138

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 2:11 AM UTC

xamuel wrote: post #129

shados wrote: post #11

Articles like these, while only loosely related, always make me think that the software engineering bubble has to pop. You have people with ton of education busting their behind dealing with little brats all day to try to make sure they have a future... During that time, some bro who read a couple of books and hammered on his keyboard, and MAYBE did a 3 months bootcamp gets bummed if he can't pull in 100k in one of t…

Most people wouldn't be able to cut it in software dev, whether they did the 3 month bootcamp or even if they managed to pass a 4-year university program. 99% of the time, Little Jimmy's 4th grade English teacher would have a snowball's chance in hell as a professional developer.

[deleted]

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#139

Post by arbie » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 2:11 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #118

e1g wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is often the case for internal comms in a large company overran with administrators / coordinators. Yet parents are more like customers than colleagues - and no operation can ignore 90% of external / customer comms and stay alive (to say nothing of effective!)

Parents aren’t customers in a government school. Customers pay money. Parents are stakeholders, along with teachers, the teachers union and local politicians who compete for teachers votes. Children are not stakeholders because they have no power and their opinions are irrelevant. A government school has an enormous advantage over private schools in that it’s free at the point of use. You can be a lot worse than the…

Parents in competitive school districts also shell out exorbitant sums, both in property taxes and during school fundraisers.

It has given rise to a bargaining mentality.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#140

Post by bumby » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 2:11 AM UTC

esturk wrote: post #84

djrobstep wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's sad is that all this desperate competition by parents to improve their kid's grades is zero-sum: A noisy but pointless rearrangement of positions on the socio-economic ladder. One kid getting into Princeton means another misses out. Very little of it results in actual useful learning or eventual public benefit.

But that's how most of society works. Only one elected official is selected. Only one co-worker is promoted. Etc. I don't think society cares who fills the position but said individuals care.

Society cares when it comes at the price of a true meritocracy. The book "Dream Hoarders" speaks to this