Are teachers underpaid? It depends. • Hacker News Board

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#41

Post by timjahn » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 4:04 PM UTC

odd_sort wrote: post #33

T-R wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I have any reason to doubt the BLS data, but does anyone know of any other data on the issue? Everyone seems to be citing the same pdf.

I think what makes people question the data is that the average hours of work per week match up pretty well with the time a teacher spends at school, which is insufficient to cover duties like planning lessons and grading papers (see for example any work-to-contract strike). In any case, the ATUS specifies that its questions are about work done for pay/profit or free for a family business (since teachers typically wo…

Bingo.

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#42

Post by timjahn » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 4:08 PM UTC

roundsquare wrote: post #6

timjahn wrote: post #2

My wife is a high school English teacher. The ongoing joke with teachers is they get 3 months a year off. What other profession gets that, right? Speaking from experience, she generally brings home work every night (grading, lesson planning, etc). Weekends too. This fluctuates based on time of year (grading a round of research papers, preparing new lessons for a new quarter, etc). Summers off? Kinda. New lessons and…

"But besides all that, teaching is a profession that is charged with preparing and educating our youth for tomorrow. Obviously, teachers go into it knowing this, and often for that very reason. But in my eyes, that's quite a responsibility. There are plenty of better paying jobs out there with less vacation that, at the end of the day, don't make much of a difference." If you ask me, that's all the more reason to inc…

I agree that it's a good reason to increase pay and possibly remove job security. And yes, once a teacher is tenured, barring any obvious crazy behavior, they are basically guaranteed their job regardless (at least in Chicagoland).

There are pros and cons to that - my wife and I discuss that subject often. I don't like the idea of tenured teachers not taking that responsibility seriously and just slacking off. My wife argues that it helps the good teachers make real change (since they can't before being tenured for fear of being fired).

No Child Left Behind is a big problem if you talk to any teacher. In my wife's district, they will soon be implementing some incentive based teaching practices, where portions of a teachers pay will be tied directly to student performances. And since all high school teaching is geared toward good ACT scores, it will all basically come down to ACT scores (which it does a lot already).

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#43

Post by timjahn » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 4:12 PM UTC

redxaxder wrote: post #11

aik wrote: post #4

> "The first time you teach a class, it’s incredibly hard and time consuming, but the difficulty drops like a logarithm to a relatively low plateau after you’ve done it a few times. This appears to be reflected in data." I'm not entirely sure if this is a good reflection of the teaching role, or at least what it should be. Also, this statement to me gives the impression that teaching is a fairly static or fixed proce…

As another graduate student who teaches, I can confirm jseliger's claim. Teaching difficulty drops of insanely fast. Don't think of it as making the task automatic, but rather having familiar territory off of which to base the things you say. After one semester teaching a class, you discover what ideas the students tend to find most confusing and what types of errors are the most common. Having leftover notes from th…

I'd like you to survey some other teachers who teach in high schools and grammar schools of varying class levels.

I'd venture to guess your observation is way off...

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#44

Post by timjahn » Mon, Jul 11, 2011, 4:13 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #28

waterside81 wrote: post #25

First observation: geez teachers in the US don't get paid "that much". In Ontario (province in Canada), teachers can max out after 12 years at > 100K a year, it's not at all unheard of. The teacher's union here is very powerful, for better or worse. I think deciding on how much a teacher "should" earn simply based on the time they put in and then compare it to another profession misses a valuable point - teachers can…

I agree that a great teacher is worth a substantial sum of money, but in order to pay it we first have to work out some objective metric. It's relatively easy to become a teacher, so if we just start paying every teacher more money we just attract more substandard candidates.

It's easy to become a teacher but not as easy to stay a teacher.

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#45

Post by learc83 » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 1:54 AM UTC

timjahn wrote: post #44

learc83 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that a great teacher is worth a substantial sum of money, but in order to pay it we first have to work out some objective metric. It's relatively easy to become a teacher, so if we just start paying every teacher more money we just attract more substandard candidates.

It's easy to become a teacher but not as easy to stay a teacher.

Where did you get that information from. In most districts it's nearly impossible to fire teachers.

Re: Are teachers underpaid? It depends.

#46

Post by timjahn » Tue, Jul 12, 2011, 8:18 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #45

timjahn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to become a teacher but not as easy to stay a teacher.

Where did you get that information from. In most districts it's nearly impossible to fire teachers.

It's nearly impossible to fire teachers, but staying a teacher is tough in terms of dealing with the emotional and mental stress (or simply wanting more money).

http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20090222/articles/90222032...