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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

#281

Post by QuarterReptile »

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 have similar impressions of teachers. Many of the girls from my public school who were always going to go to college as a fact of being from wealthier families, and who possessed some combination of the traits [not hard-working, liked to party, strongly resisted STEM subjects] went to the nearby party-and-education state school and are now elementary school teachers. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence, but on the other hand, it would probably be a severe societal misallocation of resources to send hard-charging people to be elementary school teachers.

>I have never met two professionals with so many credentials (MS in Education) and so little sense.

John Taylor Gatto (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto) is a big name to look into along these lines. He won a bunch of recognition for teaching in New York City, then used that as a platform to loudly quit and agitate against the problems of public education.

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

#282

Post by giardini »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #108
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's possible there is more than one problem. And starving teachers is unlikely to improve any of them.

$60K is hardly starvation wages!

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

#283

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#284

Post by kennywinker »

kneebonian wrote: post #229
mattwad wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's internal politics, not even close to related to destroying public services from our federal government. I'm pissed about what they and the media did to Sanders but I wish that Republicans had done the same to Trump.

> but I wish that Republicans had done the same to Trump. This sounds like a dangerous line of thinking. Like we can argue about Trump till the cows come home but I think it'd be a tough sell to say he wasn't who the Republicans wanted as their nominee. It sounds like you are saying you wish the political parties would do what they feel is best irregardless of the will of their constituints. That is no longer represe…

Winner in a broken system means the system is broken not that the winner was always going to win. Like any president who lost the popular vote, or trump who won the nomination because of longstanding apathy, not because the majority of anybody likes him.

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

#285

Post by jacobr1 »

AndrewGaspar wrote: post #234
kimbernator wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd strongly disagree with your assertion that teaching is not a difficult job. I won't address the exertion that goes into individual parts of it, but all of the teachers I know regularly work nights and weekends in addition to handling the emotional stress of teaching, which itself is a huge burden, especially for those working in less affluent schools. In any case, the measure for teachers should not be "how hard…

> all of the teachers I know regularly work nights and weekends There's a difference between difficulty and exertion. > how important is the outcome It's pretty damn important that the garbage man comes and collects the trash every week, but we don't pay him the marginal value of trash collection to the county. > another assertion I have issues with - there are rampant teacher shortages nationwide I actually agree th…

Note we tend to pay garbagemen more than teachers! I think that probably seeks to the job desirability. More people are willing to be teachers than haul garbage and that is reflected in the pay, net of other impacts.

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

#286

Post by teucris »

bluedino wrote: post #271
teucris wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

If it was easy enough to create better education by simply paying teachers more, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Surprisingly, there’s evidence that paying teachers more does lead to better teachers. It makes the jobs more competitive, causing an increase in the qualifications and expertise needed to land a job.

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

#287

Post by kennywinker »

indymike wrote: post #171
kennywinker wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have diversity without turning education into a for-profit hellscape.

Who said schools have to be for profit? In my state we have vouchers, and most voucher money goes to schools operated by not-for-profits. We also have charter schools, and most of those are operated by for-profit companies. Either way, they offer a way to get kids into a better environment/institution than trying to fix a failing public school system.

How long have you had vouchers, and what is the long term trend.

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

#288

Post by dividefuel »

mwint wrote: post #60
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?

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 think we tend to see the opposite cycle playing out more often:

"We can't hire enough teachers" -> "Let's reduce the requirements" -> "These teachers aren't very good or qualified, there's no reason to give them a raise" -> "We can't hire enough teachers!"

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

#289

Post by teucris »

indymike wrote: post #258
teucris wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

I’m with you on this generally, and I’m glad Indiana included a means test. But I’m not sold that a shift to voucher systems more broadly will include means tests.

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

#290

Post by pivo »

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…

> Do others have similar experiences with teachers or do I just have a bad selection?

My main reference point is my brother in law who's a high school physics teacher. He's a very smart person who's enthusiasm for the subject and teaching it is infectious. I love talking to him about physics and about how he gets his students interested in the subject. He loves talking about it even more. I truly wish I'd had someone like him for my own HS physics classes.

I know for sure that he doesn't make much money and I think that's a crime. His father had to help him buy his house so he could live within a reasonable distance to the school.

At the same time I have no doubt that there are plenty bad teachers out there. At the salaries being offered how could that not be the case? I'd be all for raising teacher's salaries because I just don't think many good teachers are willing to make the necessary financial sacrifice.

I also know a couple of former teachers who left the profession to become real estate agents. I don't have any idea if they were good teachers but I do know that at least one of them now earns somewhere in the mid $400 USDs/year and only rarely works a full week. It's hard to see how teaching at $40K/year could be an attractive option for her.

When I was growing up my dentist, pediatrician, high school history and math teachers, and my dad's lawyer and heart surgeon all lived in our neighborhood within a few blocks of each other. I don't know what the difference in compensation was then, but in my view that leant a certain uniform level of respectability to all of these professions. That doesn't exist for teachers anymore, and I think that's another important factor. Now surgeons live in large homes in woody suburbs or brownstones in the city and teachers have long commutes from the cheap, less safe towns. Where I live $60K/year won't fix that problem, but it might at least attract some better teachers.

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