Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

jseliger.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 46 posts

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#11

Post by redxaxder »

aik wrote: post #4

> "The first time you teach a class, it’s incredibly hard and time consuming, but the difficulty drops like a logarithm to a relatively low plateau after you’ve done it a few times. This appears to be reflected in data." I'm not entirely sure if this is a good reflection of the teaching role, or at least what it should be. Also, this statement to me gives the impression that teaching is a fairly static or fixed proce…

As another graduate student who teaches, I can confirm jseliger's claim. Teaching difficulty drops of insanely fast. Don't think of it as making the task automatic, but rather having familiar territory off of which to base the things you say.

After one semester teaching a class, you discover what ideas the students tend to find most confusing and what types of errors are the most common.

Having leftover notes from the last time you taught saves you you most of the planning work, too.

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#12

Post by noonespecial »

timjahn wrote: post #2

My wife is a high school English teacher. The ongoing joke with teachers is they get 3 months a year off. What other profession gets that, right? Speaking from experience, she generally brings home work every night (grading, lesson planning, etc). Weekends too. This fluctuates based on time of year (grading a round of research papers, preparing new lessons for a new quarter, etc). Summers off? Kinda. New lessons and…

You wife is underpaid. She cares. The guy in the class right next to her is overpaid at the very same salary. He doesn't care. That's the super-hard to solve problem a the center of this debate.

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#13

Post by pmb »

roundsquare wrote: post #6
timjahn wrote: post #2

My wife is a high school English teacher. The ongoing joke with teachers is they get 3 months a year off. What other profession gets that, right? Speaking from experience, she generally brings home work every night (grading, lesson planning, etc). Weekends too. This fluctuates based on time of year (grading a round of research papers, preparing new lessons for a new quarter, etc). Summers off? Kinda. New lessons and…

"But besides all that, teaching is a profession that is charged with preparing and educating our youth for tomorrow. Obviously, teachers go into it knowing this, and often for that very reason. But in my eyes, that's quite a responsibility. There are plenty of better paying jobs out there with less vacation that, at the end of the day, don't make much of a difference." If you ask me, that's all the more reason to inc…

Do you know of any good techniques to measure teacher performance?

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#14

Post by pmb »

maeon3 wrote: post #7

The reason teacher's salaries are set incorrectly is because supply and demand has been pushed out of the equation. 1. some teachers can't be laid off. 2. schools don't get proportionally more money for exceptional work. 3. most parents are indifferent to maxing out their child's education quality. 4. most of the teachers effort must be applied to the hellions and problem-makers. optimization for max output requires…

How can you tell? How can signals propagate through such a system?

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#15

Post by T-R »

maeon3 wrote: post #7

The reason teacher's salaries are set incorrectly is because supply and demand has been pushed out of the equation. 1. some teachers can't be laid off. 2. schools don't get proportionally more money for exceptional work. 3. most parents are indifferent to maxing out their child's education quality. 4. most of the teachers effort must be applied to the hellions and problem-makers. optimization for max output requires…

I agree with your overall points, but sarcasm and characterizations of those who disagree with you as communists isn't conducive to conversation.

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#16

Post by aik »

redxaxder wrote: post #11
aik wrote: post #4

> "The first time you teach a class, it’s incredibly hard and time consuming, but the difficulty drops like a logarithm to a relatively low plateau after you’ve done it a few times. This appears to be reflected in data." I'm not entirely sure if this is a good reflection of the teaching role, or at least what it should be. Also, this statement to me gives the impression that teaching is a fairly static or fixed proce…

As another graduate student who teaches, I can confirm jseliger's claim. Teaching difficulty drops of insanely fast. Don't think of it as making the task automatic, but rather having familiar territory off of which to base the things you say. After one semester teaching a class, you discover what ideas the students tend to find most confusing and what types of errors are the most common. Having leftover notes from th…

Perhaps we need to talk in scales or include some comparators here. I completely agree that difficulty does drop some with more subject knowledge, teaching experience, and familiarity with the subject and types of questions and students, but by how much really? To me it sounds like it's being suggested that teaching becomes "easy"? Effortless? Not necessarily mentally taxing? Not necessarily time consuming? I can't see how one could _effectively_ teach and think this.

Again, I don't see teaching as simply "transferring" facts/knowledge. Students can test well and have no conceptual understanding whatsoever. Or, students can show understanding but have underlying mental models untouched (making them even more confused than previously). Both of these cases are failures.

The book "What the Best College Teachers Do" has amazing insights on how involved, dedicated, knowledgeable, and wise very successful and effective teachers are. The amount of thought and effort they put into their courses is staggering, so I'm approaching this discussion from that frame of mind, rather than what the average teacher (or student teacher) does.

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#17

Post by learc83 »

When I was in college several of my friends majored in early childhood education.

Without a doubt it has to be the easiest major out there. While I was writing papers, my friends were learning how to make name tags with construction paper and crayons, and learning kiddy songs (this is not an exaggeration).

The problem is that once you get the degree and jump through the hoops, you're in. That's all there is to it

If any idiot can become a teacher, and a bad teacher makes the same a great teacher, then the pay is going to end up as the average of what you'd pay a bad teacher and great one.

Side-note: my mom, who also has a degree in early childhood education, tells me that when she was there 30 years ago it was much more academically rigorous.

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#18

Post by T-R »

I just want to say thanks for the great post. I thought your comment on the other thread was particularly good, I'm glad to see you expand a bit more on it. Honestly, I was a little disappointed to see patio11 reference yummy's comments, since they really leave the impression that he has a horse in this race - it's nice to see a more even handed treatment of the matter.

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#19

Post by T-R »

jseliger wrote: post #9
timjahn wrote: post #2

My wife is a high school English teacher. The ongoing joke with teachers is they get 3 months a year off. What other profession gets that, right? Speaking from experience, she generally brings home work every night (grading, lesson planning, etc). Weekends too. This fluctuates based on time of year (grading a round of research papers, preparing new lessons for a new quarter, etc). Summers off? Kinda. New lessons and…

"Speaking from experience, she generally brings home work every night (grading, lesson planning, etc). Weekends too. This fluctuates based on time of year (grading a round of research papers, preparing new lessons for a new quarter, etc)." That might be true for her. Nonetheless, the plural of anecdote is not data; as I observe in the post: "According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the average teacher work…

Not that I have any reason to doubt the BLS data, but does anyone know of any other data on the issue? Everyone seems to be citing the same pdf.

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#20

Post by sliverstorm »

This seems to be sort of a catch-22.

If the quality of teachers was uniformly high, we could pay them all what they deserve to be paid and not have to worry about leeches so much.

If good teachers were paid what they deserve, the quality of teachers would be uniformly high.

Post reply on HN