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Pay Teachers More

nytimes.com

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Re: Pay Teachers More

#31

Post by akashs »

bugsy wrote: post #8

Numerous studies show that education majors is the US have among the lowest composite ACT and LSAT scores of any major. http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2006/02/ranking-sc... There have been various explanation for this phenomenon which started in the 1970s and grew since then. Among the most interesting hypotheses is that traditionally smart women went into teaching as one of the few careers available to wo…

Why would you expect people who want to be teachers to do well on an admissions test for law school? Engineers do almost as poorly on the GRE Verbal, but does that mean they're idiots? I understand the LSAT has little to do with law, but just think of the selection bias of people in that bucket.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#32

Post by dangoldin »

maratd wrote: post #16

Let's try a thought exercise. If we pay engineers more, we'll get safer buildings. If we pay police officers more, we'll get safer streets. If we pay doctors more, we'll get better care. You see how this works? More pay attracts higher quality individuals, but it's a zero sum game. Those people are coming from some other industry. So if you'll pay teachers more, you'll have a lower quality of service elsewhere. That…

What about the future generations of doctors who had poor teachers and won't make good doctors?

I don't think it's a zero sum game - the world changes and different skills are required at different points. New industries are constantly born that require a whole new set of people. The population of the world is always in flux as well - does that mean every additional person has to split the limited resources?

I think a great teacher is a very leveraged way of taking students and giving them passions, goals, and skills. Students who've been lucky to have had these great teachers are the ones who will be passionate and become great in their chosen fields.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#33

Post by uuilly »

alextingle wrote: post #11
tokenadult wrote: post #2

One of the startling factual claims in the article is that there were times in the United States, and are now places in the world, where lawyers make little better compensation than schoolteachers. Really? I recall reading in the 1990s in a book about education policy in the United States that schoolteachers are more numerous than doctors, lawyers, scientists, and engineers COMBINED. If there are that many more schoo…

Why would a lawyer earn more money than a teacher? Only your ingrained cultural expectations suggest this. Can you strip those out and suggest any objective reasons that lawyers are worth more? Do they train for longer? Is their work more important? Do they need better school grades?

Lawyers make more money because teachers are willing to work for less than lawyers.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#34

Post by archgoon »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #28
archgoon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at the chart for percent of teachers working on a given day (orange and gray one). The orange alone gives 9.5 hours per day. That alone is more than 40 hours per week.

Which chart? They are numbered, you know. [edit: I'm guessing you are referring to chart 6, but that data is restricted to "days when they did at least some work".]

Number 6. Sorry, the color description was completely useless.

Edit: I'm tired, and I'm making a bunch of stupid mistakes. Figure 6 and figure 5 are directly at odds with each other. I can't account for the discrepancy, so I'm going to reduce the signal to noise ratio, and get rid of some of my other comments. I apologize to everyone for spamming stupidly.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#35

Post by pmorici »

bkaid wrote: post #3

I never understand why people get overly emotional about teacher salaries but not other public positions like fire, police, military, etc. While I empathize (my mother and 2 sisters are teachers), they do only work 9 months out of the year, and less than 40 hours per week. And teachers insist on remaining unionized, basically ensuring bad (non-criminal) teachers can't be fired once they get tenured after 2-3 years in…

"I never understand why people get overly emotional about teacher salaries but not other public positions like fire, police, military, etc."

Firefighters and Police were notably excluded from the recent anti-union legislation legislation they passed in Wisconsin. My guess is because if they had included the Police then who would have kept order in the capitol building? The police would have been out there on strike with the teachers.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#36

Post by [deleted] »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #9
mmaro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers do not work less than 40 hours per week. A ton of time is spent on grading, prep, helping slow students, school meetings, complying with NCLB requirements, etc.

According to the BLS, the average full time teacher works slightly less than 40 hours/week (see Table 2). This includes time at the workplace, at home and at another location. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

[deleted]

Re: Pay Teachers More

#37

Post by juiceandjuice »

I really, really wanted to teach high school physics. I fell in love with physics, and I fell in love with my high school physics teachers. I've always liked kids.

My Sophomore year of high school, I really thought about getting the teaching physics degree. It was basically a teaching degree with a Physics minor. I went and talked to my high school physics teacher, and he told me this:

Don't. We went over all the salary benefits, and all the possibilities. I'd be starting at 29k (Utah), about 4k more than I would make fulltime working at a grocery store. The max salary was about 55k if you'd been there a while and had a Masters I believe. We also talked about student loan forgiveness that comes along with teaching at a Title 1 school.

He told me to do this: Go into physics. Get a real degree, maybe a masters. Work in physics, make some money, save some money, live your life, etc... He said I was a smart enough person that I won't have any problem with this (kind, encouraging words)

He told me after I did this, if I still want to teach, not only would I be in a better position to teach, but I'd be a better teacher from the real world experience.

So, someday in the future, I plan to teach. Right now, I have a degree, a job, and I'm paying off student loans and saving up money. Someday, I'd still love to teach. I got a taste of it being a TA for a bit in college. I still talk to this teacher once a year or so.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#38

Post by yummyfajitas »

pmorici wrote: post #29
lallysingh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a better merit->pay feedback cycle. A good lawyer will get repeat business. When am I going to take a class again?

You're kidding right? College students in particular are always trying to get into sections of classes taught by professors they know are good either through first hand experience or word of mouth recommendation.

lallysingh was describing a merit->pay cycle. You are describing a merit->opinion cycle.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#39

Post by barry-cotter »

alextingle wrote: post #11
tokenadult wrote: post #2

One of the startling factual claims in the article is that there were times in the United States, and are now places in the world, where lawyers make little better compensation than schoolteachers. Really? I recall reading in the 1990s in a book about education policy in the United States that schoolteachers are more numerous than doctors, lawyers, scientists, and engineers COMBINED. If there are that many more schoo…

Why would a lawyer earn more money than a teacher? Only your ingrained cultural expectations suggest this. Can you strip those out and suggest any objective reasons that lawyers are worth more? Do they train for longer? Is their work more important? Do they need better school grades?

>Why would a lawyer earn more money than a teacher?

Apart from governemnt lawyers and academics everybody is in private practice or working for a company. Their employers/clients have them to deal with money problems. Whoever is close to the money gets to keep some. Also, teachers have tenure, great pensions, work only 9-10 months a year, and within a few years of being hired, work under 40 hours a week on average.

>Only your ingrained cultural expectations suggest this. Can you strip those out and suggest any objective reasons that lawyers are worth more?

If you mean morally, no, it's a value discussion, and those are always boring because nobody ever convinces anybody. If you're talking about how much their labour is worth... A good lawyer makes their client money or stops bad things happening to them. This is a much more valuable service than childcare/socialisation/education to the people handing out the money. Children have no money or freedom after all.

>Do they train for longer?

Not relevant

>Is their work more important?

Value judgement; all heat, no light

>Do they need better school grades?

Yes, but that's also not terribly relevant.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#40

Post by Anechoic »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #9
mmaro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers do not work less than 40 hours per week. A ton of time is spent on grading, prep, helping slow students, school meetings, complying with NCLB requirements, etc.

According to the BLS, the average full time teacher works slightly less than 40 hours/week (see Table 2). This includes time at the workplace, at home and at another location. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

Are these data averaged across the entire year (including summers)? The summary is not clear about that, although it does include data from summer interviews.

If it is averaged across summers, you can have a teacher working 50 hrs/wk during the school year, 0 hours during the summer and have the average come out to less than 40.

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