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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

#241

Post by tombert »

candiddevmike wrote: post #204
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…

I would love to retire and become a public school teacher, but I will not go back to college for a bachelors degree in teaching. Make it easier to become a teacher and you'd see more people consider it, IMO.

What state do you live in? A lot of states will allow you to get a teaching certification as long as you have any relevant bachelors.

https://www.teachaway.com/blog/can-you-become-teacher-withou...

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

#242

Post by teucris »

macinjosh wrote: post #136
Elidrake42 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the typical argument against such vouchers in Housing that companies will simply bake the voucher amount into the price, leaving us in the same place without a public option?

None of the voucher systems I've heard of abolish the public system. It simply gives parents and students more choices and actually forces the public system to compete instead of continually beg for more funding that ultimately goes into the pockets of administrators instead of teachers and resources for students. I do not see what public education advocates are fearing here. If their systems are so amazing and essen…

One issue is that good quality education isn’t linear in cost. A school with 5 students may have lower overhead but will lack amenities that enable better learning, eg athletic infrastructure, libraries, etc. We provide public versions of those things, but then we’re back to funding parts of the education system with public levies. Furthermore there are some economies of scale that a public system enables, particularly around equitable access. For instance, I read somewhere that the postal service loses money delivering to remote areas. But given their mandate to serve all Americans, those in remote areas have access to a postal service. A private model would not likely serve those people well, if at all.

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

#243

Post by QuarterReptile »

candiddevmike wrote: post #204
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…

I would love to retire and become a public school teacher, but I will not go back to college for a bachelors degree in teaching. Make it easier to become a teacher and you'd see more people consider it, IMO.

There are states working on this. I think Virginia may be one of them. If I understand correctly, it's a pursuit undertaken almost solely by Republicans, presumably because teachers' unions are pretty powerful.

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

#244

Post by candiddevmike »

tombert wrote: post #241
candiddevmike wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to retire and become a public school teacher, but I will not go back to college for a bachelors degree in teaching. Make it easier to become a teacher and you'd see more people consider it, IMO.

What state do you live in? A lot of states will allow you to get a teaching certification as long as you have any relevant bachelors. https://www.teachaway.com/blog/can-you-become-teacher-withou...

I don't have any degrees, and pursuing a four year so I can take a pay cut is a non starter for me. I'd consider doing a two year technical degree, maybe.

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

#245

Post by lukas099 »

sjm wrote: post #7
bushbaba wrote: post #2

Teachers don’t work year round. So that 60k salary if adjusted to days worked + pension benefits is equivalent to six figures in the private sector.

Teachers do more work outside of their standard hours than most other professions. I dated a teacher for a long time and she worked much harder for her public school salary (waking up at 6am, prepping, lesson planning, grading, chasing up kids who aren't making it to school, dealing with social workers, etc.), than I do for my cushy six-figure tech job salary. Besides, why shouldn't teachers make six-figures? Why are…

Here is a thread on r/Teachers where teachers discuss how many hours they work [1]. From a quick skimming it seems to vary with new teachers working really hard, older ones having pretty easy hours, and some teachers doing things like extracurriculars which are not difficult but do take time.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/6f1m76/how_many_h...

I know this is a biased sample.

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

#246

Post by baron816 »

It’s really hard to make moral judgments on what someone should get paid.

How much does a bricklayer deserve to get paid? How much does an insurance broker deserve to pay? How much does a blackjack dealer deserve to get paid?

It’s easy to say teachers or X deserve to get paid more, but by how much? And if you just say everyone deserves more pay, that just means no one deserves more pay.

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

#247

Post by 5544332211 »

kshahkshah wrote: post #24

I'm in NJ where we value public education, for the most part. According to National Center for Education Statistics our average teacher pay was $77,489 in 2022. This is excluding benefits/pension. Well worth it.

Does NJ really value education? Or do you value education funding for other reasons?

I remember a while ago, googling around about the schools of Newark NJ, because of a rather complicated Mark Zuckerberg story. The school district's budget was around a billion a year, while a third of graduating students weren't proficient at reading.

And when public officials were trying to do something about this, their motives were rather ...peculiar. I think the words of governor Christie were something like "Nobody votes for me in Newark, so why not do the right thing?"

Think about that for a minute. The governor would have expected to to loose votes for trying to improve a city's public schools. Does that sound like a place that values the education of it's children?

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

#248

Post by blockwriter »

I’m trying to get a real grip on the financial hellscape of my home state, Illinois, for a novel I’m working on. The Illinois constitution ensures the benefits of public sector employees, and these benefits, once enacted, cannot be diminished. Basically, it made short term political sense to increase benefits, and so politicians did, whereas in the long term this spelled doom. In order to fund the pension, the state cuts services and puts assets from the school system into hock. Teachers, cops, firefighters, municipal workers, et. al. consume the state’s finances, and every plan that has been proposed to reduce the pension problems, even if endorsed by the union, has been challenged by individual members and been ruled unconstitutional by the state’s Supreme Court.

It seems like teachers in Illinois are on a defined benefit plan where the contributions are a percentage of the salary. Increasing the salary of starting teachers statewide to $60,000.00 would have staggering consequences in Illinois. It’s pretty interesting, if bleak.

https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/pensions-101-understa...

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

#249

Post by samvher »

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…

I'm Dutch so I don't know to what extent my experience applies here and what it will do to your expectation on outcomes (teacher is a decently paid job with us, though definitely not high paying). The people I know in education are generally highly caring and work way more hours than their contract asks them to. When I was in school, I've definitely also had teachers that were not so good - in some cases that may have been because they were in a field where teaching was one of the few feasible careers (e.g. Latin/Greek) and it was not a fit for them, in other cases maybe there was also a lack of competition or accountability to an extent. Teaching is definitely viewed as a safe/fallback career option, but there are also lots of people who choose it specifically because they are passionate about it.
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