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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#221

Post by bittercynic »

prirun wrote: post #155

I know a few teachers who have quit or want to quit. It isn't a money issue, at least for them. My high-school computer science teacher (many moons ago) taught advanced high-school math. He quit because the administrative requirements became too burdensome. He loved teaching, but every year the administrivia got worse until he finally quit. Another teacher was a special-ed reading instructor; that's what she was trai…

More money can certainly solve those problems.

I work at a school that improved during my time. We've enjoyed some changes that brought the school significantly more funding, and it has allowed us to attract better applicants, and hire additional staff members that help take some of that load off the teachers.

Also, simply having more adults per student makes a big difference, provided they are the right adults for the job.

Your friend was forced into the wrong category because of a funding problem.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#222

Post by lotsofpulp »

horsawlarway wrote: post #128
GiorgioG wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"K-12 schools spend $666.9 billion or $13,185 per pupil annually." - https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti... We invest plenty. We just don't get a great return on our investment.

I'm not actually sure that's "plenty". For comparison - we currently pay more per year to keep our 1 year old child in daycare (roughly ~15,000/yr) and for daycare we literally only expect them to keep him alive & clean. And this is considered a "cheap" daycare. Most places in our area (the much cheaper south-west side of Atlanta) still charge more than 1600/m or almost 20k/yr. We certainly don't expect them to be si…

>For comparison - we currently pay more per year to keep our 1 year old child in daycare (roughly ~15,000/yr) and for daycare we literally only expect them to keep him alive & clean

You cannot compare the per child costs of taking care of a kid who cannot go to the toilet themselves or eat by themself with a kid who is much more self sufficient.

The person taking care of a baby (or 4 babies) might need to be much less qualified than an AP physics teacher in high school, but the labor (and liability) costs do not necessarily scale exactly with the minimum qualifications needed to be an AP physics teacher versus a daycare teacher.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#223

Post by rayiner »

_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…

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

Here is the problem. Teachers in America compare themselves to professionals, but their test scores are below the average for college educated people generally: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/.... Now 40% of college graduates don’t even get a job that requires a college degree. Disproportionately, those are people with lower aptitude scores. Teachers as a group are right on the borderline above those folks.

Teacher salaries are not low compared to jobs typically held by people with similar test scores—especially when you account for degree-required jobs that pay a premium for mathematical aptitude (accounting, engineering), or dealing with blood and body parts (nursing).

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#224

Post by atemerev »

hattmall wrote: post #186
atemerev wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public schools are not a market economy. Even in the most capitalist country in the world, there will be obligatory free public schools, and they will be government-financed. The level of demand, however, can vary. Do Americans even want good public education? Or it is an afterthought?

Market forces for schools are reflected in real estate prices. Houses in good school districts can go for 4x the cost of similar housing a few miles away if the schools are bad.

That’s right, but the schools themselves are not participating in the market feedback forces, their quality distribution is random (or worse).

This very observation is telling us that the entire system is outside the market (why, for example, people from other locations cannot choose this particular school if it is better than others?)

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#225

Post by germinalphrase »

diognesofsinope wrote: post #167
_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 disrup…

“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.”

I received my teaching license in Wisconsin and transferred to Minnesota by doing little more than passing the licensure exam. I did not have an MS at that time or when I started teaching in the Minneapolis suburbs.

I believe you were somewhat misled.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#227

Post by JustSomeNobody »

imglorp wrote: post #95

I'd like to introduce a sensitive subject as neutrally as possible. For root causes, the morale environment is largely politically induced in a coordinated attack on public education that goes back to the 80's. For some examples... * cuts on school lunches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup_as_a_vegetable * voucher programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_voucher * vast finanical aid cuts http://tech.mit.edu/…

Exactly. They want to replace public education with a for-profit system. Once that transition is in place, the vouchers will become harder for certain people to get, then eventually vouchers will go away and people will be solely responsible for their children's education. This means, yet again, the poor and middle class get the shaft.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#228

Post by veltas »

chadash wrote: post #134
_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…

> Disruptive children are caused by parents who frankly just don’t give a shit. Throwing more money into schools won’t ever fix this problem. I was a disruptive child and my parents were the opposite of people who didn’t give a shit. Both of them highly valued education and spent plenty of time with me. they just had to contend with a child who wasn’t well behaved at school and it was genetics more than anything they…

Yup this was me in school as well, hope to have kids and not looking forward to this aspect!

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#229

Post by lr4444lr »

viraptor wrote: post #69
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…

> most qualified high school physics teachers have way differently valued skillsets in the labor force by alternate employers than most kindergarten teachers. Do they? I read that as implying that physics teachers could potentially get some stem jobs. But is that actually true? If you can do math, you can teach yourself enough physics to teach in high school. But that gets you nowhere near the knowledge necessary for…

Whether you could or couldn't self study to be a competent physics teacher is besides the point if you need a physics or very closely related STEM degree plus test of content competency as a condition of getting the job by the regulations if most US states. That limits the pool of applicants to people who can command better salaries elsewhere over their whole career arc for arguably a lot less stress. Thus an exceptional shortage within that specialty is more prone to happen. Lowering the standards of qualification is an option, but the author doesn't seem thrilled with that idea. So we are pretty much left with discussing a pay differential within the profession, which is a third rail topic among most teacher unions.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#230

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

seangrogg wrote: post #100
sidlls wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money will not overcome the "those who can't, teach" sentiment that runs quite strongly in the US. There is a very strong anti-intelligence (not merely anti-intellectual) sentiment in this country. It will help, and we should certainly pay teachers more, but it isn't the whole solution.

"Those who can't do, teach" is almost exclusively about money, the idea being that in almost every industry you would be paid more to do than to teach. Thus, if you are teaching it's likely because you failed to be a doer. This isn't anti-intelligence, it's actually a fairly logical stance. It does miss that a person's desire to educate can far exceed their desire to ply the trade and they are willing to sacrifice th…

Being a teacher (as opposed to a trainer, like me) is really difficult, and a great many people who are excellent engineers and scientists, are horrendously bad teachers.

The best teachers that I ever had, were ones that were trained as teachers, and were not necessarily content matter experts.

The worst teachers that I ever had, were content matter experts. Almost universally, they had no patience for folks that had a hard time coming up to speed, or that weren't already at a level beyond the class they were teaching.

They would ridicule you for asking "stupid" questions (that's me -I ask questions that have the whole class in stitches, but by the end of the semester, I'm coaching my classmates). They would start from a baseline that actually assumed the student had already completed and passed the class they were taking.

I would sign up for a class, because of the bona fides of the teacher, but would end up regretting my decision.

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