101–110 of 1001 posts
Ever seen the pages long bullet points of sub-sub-sub topics supposed to be covered in kindergarten? Know how much stress that would add…
I realize this piece is more of a rant, and I won't hold it to a data accuracy standard it never pretended to have, but they pay issue is really misconstrued. Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area median, and when accounting for benefits and pension, quite impressive. In South Dakota and a number of states in the south and rural districts, yes it is another story, and it is bad. Also, teachers N…
This is the best reply so far. In the US, things (good and bad) vary dramatically between school districts, but everyone talks about “teachers” as this monolithic group. In the Boston area it’s absolutely possible to exceed $100,000 salary. The pay scales are public, look it up yourself. I’m willing to believe many teachers are underpaid, and that those in Boston have legitimate gripes too, but we need to be clear ab…
> Demoralization is what happens when you spend years becoming an expert in a subject area, and nobody cares. They’d rather hire another MBA to make all the important decisions, while they stick us on committees writing reports for ghosts. That’s when teachers start to withdraw from their jobs, when we realize it doesn’t matter what we think, and it definitely doesn’t matter how amazing we are at what we do. This was…
Of course what they mean by “complexity” is money.
What experts recommend costs money, where the MBA/PM will come with dumb solutions that cost less on paper.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People keep saying crap wages, but put some real numbers up here. What do you consider crap wages?
Let’s just go with crap wages == whatever isn’t sufficient to keep enough people in the profession, such that you need to start recruiting wildly unqualified people just to fill the spot.
I realize this piece is more of a rant, and I won't hold it to a data accuracy standard it never pretended to have, but they pay issue is really misconstrued. Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area median, and when accounting for benefits and pension, quite impressive. In South Dakota and a number of states in the south and rural districts, yes it is another story, and it is bad. Also, teachers N…
> Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area median Is the median the correct benchmark? The median household income in NYC was $67k in 2021 [0]. Why would someone choose to be a teacher making around the median [1] when you could be a software engineer and make 3x as much? It's not just a matter of trinkets and baubles. That difference allows you to comfortably afford a nice family sized apartment […
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paying more will solve the appreciation problem. My wife is (ex)teacher. Parents would flat-out say that they can't respect her because of her salary. Along the lines of, if you're smart and can do stuff, why the hell are you working for such a low pay? Ergo teachers are dumb and parents (along with their kids) feel free to make fun of dumbasses who work in schools. On top of that, paying more would help with self-re…
> Parents would flat-out say that they can't respect her because of her salary. Along the lines of, if you're smart and can do stuff, why the hell are you working for such a low pay? Damn, that is so gut wrenching to read. It's so short sighted that society does not value teachers more highly. The next generation is the ultimate investment.
Attacking the teachers have been a long term goal. School funds already are now allowed to be directed to parochial (religious) schools from the state school coffers. This starves the public school systems one by one.
No Child Left Behind guaranteed that bad schools get less money, and get worse. This all but guarantees that low income areas have terrible school systems that are more just juvenile delinquency prevention and babysitting services.
Book bans are pushed by the "right" (which they rarely, if ever, are), with obvious canards like "Harry potter is evil occult and should be burned". Naturally, with the exception of https://www.vice.com/en/article/epzv9j/texas-school-bans-the... , most of the bans are done explicitly by the christian fascists forcing their beliefs on others.
Or, instead of more money and resources, we see Texas state legislature forcing schools to hang banners of "In god we trust." https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/18/texas-schools-in-god... . Again, it's the forcing of one myopic direction of religion on the masses. It brings the parochial school into the public piece at a time.
All of these different directions have the ultimate effect - deprecate the "godless" education to something with their variant of religion in it. And naturally, we get pablum like "Noah and dinosaurs lived together", and other completely non-science garbage taught as fact.
I realize this piece is more of a rant, and I won't hold it to a data accuracy standard it never pretended to have, but they pay issue is really misconstrued. Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area median, and when accounting for benefits and pension, quite impressive. In South Dakota and a number of states in the south and rural districts, yes it is another story, and it is bad. Also, teachers N…
Many suburban schools pay decent, but often urban centers pay poorly.
I know one person who was offered under $30k for teaching young special Ed folks. This is someone who has a masters and extra certs on tops of that.
Your argument about physics teachers being more sought after is interesting but misses the point. As a society we want our children to have the best outcomes, providing them with the best education at early ages provides that.
To have the best education you want to pay well and attract the best candidates. Not have those teachers splitting their time with Uber so they can afford rent.
There was a study that showed the value of great kindergarten teachers and it’s over $300k a year.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/07/28/128819707/the-...
Title should be, nobody wants to support teachers anymore.
As a European, it has always been perplexing to me how little the US invests in teachers and schools, given that we know how huge the benefits are down the road (educational attainment, income, pro-social behavior, life satisfaction). Watching how large parts of the political spectrum embrace hardship as a societal teaching tool, I begin to understand that the expectation may always have been that kids ought to figur…
Teaching is a precarious job - particularly in early career in public sector schools. And just like many comments already mentioned: There's a global social trend expecting teachers to be some kind of social workers. And older teachers in many countries public sectors are basically grandfathered into previledged conditions that Young professionals will never attain.