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Sanders calls for minimum salary of $60000 for public school teachers

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Re: Sanders calls for minimum salary of $60000 for public school teachers

#191

Post by kneebonian »

bfeynman wrote: post #163
news_to_me wrote: post #44

My first “real” job after college (2013) I started at $60k. It was more than my mom, an elementary school teacher, ever made. It felt embarrassing. Teachers are at least as valuable as software developers (probably more), given their impact on society. Why do they make so little?

maybe because "impact on society" is a totally delusional way to make pay scales. Pay is almost entirely based on talent scarcity. Thats why low skill jobs are lower pay, and highly skilled professions pay more accordingly. It doesn't matter at all what your impact is, think of people who work(ed) in mines or in the fields.

I'd argue it's not just talent scarcity it's measurable talent scarcity. There are really great teachers out there that do a fantastic job there are terrible teachers that suck, they are mostly paid the same because it's hard to differentiate between a good teacher and a bad teacher.

Whereas with a software developer especially at small orgs their ability is easier to measure and evaluate.

Re: Sanders calls for minimum salary of $60000 for public school teachers

#192

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

HEmanZ wrote: post #128

This is loosely related, but every time I think of public school teacher salaries my mind goes to the public school teachers I know. As a group they are… exceptionally ungifted. As just one example, I lived with two middle school teachers in Texas for a few years. They probably couldn’t pass the grade they were teaching. I have never met two professionals with so many credentials (MS in Education) and so little sense…

[dead]

Re: Sanders calls for minimum salary of $60000 for public school teachers

#194

Post by kristopolous »

mwint wrote: post #166
news_to_me wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What demand though? Nobody “buys” what public teachers produce - it’s a public service. It’s up to the state (and ultimately, voters) to decide what teachers make. And it’s even harder for teachers to advocate for themselves in states where teacher unions are banned.

There’s absolutely a supply demand cycle here. If wages are too low, teachers will do something else. School quality suffers, parents (may) make noise, politicians raise the wages (or do something else to appease their constituents). The voters are the customers.

Can you give any material historical examples to support your hypothesis?

Re: Sanders calls for minimum salary of $60000 for public school teachers

#195

Post by aisengard »

HEmanZ wrote: post #128

This is loosely related, but every time I think of public school teacher salaries my mind goes to the public school teachers I know. As a group they are… exceptionally ungifted. As just one example, I lived with two middle school teachers in Texas for a few years. They probably couldn’t pass the grade they were teaching. I have never met two professionals with so many credentials (MS in Education) and so little sense…

Here's a good way to think about it - there is no world where education improves if teachers are not a well-paid profession. It's a race to the bottom, as we're seeing today. So if you want to get better, you have to create incentives for otherwise smart/talented teachers to enter the profession, rather than other professions. The only way to do that is to provide some base level of pay that would be enticing. Once you clear that bar, then you work on things that are unique to the profession, like protecting teachers from abusive parents.

If you don't care about education and you just want to extract the most money from parents for the least amount of effort, you do nothing and let the market take over.

Re: Sanders calls for minimum salary of $60000 for public school teachers

#196

Post by cs702 »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #147
cs702 wrote: post #77

I'd be OK with raising the minimum salary for public school teachers a LOT more, BUT ONLY for teachers who graduate in the top 10% of their high-school class and in the top 10% of their college class -- like in Finland, which has one of the world's best public school systems. It makes sense that if public schools hire teachers only from the most academically competent population in a country, and pay them well, those…

Yes we should all aspire to be more like the Fins. Which has a population slightly smaller than that of, checks notes, Missouri.

I didn't say we should aspire to be more like the Finnish. What I did say is that I would be OK with teachers getting paid a lot more if they are drawn from the top of the distribution of academic performance in the country, which is what public schools in Finland do. It makes sense that if public schools hire teachers only from the most academically competent population in the country, and pay them well, they will improve the quality of public education.

Please don't attack a straw man!

Re: Sanders calls for minimum salary of $60000 for public school teachers

#197

Post by teucris »

macinjosh wrote: post #39
mempko wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't teachers make six figures? I mean after all, half the people here just put buttons on websites and get paid six figures.

Because teacher salaries, like the salaries of people here, should be determined by the market not by warm and fuzzy feelings.

The market has plenty of evidence that better education leads to significant economic benefit[0]. Specifically, high quality education, which requires highly trained teachers, leads to higher economic growth (0.63 percentage points per half of a standard deviation of test scores, normalized against other factors)

0: https://www.educationnext.org/education-and-economic-growth/

Re: Sanders calls for minimum salary of $60000 for public school teachers

#198

Post by tristor »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #160
dekken_ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm still shocked to this day that Obama didn't get assassinated. I thought he'd make it less than a year.

Why? Why would you imagine that a globalist neoliberal who continued growth of funding to the military industrial complex would end up assassinated while POTUS?

Re: Sanders calls for minimum salary of $60000 for public school teachers

#199

Post by mattbuilds »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #116
bfrog wrote: post #76

[flagged]

There's a significant number that would rather do it themselves or simply be given vouchers to select an educational institution of their choice, because they believe government-provided educators don't teach things correctly or they want their children to be provided religious-focused instruction.

If they want to do it themselves, then they can fund it themselves. I don't want tax dollars going to individual vouchers.

Re: Sanders calls for minimum salary of $60000 for public school teachers

#200

Post by elil17 »

mwint wrote: post #155
megabless123 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It hasn't solved Chicago Public Schools' problems. sure but it probably has solved many financial problems for Chicago teachers, which is a good enough reason to implement a tool like this.

Companies (and governments) never raise wages to solve problems for employees. They raise wages to solve problems for themselves. Maybe that’s the stated reason, and maybe it’s used to drum up political support, but it’s never the real reason.

Sure, for companies. But the government is supposed to act in the interest of all citizens, including the citizens it employs.
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