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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

#251

Post by ahepp »

blamazon wrote: post #169
mwint wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It can be both. Everyone prospers when incentives are aligned on both sides of being and using labor.

I absolutely agree in principle, but unless pay is in some way linked to performance I really don’t see how.

The existing seniority based pay system completely decouples money as an incentive, doesn’t it?

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

#252

Post by jacobr1 »

monocasa wrote: post #119
mwint wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply and demand, like always. The market cares not one bit about what someone “should” be paid, it cares about the price where no one is left willing to do the same job for less. If you want teachers to be paid more, increase the requirements to be a teacher. I’m a proponent of requiring at least n years experience in real world work, plus education in a hard science or trade.

I mean, we already have massive teacher shortages. Class sizes keep going up, and many school systems are switching to four day schedules because of staffing issues. Not everything can be looked at from a macro econ 101 supply and demand take; the real world is much more complicated than that.

Sometimes it is more complicated, but in this case the analysis does apply. The problem isn't on the demand side, but on the supply. And one way to increase supply is to charge a higher price, or otherwise compensate (more time off, better work environment, prestige, etc ...) and a big part of the reason we have a teacher shortage is that there aren't enough compensatory incentives.

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

#253

Post by kneebonian »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #238
Gh0stRAT wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think pay is one part of the problem of attracting the best teachers. Potentially an even bigger problem is just how much of the curriculum is dictated by fiat. We require them to get a Masters degree but then give them almost no autonomy. I'm not a teacher, but I feel like that's gotta hurt job satisfaction and be a big contributor to high teacher turnover/burnout. (quick Google says 8%/year leave the field entire…

It's not just autonomy it's putting up with poor student behavior. There's no real power or respect in the profession. Stop bending over backwards to please parents. Punish and remove students that can't behave in the classroom. Culturally reward students that excel academically.

Without a doubt all of the best teachers I know say the worst parts of their job is dealing with parents. Many of them who have talked about quitting have almost always cited the parents as the biggest problem.

Also the worst parents are in the richest areas.

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

#254

Post by _hdki »

megabless123 wrote: post #96
hammock wrote: post #70

The minimum starting salary for a teacher in Chicago is $60,000 (cost of living adjusted), the highest in the country. It hasn't solved Chicago Public Schools' problems. Source: https://wirepoints.org/chicago-teachers-are-paid-some-of-the...

> 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.

At the expense of the school system itself, and students therefore. Illinois has to diminish services and sell the school system’s assets in order to fund the underfunded pensions, which cannot be diminished, as per the Illinois constitution.

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

#255

Post by toast0 »

RajT88 wrote: post #127
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?

Impact is huge, but they don't generate revenue for the organization which pays them. Therefore - their pay is a function of the budget that is available. Public school budgets are set of course by property taxes. If you teach in a rich district, you get paid more. If you teach in a poor district, you get paid less. The way public schools are funded helps keep the rich rich, and the poor poor. Unfortunately, the poli…

> Public school budgets are set of course by property taxes. If you teach in a rich district, you get paid more. If you teach in a poor district, you get paid less. The way public schools are funded helps keep the rich rich, and the poor poor.

That depends on the state. In California, most school districts have their budgets set by the state funding formula which provides state funding above the local property tax revenues. There are a handful of school districts where local property tax revenue provides more than the state formula, although I haven't been able to find a list of those districts recently.

The California funding system was in place since 1972 (with major changes in 2013). Have we seen improvements in the wealth gap and society in general?

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

#256

Post by tombert »

candiddevmike wrote: post #244
tombert wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you heard of WGU? You can knock out bachelors degrees much faster if you already know the material. After about a decade of software engineering, I was able to knock out a CS degree in about six months. Feel free to email me for more info.

https://www.wgu.edu/

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

#257

Post by dcolkitt »

Gh0stRAT wrote: post #211
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 think pay is one part of the problem of attracting the best teachers. Potentially an even bigger problem is just how much of the curriculum is dictated by fiat. We require them to get a Masters degree but then give them almost no autonomy. I'm not a teacher, but I feel like that's gotta hurt job satisfaction and be a big contributor to high teacher turnover/burnout. (quick Google says 8%/year leave the field entire…

But this isn't just a case of politicians arbitrarily shackling teachers. Research has shown time and time again that standardizing curriculum results in better educational outcomes, particularly at the lower end of students and schools.

In fact the evidence consistently shows that direct instruction is by far more effective than any other major pedagogical framework.[1] And this literally involves the teacher reading from a pre-packaged script.

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8476697/

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

#258

Post by indymike »

teucris wrote: post #208
indymike wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did this in Indiana and handled this by having an income cap for voucher eligibility. The reality is that people living in poor areas now have access to better schools. Rich people don't get vouchers.

That’s good for Indiana if true. What about other places? My understanding was that many voucher proposals did not have income caps.

The means test was added to Indiana's voucher program to get it passed, and it was a good thing. I put a lot of time in doing grass-roots work to get it passed, and honestly it has been great for kids, teachers (unions are good, but having employers compete for you is even better)... the only people it's been bad for are professional public school administrators and construction companies that sell school districts new buildings instead of paying teachers more.

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

#259

Post by Justsignedup »

Teachers are such a fucked up system that its hard to visualize just how bad it is. Having worked in teacher support orgs in the past, I can tell you... its bad.

- There are definitely bad teachers out there. The older the get the worse they get. But what's really counter-intuitive is that the teacher filter is absolutely backwards. The teachers who are smart, tallented, and trully exceptional... they end up leaving and getting better professions. Anyone who is tallented with mathematics has a real chance at getting a job in IT/Programming. And I've seen trully caring teachers just leave because a 3x pay increase OVERNIGHT is much more of a quality of life improvement than any sort of feel good from teaching. The worst with no other opportunities stay. And the best lave. And sometimes the best stay, but it is an exception, not the rule.

- Teachers are overworked, underpaid, and often pay from their own pocket. They burn out. Worse, they often can't afford to live where the work is. And to make things even worse, the more educated they are, the harder it is to find work. I know a PHD who wants to teach highschool because he loves it... he has to basically find a school so despearte for teachers that they can't pass on him, because any other school thinks that the small pay the union demands to increase him by is just not worth it.

- Teachers in cities get paid so little they can't afford rent. Seriously, 50k salaries in NYC. Even at 60k its basically poverty pay, and you need a Masters!!!

- 1 in 3 teachers burn out within a couple of years. This has been a very consistent statistic.

60k is far too low. I don't think teachers should be paid below 100k fresh out of school. The work is hard, and we need people fighting to get these positions by showing excellence. This is our future, we should not give it to the shittiest educators who can't afford not to be a teacher.

Every time I talk to a teacher who's smart, all I can think of is "literally you can find work in the tech sector, even doing just customer service, for double your pay"

My sister is working on her masters (lots of cost) and is a NYC teacher (not DOE, she gets paid a bit better working for a charter school). She cannot afford to move out of our parent's house because her quality of life would go down drastically because most of her money will go to survival. The fact that she gets to save 24k a year on rent (pretty much the minimum rent I could find that's not dilapidated) allows her to live even a bit. Not to mention that she has to still pay the 6-7 years of college tuition out of pocket. OH and she's specialized (special education).

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

#260

Post by jacobr1 »

kimbernator wrote: post #215
kneebonian wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is an obvious downside of modern capitalism; Value is defined as what brings in money, And in communism value is defined as what will get you promoted. And in autocracy value is loyalty to the party line And in Neo-Nazism value is what kills the most Jews And so on and so forth, let's not pretend that people making short sighted decisions for personal gain is limited to a single economic system it may be more…

The problem I'm trying to highlight is that the capitalism and focus on the short-term of business is leaking a bit too much into the operation of government. Instead of directing resources in a thoughtful way, it seems more like we're trying to check boxes for the lowest price and forget about the purpose of that funding.

Except with something like K12 education we don't actually allocate resources in a market/capitalist fashion. So is your argument that we have a "mindset" problem?

One could suggest the opposite problem, we don't have enough markets in eduction and could do more with charters and vouchers, or programs like magnet schools.

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