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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

#221

Post by spyremeown »

AndrewGaspar wrote: post #94
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?

I'm sure your mom is great, but teachers have low value over replacement. Teaching is not a particularly high skill or difficult job.

>Teaching is not a particularly high skill or difficult job.

Even though I disagree with you I can see where you're coming from with this sentence, but: the impact is HUGE. The impact of good teachers on society cannot be overstated. It's an amazing ROI and everything we can do to further the education of humankind is worth doing.

Programming (mostly) isn't that hard as well, compare software engineering with electronics engineering, for example, but the impact is huge: that's why you're probably well paid to do it and your company makes your life really easy, with all the bells and whistles to make you happy.

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

#222

Post by lukas099 »

Lucasoato wrote: post #27

What a world would we live in if Bernie Sanders won those 2016 elections...

We wouldn't have had tax cuts in 2017 and we would have a much more liberal Supreme Court. I guess Jan 6th wouldn't have happened either. I have no idea how we would have fared differently through the pandemic. I don't think Bernie would have gotten any meaningful legislation passed but I've been wrong before.

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

#223

Post by clircle »

flerchin wrote: post #193

I see no reason this should not be the case. That is the starting wage in my Dallas area school district.

Where I grew up, this kind of thing would make the schools go to a 3 day per week schedule. They are already on a 4 day schedule due to budget problems.

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

#224

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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…

> This is loosely related, but every time I think of public school teacher salaries my mind goes to the public school teachers I know.

The public school teachers you know are the teachers willing to work for non-livable wages.

I wonder what would happen if the subset of people willing to take the job increased (because the pay increases).

That's kind of the point of the bill.

The current pool of teachers is:

1) Old people who have been doing it for a long, long time - back when pay wasn't quite so terrible and were able to scrape together a good life by getting a house when it was somewhat possible.

2) People who love teaching and are willing and somehow able to do it for basically charitable wages.

3) People who are desperate and have no better options.

This isn't exactly the pool you want raising your next generation. Especially after everyone in group 1 retires or dies or whatever...

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

#225

Post by joxel »

IceHegel wrote: post #97

This Raj Chetty paper on teacher quality makes a strong case for doing whatever you can to get as many good teachers as possible (and as few bad ones). https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.104.9.2633 They claim replacing a bad teacher with an average teacher is worth like $250k in earnings per classroom. It's unclear what effect a blanket minimal salary would have on teacher quality. I'd be worried that it…

[dead]

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

#226

Post by rayiner »

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 sixth grade science teacher called on me and asked “if the freezing point of water is 0C and 32F, and the boiling point is 100C, what’s the boiling point in F?” I answered “212F” but she said “132F.” Then the class laughed at me which was very embarrassing.

Most teachers are very nice, very dedicated, but not intellectually gifted people. There’s lots of degrees and certifications, but it’s halfway between white collar work and blue collar work. Your HVAC technician might be better at math and science than your average elementary or middle school teacher.

I’m not opposed to working class people getting paid more money, I just don’t like how teachers are singled out as being especially underpaid because of empty credentialism. Why should having a piece of paper that frankly doesn’t signify much given the standards in the industry entitle teachers to higher pay than other people at the median?

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

#227

Post by lukas099 »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #109

I really wonder why those headlines still make the news. It's been centuries, and probably millenias, that politics have asked for things that they did not grant once they were in a position to do so. I demand a minimum salary of $1,000,000 for everyone, and immortality for all! Vote for me and make a news article I guess?

Yeah, it's pretty easy to say that teachers should make that much.

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

#228

Post by ch4s3 »

Calavar wrote: post #107
bmmayer1 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come 78% of low income fourth graders in NJ can't read?[0] [0] https://acnj.org/newsroom/news-releases/nj-4th-graders-score...

Title of that article: "NJ 4th Graders Score Low on Literacy, Still Ahead of Nation" Throwing more money at the problem often makes some progress, but it's not always a definitive solution. Tough problems usually involve reorganizing processes, which tends to be harder than spending more money or recruiting more talented people.

It doesn't help that teaching programs in universities hold anti-science views about reading and reading comprehension and still cling to whole language nonsense. Furthermore they often reject broad cultural knowledge and vocabulary as key components of reading comprehension and insist that (despite evidence to the contrary) that it is a discrete skill that can be built in a vacuum.

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

#229

Post by kneebonian »

mattwad wrote: post #61
kneebonian wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me who was it that closed polling stations in areas with large Sanders support during the primaries again? And why was it that Bloomberg was running for only like 3 weeks right around super Tuesday and then folded after that? Maybe they are the same they just pretend ti act differently in front of the camera?

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 representative democracy but rather tyrrany.

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

#230

Post by QuarterReptile »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #101
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...

Perhaps because $60k is not actually that much for what we ask of our public school teachers. HN: $100k/yr to write webshit is a poverty wage! Also HN: $60k/yr is too much for the people we expect to educate our children!

No one could achieve all that we ask of our public school teachers, because the set of tasks does not lie within the realm of reality to accomplish, and most municipalities would go bankrupt before they finished trying to atone for that fact by dumping truckloads of money on teachers.

Despite all that, those teachers choose to work in those jobs. Are manning shortfalls at public schools significantly more than in other comparable sectors of the economy?

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