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The myth of the teacher pay gap?

nationalaffairs.com

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Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#61

Post by gridlockd »

Someone1234 wrote: post #10

This seems to use private education as a benchmark for the entire argument. From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just above public salaries and conditions (meaning private education cannot be used as a benchmark for when someone is under-paid, over-qualified, or has too high of a quit rate because they are…

> The fact that I could walk out of college with zero experience and only a degree, and earn $20K more than that working only 9-5 in the same city seems unfair (as a programmer).

So what? With many other degrees, you can walk out six figures in debt and land a job at McDonalds. Is that fair?

> But I have no idea how society decides salaries.

In the open market, it's (supposed to be) supply and demand. If salaries are high, that's a signal that there's too few people in the profession. Programmers are privileged for now, but lots of people are joining in.

Once supply outweighs demand, salaries will fall. Just wait for the next recession when the bullshit startup train will go off the rails.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#62

Post by vkhn »

nilkn wrote: post #37
vkhn wrote: post #9

I am willing to accept that there are studies and statistics that seem to contradict what is commonly accepted. I'm also willing to accept a lot of the evidence here that the problem is not nearly as bad as believed. This was, however, clearly written by statisticians that have no teacher friends or family. If they did, they would have asked more relevant questions of the data. For example WHY do teachers work "on av…

My partner is a teacher. She does indeed work 40 hours per week on average, has extensive time off for holidays, has the full summer off (she doesn't work at all during it), has a pension that when she retires will easily fund her lifestyle and more, and is paid the median household income for the city. It's not an easy job, but it could be a lot worse. She was also given a signing bonus and scholarship that together…

Pensions, bonuses and scholarships seem to be exceptions.

Median income is also a poor indicator.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#63

Post by shantly »

simonsarris wrote: post #57
shantly wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife's about to hit a wall on pay increases at right at $40k if she doesn't get a master's degree. Never get another real raise, just sub-inflation bumps every year. With quite a damn while left until retirement. Mind, the master's degrees most teachers get aren't exactly hard —there's a giant market for easy-as-pie degrees for teachers for exactly this reason, and that's what most universities deliver and what mo…

Why does the school require it? If everyone agrees its silly, why don't they just drop the requirement?

Dunno, they all do it though. I know school stats report the % of teachers with higher degrees and of course they all want those percentages to be higher. Possibly there are state incentives. Mostly it's just a bunch of people doing dumb crap without anyone having the power & motivation to fix it so they can all knock it off, which is a pretty common phenomenon, actually.

[EDIT] I mean to you wanna be the superintendent reporting that proportion of district teachers with master's degrees is up by seven percent since you started, or the one explaining that most of those degrees are bullshit and you don't care about it and neither should anyone else? Bear in mind most people have zero idea what teacher education looks like.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#64

Post by vkhn »

julianapostate wrote: post #43
vkhn wrote: post #9

I am willing to accept that there are studies and statistics that seem to contradict what is commonly accepted. I'm also willing to accept a lot of the evidence here that the problem is not nearly as bad as believed. This was, however, clearly written by statisticians that have no teacher friends or family. If they did, they would have asked more relevant questions of the data. For example WHY do teachers work "on av…

does she work summers too? winter break, spring break?

Do these questions have a point?

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#65

Post by nilkn »

vkhn wrote: post #62
nilkn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner is a teacher. She does indeed work 40 hours per week on average, has extensive time off for holidays, has the full summer off (she doesn't work at all during it), has a pension that when she retires will easily fund her lifestyle and more, and is paid the median household income for the city. It's not an easy job, but it could be a lot worse. She was also given a signing bonus and scholarship that together…

Pensions, bonuses and scholarships seem to be exceptions. Median income is also a poor indicator.

Pensions for teachers are certainly common. I grew up in a completely different part of the country and all my teachers also had pensions. I'm not sure how the median income is a poor indicator -- she makes as much as the median household does for the city.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#66

Post by yellowapple »

> Unlike in the EPI analysis, however, teachers (the black dots on the chart) receive a salary premium of 9% once their shorter work year is accounted for.

This is exactly where the article fell apart for me. There is no "shorter work year". Assuming that a teacher has zero work responsibilities when school's "out" (even setting aside summer school programs, "track"-based schedules, etc.) betrays a gross misunderstanding of exactly how much work a typical teacher has to do outside of class hours. Lesson planning alone is a major time sink, especially at a middle or high school level when you'll often be teaching entirely different classes with entirely different curricula (for example: a history teacher might be teaching both regular and AP variants of both US History and US Government; this is, in fact, exactly what my grandpa did).

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#67

Post by gridlockd »

Why do teachers have such an elevated standing in society anyways? If we're being honest, schools are, for the most part, daycare centers. Secondary education is, for the most part, completely useless.

Yet, unlike with most other professions, the government guarantees that those glorified daycare jobs will continue to exist. Why should these jobs pay well?

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#68

Post by vvanders »

simonsarris wrote: post #57
shantly wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife's about to hit a wall on pay increases at right at $40k if she doesn't get a master's degree. Never get another real raise, just sub-inflation bumps every year. With quite a damn while left until retirement. Mind, the master's degrees most teachers get aren't exactly hard —there's a giant market for easy-as-pie degrees for teachers for exactly this reason, and that's what most universities deliver and what mo…

Why does the school require it? If everyone agrees its silly, why don't they just drop the requirement?

I believe a portion of it ties into school accreditation.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#69

Post by crumpets »

Someone1234 wrote: post #10

This seems to use private education as a benchmark for the entire argument. From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just above public salaries and conditions (meaning private education cannot be used as a benchmark for when someone is under-paid, over-qualified, or has too high of a quit rate because they are…

>how society decides salaries. It seems pretty arbitrary from my perspective.

Society doesn't "decide". It's a decided by the labor market. Nobody wants to pay programmers six figures.

It's a myth that we think teachers are less important than programmers because they make less on average. There is just a larger supply of qualified teachers willing to work at lower prices.

Wait until you find out how little art history masters holders make. Amount of training is irrelevant to how much money you get.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#70

Post by mdorazio »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #23

Why not just go directly to the source? https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#25-0000 Secondary School Teachers: annual mean wage: $64,230 If we zoom in on a particular type of teacher, you get ranges: Middle school teachers https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes252022.htm bottom 10% earn 39k or less. bottom 25% earn 46k 50% earn 58k 75% earn 74k 90% earn 93k Based on these metrics, it seems like a fine occupation…

I think it's more useful to look at new teacher salaries by state to get around tenure and averaging effects [1]. Fine vs. not fine varies a lot by location in this list.

[1] http://www.nea.org/home/2017-2018-average-starting-teacher-s...

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