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Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#751

Post by hysan »

treis wrote: post #332
Kapura wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's in Colorado. The teachers' union agreed to a pay cut & freeze during the Bush financial crisis; pay had had only started to rise again a few years ago. This is somewhat of a digression, but the extremely low rate of teacher pay (for a job that requires a Master's degree) limits the pool of available teachers greatly. The people taking these jobs typically must have some other way of supporting their family; eit…

> the extremely low rate of teacher pay (for a job that requires a Master's degree) limits the pool of available teachers greatly. Teacher pay is not extremely low. The median teacher salary is usually pretty close to the median salary for the state. Plus they get good benefits, a pension, and much more time off than other jobs. It's a solid middle class life.

Ehh... those statistics are often skewed. First hit on search for elementary school teacher median salary comparison[1]:

> ...median annual income of $58,230.

> This number would be above the average salary in the U.S., but it's the median of an awfully wide range of salaries. Elementary school teachers in the bottom 10% of income only made around $37,780, while those in the highest 10% could make as much as $95,270.

You then scroll down to the section on per-state numbers and see the wide gaps between states. You also see that this article, like others, suddenly jump to using mean instead of median.

I usually don't play this card, but show the data. You are likely only looking at a specific statistical lens that does not paint a real picture.

[1]: https://www.niche.com/blog/teacher-salaries-in-america/

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#752

Post by int_19h »

jimbokun wrote: post #488
RestlessMind wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see - US government instituted reasonably prompt lockdowns. They mailed one-time stimulus checks to everyone, gave 600$ unemployment insurance boosts, ramped up hospital capacities, opened up other support measures for businesses and allowed 50 parallel experiments (at state level) to see what works and what doesn't. Was the response perfect? Certainly not. Did some other countries do better? I'm sure we could…

The US has handled the pandemic worse than any country in the world, except maybe Brazil. Otherwise, I can't think of a country that has handled it worse. Which countries are doing a worse job than the US in handling Coronavirus, in your opinion?

Russia did very badly. First, lots of denial. Then, lockdowns so harsh in some places, Chinese could be jealous. And the burden was placed squarely on the businesses - the government effectively declared universal non-essential paid leave, but didn't subsidize it.

Oh, and the government successfully managed to use the epidemic as a cover-up for heretofore unseen levels of electoral fraud in the not-really-referendum on constitutional amendments.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#753

Post by oramit »

isthispermanent wrote: post #731
oramit wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so certain. There is extreme political polarization, yes, but I don't think we can honestly look at the situation at hand and not see the giant Trump shaped elephant in the room. He hasn't ever governed as a "unity" president. That has worked for him when things were generally humming along but it fails catastrophically in times of crisis. Lots of people (myself included) simply don't believe he can put aside…

What I'm saying is that if Sec. Clinton were in office the red states would be doing exactly what they're doing now. It wouldn't have made a lick of difference. I should have been more explicit on that. > Contrast this with Andrew Cuomo of New York... Exactly. I think this is part of the problem on the left. The desire to do something , anything, when sometimes doing nothing, or less, is the right thing. And then if…

Thanks for the clarification. I thought you meant a complete reversal. If Hillary were president I think red states would have resisted but its hard for me to imagine they would be doing it at the same level. Maybe i'm being too Pollyanna there.

I also agree that simply doing something, anything, isn't always the right approach. I'm an independent who hangs out with the left and there is a tendency to reach for the hammer of government a bit too often. The feds shouldn't have led the charge by any means, but once individual states had started to shut down, a coordinated federal response to get this fully under control would have been the best approach. I think the end game for this will be something like that.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#754

Post by pravda »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #115
kevmo wrote: post #30

Why wouldn't a teacher quit if they possibly could? The pay is peanuts, certainly not worth any serious immediate risk to your health.

It's a lot better than no pay at all! (Also fwiw, teacher salaries in the US do vary greatly by state. You won't make off like a bandit anywhere, but it's a perfectly respectable amount in some places.)

Teachers around me (NYC suburbs) are getting $200K compensation packages!

I consider that making out like a bandit. Only 186 days of work a year, summers off, can never be fired.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#755

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #696
selectodude wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And furthermore, there are locations in the United States that have handled the virus pretty well and are powerless to stop people from coming up there and messing it all up. “Mike, from Old Town, who did not want to share his last name, ordered a vodka Red Bull before getting back in line with friends at Old Crow Smokehouse’s curbside bar. He had just gotten back from a vacation in Dallas, Texas, with a friend, wher…

The one national level thing Trump could and should have done, but didn’t, is ban international and interstate travel.

[deleted]

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#756

Post by MereInterest »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #737
vkou wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they aren't, because they expel problem students, into the public system. Even if admissions are lottery-based, expulsions are not. Imagine two groceries. One that has to, by law, serve every kind of customer, and one that is allowed to throw out shoplifters, drunks, people high-out-of-their-minds-on-meth, etc. Which one of these will provide better groceries for lower prices?

Don't we want better groceries for lower prices? The question is if there is a net benefit in educational outcomes for the combined charter and public system.

Experimentally: No. Betsy Devos's implementation was tested in Detroit, and failed miserably at teaching children. Expanding it without major, major changes is irresponsible and immoral. Step 1 is a system that doesn't defund public schools in the process.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#757

Post by thephyber »

ska wrote: post #653
thephyber wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to see how differently we treat the low probability, high impact events like active shooters and terrorism, but we completely fail to do the far easier task of dealing with the high probability, unknown impact events.

do you think low probability, high impact events are handled well on average?

No. I think my intention when using the low-probability, high impact examples is that we over-invest by dedicating far too much time and too many resources on events that will likely never happen but we can't even prepare for / respond to the high probability events well. Far better to practice and iterate on improving our response to the latter which will give us the expertise to better handle the former.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#758

Post by treis »

oramit wrote: post #722
marcell wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus This statement implies that there's a way to completely eradicate the virus, eg. if everyone in the world stays locked in their homes for 6 weeks, then the virus will be eradicated. That's not realistic, the level of coordination required to make that happen does not exist. So eradicating the virus was never on the table, no matter ho…

I actually chose stomp over eradicate because I wanted to imply that there would still be some left but that it would be a manageable amount. That's interesting that you took it the opposite way; I'm sorry for the confusion. I agree, eradication was probably impossible in the United States. What I thought we all agreed on at the start of this thing was to lock down so we could "flatten the curve". Remember that? Whil…

We didn't snuff out hot spots. The virus was/is still in NYC and Washington. No matter how long we locked down for it would still be there waiting to emerge after the lock down ended. That was the problem with the lockdown. It was touted as a solution when its just a delaying tactic.

Schools are the same. Keeping them closed is just a delaying tactic. And like the lockdown, unless we delay until a vaccine then it's a pointless delay.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#759

Post by lemmonii »

tomohawk wrote: post #119

In Iceland, they did extensive testing, and genetic tracing of infections. Children infecting other children was extremely rare. In almost all cases, it was adults infecting them. There was only a single case of a child infecting an adult. https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/hunting-down-covi... Now that we have actual experience with the disease, hospitalization rates for children with covid is 5x lower than…

HN is feeling more and more like reddit every day. Why is this comment downvoted/flagged? It's the first well sourced scientific information I find in this thread.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#760

Post by dragonwriter »

rpiguy wrote: post #749
dragonwriter wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of the states that had the strictest lockdowns, NY, NJ, also had the worst outcomes. NYC metro ordered lockdowns after it was hard hit, because it was hit early on before there was a real understanding of what was going on. A lot of other places still haven’t peaked, the reopening push in response to overall national case decline was driven entirely by NY being past it's peak while the rest of the country comb…

It is normal for ICUs to be at or near capacity. This is also misleading journalism. Most ICUs are in “surge” cities right now are 20-30% Covid. Reporting that they are at capacity intimates that they are packed full of Covid patients and overflowing.

> Reporting that they are at capacity intimates that they are packed full of Covid patients and overflowing.

No, it suggests that if the COVID numbers go up, someone who should get ICU treatment, whether COVID or not, won't get it because there won't be capacity. Which is kind of an important fact in places where COVID numbers are trending upward.

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