Nobody wants to teach anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#161

Post by zozbot234 » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #148

powerhour wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> competition would force public schools to improve or shut down as every school vied for the vouchers. I don't know how to fairly evaluate a school's performance. I guess we could ask if the students perform better in the job market 10-20 years later, but that's not obviously not helpful or useful information on which to make a decision now. I get why the voucher system is appealing on first glance. After all, you o…

You don’t seem to know how to evaluate them, yet everyone agrees Harvard is better than your local community college, and there is literally a private school half a mile from my house that charges $60,000 per year. So clearly some people know how to distinguish a bad school from a good school and allocate their money appropriately.

Most importantly, everyone knows a very bad performing school when they see one. The role of vouchers is first and foremost to reward schools that don't screw things up too badly. Quality can then be a secondary factor.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#162

Post by aetherson » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

throwaway787544 wrote: post #114

lr4444lr wrote: post #15

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 teachers work very long hours. Ones I've dated did a minimum of 60 hours. They would work their day shift and then go home and work more, and work on weekends, and then do tutoring for extra cash. Do you know how frustrating and exhausting teaching is? Very. They also don't get hazard pay for working in dangerous schools. One teacher I knew literally stopped teaching and became a kind of official bouncer (I don'…

How old were the ones you dated?

In general, the hours spent teaching diminish over time. At the beginning of a teacher's career, they spend a lot of time outside of class building lesson plans and creating tests and homework assignments. These legitimately take a lot of time. And they aren't perfect, so the teacher often sees that they need to make big changes after those lesson plans and tests and homework assignments hit the students.

But after a few iterations, they have those tools, and at that point things settle down a lot. The material only needs to be updated infrequently. Most of that time that in the first few years was spent building those things is freed back up, and it's not replaced by anything.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#163

Post by raverbashing » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

RobotToaster wrote: post #24

ekianjo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

paying teachers more is not going to solve the problem that most people do not appreciate teachers whether its kids or parents. It is certainly not a job for those who cannot stand being criticized the whole time.

Most people hate lawyers, but plenty of people still want to be one.

Nah I think most people like "the idea" of being a lawyer (or a doctor). But to actually be one it's much harder, and that's when they get a reality check

Lawyers will mostly attest how divorce/family practice has nothing on actual criminal practice, and it might be even harder. Most people don't know about the long hours, the case studies, etc. They think it's the romantic view of what they see on TV

Doctors have to know how to deal with bodly fluids. Of various kinds. They have to learn how to tell a family a dear person died. They have to literally survive residency.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#164

Post by blooalien » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

borski wrote: post #117

_vdpp wrote: post #98

A few random thoughts: 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the budget. Where does that money go? 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others. 3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are unappreciated, yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why do people come up to them and say they hated s…

I agree with the rest of your post, but: > Disruptive children are caused by parents who frankly just don’t give a shit. This isn’t necessarily true; sometimes the parents simply don’t have the proper info or education themselves. Example: parent of a kid with ADHD who has no understanding of what ADHD is or how it presents, and thus that their kid even has it.

On the flip side of that coin, you sometimes have the parents who do know all about their child's ADHD and how to (help their child) manage it effectively, and then you get these meddling teachers or principals who genuinely believe they know better than everyone else about how "problem children" should be dealt with (all while utterly ignoring the actual problem children, like bullies for example). They hear that a child has "a diagnosis" and it's like painting a target on that child for some screwed up teachers/principals, no matter how actually well behaved that child is in practice. Sometimes those vile people even go beyond "too far" and ruin lives with their meddling.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#165

Post by uniqueuid » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

candiddevmike wrote: post #121

_vdpp wrote: post #98

A few random thoughts: 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the budget. Where does that money go? 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others. 3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are unappreciated, yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why do people come up to them and say they hated s…

1. Parasitic administration salaries 2. Depending on the state you may not even need one 3. It's the parents, not the kids that make them feel this way. Kids typically love their teachers 4. 100% 5. Building a new school is 10-100s of millions typically. Why it costs so much is worthy of debate, but plunking down new schools these days is far more costly than in the past.

I'm definitely stealing "parasitic administration salaries", because it describes a wide array of administrative bloat.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#166

Post by zmgsabst » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #124

zmgsabst wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$13k per student is more than the cost of undergraduate education, at $12.5k per student for the University of Washington. https://www.washington.edu/opb/tuition-fees/current-tuition-...

It's $40K if you select "non-resident", which I assume is because the in-state tuition is taxpayer subsidized.

Why would non-resident apply to the comparison of local schools?

My understanding is that you have non-residents subsidize things such as scholarship programs — but that in-state is fairly close to costs.

State money appears to be a relatively small fraction of their incomes — and is smaller than the increase in their financial position.

https://finance.uw.edu/uwar/annualreport2021.pdf

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#167

Post by diognesofsinope » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

_vdpp wrote: post #98

A few random thoughts: 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the budget. Where does that money go? 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others. 3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are unappreciated, yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why do people come up to them and say they hated s…

> 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the budget. Where does that money go?

Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just backloaded in pension plans.

> 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others.

Yeah, but cost is the same and cost is what's important.

> 4. Many school problems are caused by disruptive children.

Bingo. Half the success of 4-year colleges is that it's the first time the bottom 50% of the students are filtered out.

Story time. I was an ESL teacher for 5 years in Asia and planned on coming home to the USA and getting my teacher's license in Math to teach at international schools. I am not currently a teacher, I'm a quant at a big bank.

Why didn't I end up in teaching? The licensing requirements in Minnesota are insane. Counselor's straight up told me I'd have to borrow ~$50k from the UMN for a MS in Curriculum and Instruction before I could teach.

The labor unions along with politicians have built a structure in which there is artificial scarcity of teachers. Not only is the profession filled with disrespect, but it's outrageously expensive and bureaucratic.

Lastly, the Economics of Education field is wild. Clearly there's value to basic reading/math/science education, but it's not clear at all whether teachers are schools matter than much (wealthy communities/parents matter a lot).

Edit: feel obligated to add that k12 education is financed and administrated at the local level, which means our experiences with this likely vary a lot. Mine are specific to trying to move back to the USA and become licensed in MN.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#168

Post by mynameishere » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

This person is all over the map--it's the kind of rambling for which the awful five paragraph essay was designed to correct.

Anyway, I am assuming that she is a public teacher and her job is to some extent supported by that fact (with respect to working conditions, salary, etc) as well as by a union. Many private schools, especially religious schools, actually do pay a "pittance" which probably more closely reflects the market rate. Such teachers often do depend on a spouse's salary, or live in real poverty. Public teachers benefits are usually much, much better.

Of course, the big disadvantage of a public school: You get what you get. Only the very, very worst students are expelled so classroom behavior can be wretched, with correspondingly wretched parents (if any). The administration is politically motivated and the teachers get the short end there, too.

Good districts have no trouble getting teachers, and never have.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#169

Post by readingnews » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

SamuelAdams wrote: post #22

> 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…

I was going to quote that very paragraph, as a professor teaching three classes this semester, in addition to my 50 hour a week job as the technical director.

I see at my university the outside consultants telling us how and when to teach. But OPs first sentence here seems to ring true a lot on my campus. Your boss, HR, some organization called "student success" which is made up of MBAs that have never taught a class, some VP of whatever division, they talk down to you. Tell you, as a professor with great student feedback and high marks all over the place, that you do not understand "how to teach" and that we should have Elvsiver, Pearson, or some other bookseller tell us how to teach, or even better, that we should just outsource teaching to them.

They can not imagine why people are leaving.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#170

Post by starkd » Sun, Aug 21, 2022, 1:43 PM UTC

uniqueuid wrote: post #96

starkd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about money. Avg salaries are plenty above the OECD average. The U.S. has a strong tendency to just throw money at a problem. There are many urban school districts that have trouble getting 50% attendance rates ON THE FIRST DAY. And that's with going door to door to remind parents the day before. How can you even address it when the people don't even believe in the institution anymore? Let parents have some…

Do you mean cost of living-adjusted salaries are about OECD average? And do you think above-average salaries are required for above-average returns? Just curious.

The stats on the page are from 2018, before inflation became problematic. It also does not include the pandemic-related problems that have made things worse. However, the main point about comparable funding still stands. We are not getting above average returns. The question should be where is all that money going.