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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

#311

Post by fafafuf »

1-more wrote: post #202
fafafuf wrote: post #78

I know this is crazy but: Recently I was thinking about opening a foundation that will create a universal multimedia "product" (combination of software, movies, games, maybe vr) that will teach kids around the world in schools subjects that all nations agree upon like mathematics, physics, chemistry, informatics etc. This is extremely challenging to convince governments to impose this in the schools but the gains are…

> Recently I was thinking about opening a foundation that will create a universal multimedia "product" (combination of software, movies, games, maybe vr) that will teach kids around the world in schools subjects that all nations agree upon like mathematics, physics, chemistry, informatics etc. If this ever got made it would only be used my school administrators as a cudgel to discipline teachers unions. It would neve…

I would say that teachers unions will definitely not be happy about it as work style of all teachers will need to change and a lot of them will not be necessary anymore. But kids will have the best possible education. We do it for kids, right?

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

#312

Post by juancampa »

How about we align incentives instead?

Here's an idea: when a student graduates, they allocate 1% of their yearly salary to their favorite 5-10 teachers for the next 5 years. I call it the "thankfulness tax".

Incentives aligned: the most impactful teachers make the most money.

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

#313

Post by throwaway6734 »

kneebonian wrote: post #253
throwaway6734 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is highly dependent on where you teach.

Teach in poor areas and student behavior is going to be your biggest issue because of bad parenting

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

#314

Post by giardini »

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?

All explained, without embarrassment, by the undergraduate economics concepts of supply and demand.

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

#315

Post by salawat »

dcolkitt wrote: post #257
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…

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 readin…

...It also happens to be the only method conducive to quantitative sampling methods at the expense of all qualitative evidence of the times it didn't work.

One size fits all education is literally the propagation of inequality.

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

#316

Post by fafafuf »

bick_nyers wrote: post #125
fafafuf wrote: post #78

I know this is crazy but: Recently I was thinking about opening a foundation that will create a universal multimedia "product" (combination of software, movies, games, maybe vr) that will teach kids around the world in schools subjects that all nations agree upon like mathematics, physics, chemistry, informatics etc. This is extremely challenging to convince governments to impose this in the schools but the gains are…

I'm in the camp that believes individualized education is best solved using AI. Not ChatGPT, something better. Likely will need in-person teacher facilitation as well, setting up kids alone with a laptop and an AI feels very wrong and dystopian to me. Edit: Also getting all nations to agree will be impossible, if not then you will probably a curriculum that suffers death by committee.

It will need to be done step by step. When nations see how good and cheap this system is and how great are the education results they will be more willing to join.

I also think that AI can play a huge role in this - but for sure it needs to be improved.

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

#317

Post by giardini »

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.

Supply and demand aren't part of macroeconomics but of microeconomics

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

#318

Post by jdmtheNth »

My experience of teachers is in Canada, and spans my children's (15 and 25) current and completed school careers and my wife's employment at the local university's BEd program. While I've met a couple of exceptional and outstanding teachers in the last two decades, they are vanishingly rare. By far, the majority of teachers I have met call themselves teachers, but are, in reality, dispensers of goverment-directed and union-approved knowledge. They use the internet to produce generic fill-in-the-blank exercises, send home atrociously spelled and grammatically incorrect instructions that don't make sense (when there's anything sent home at all), and only hold the kids to the lowest standards, so that everyone can pass. Their unions fight for maximal pay, but demand increasingly minimal interaction with the children. Teachers can't volunteer their time anymore, staying to help kids that need it, or running clubs. In many cases, they don't even supervise the children during lunch hours, instead relying on community volunteers, or, more commonly have the grade 6 kids watch the younger kids. Of course, this is the same province that famously allows a shop class teacher to wear impossibly huge prosthetic breasts because presumably it helps him deal with teenage boys or something. I would love to see teachers being paid according to their worth, but with the standards they are set for the kids and themselves model, a lot of them are already.

TLDR: Teachers deserve better, mechanical, unionized, education dispensers really don't.

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

#319

Post by xboxnolifes »

surge wrote: post #98
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.

Yeah but in NJ, that's 35k-45k in most other states. Not really worth bragging about. If it was over 100k for NJ, I'd say it was an leading. 75k there just barely pays rent on a small apartment. 60k is okay in some areas, personally I think the average salary should be 85-90k and over 100k where cost of living is much higher.

The entirety of New Jersey isn't just the New York suburbs. Plenty of people live well and even raise family on 70k salaries.

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

#320

Post by monocasa »

giardini wrote: post #317
monocasa wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Supply and demand aren't part of macroeconomics but of microeconomics

It's part of both.
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