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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#801

Post by ggm »

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…

It's always been my opinion that market value aside, Kindergarden teachers probably deserve the HIGHEST pay because they lay the foundations, and without sound foundations, the building is unstable.

Apologies for extended metaphorical language, but the underlying point is really what I think: Pay the ones at the front the most. They do the groundwork.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#802

Post by dmerks »

just_boost_it wrote: post #737
8note wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Send the kid home and fail them for the year? They can try again next year. Well behaved kids are the parents' problem

When I grew up, there were different classes for the smart kids and the less smart kids. There was a bottom class where the students had all sorts of behavioural issues. Some people just won't learn, and I think it's fair to separate them from the people who do. At least that way, teachers get at least a few classes of eager students.

This was the generally accepted approach nationwide in the past, until we realized it fuels systemic transgenerational inequalities, a bit like economic, racial, residential, etc. forms of segregation.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#803

Post by Beltalowda »

synthc wrote: post #661

The same problem is happening in NL, it's a downwards spiral really that concerns me a lot. The government is trying to improve the situation by increasing pay a little, but with the current inflation it is probably too little, too late. A relative of mine became a teacher after a career switch, and while she likes the work, there are many frustrations: - Parents have a 'the customer is always right'-attitude, and co…

This is compounded by making it quite hard to actually get in to teaching, especially later in life. You have to go to school for 4 years and pay for this yourself (no student financing), which essentially no one does for obvious reasons. There is a special path for adults (zij-instroomtraject) which means you "only" get paid minimum wage for two years and the entry requirements (IMHO needlessly) excludes quite a few people.

Inflexibility in how we treat education in general is a big problem; I was sent to MAVO back in the day only because I hated doing French and was pretty awful at it, and bad French grade of course means you can't possibly be good at anything else :-/ There were quite a few people in my MAVO class like that. There's been shortages of technically educated people for decades, which is not a surprise if you judge technical people on their ability to do French when they're 13 and then close off all avenues for further education based on that...

Or, as one of my foreign friends said, "you need a diploma to clean a rat's arse here".

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#804

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

amusedcyclist wrote: post #745
ekianjo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but plenty of people still want to be one The much higher salary makes up for it, but you can't seriously expect teachers to get the same salary as lawyers.

Why not ? I would argue that most teachers provide a more valuable service than most lawyers (For my definition of value atleast). Lawyers have strict licensing requirements while teachers don't, which would be one of the major differences

In NY, teachers have to pass exams, and get certified. I could ask my friends for details, but I know they need to do it, because I hear them bitch about it.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#805

Post by astrange »

mattkrause wrote: post #285
GiorgioG wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like US spending is slightly higher than European countries. We're not getting our money's worth here. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...

These cross-national comparisons are tricky. For example, US spending on education includes a bunch of healthcare costs, as the employers are paying something (as a benefit) and employee salaries need to cover the rest. Somewhere with single-payer healthcare will directly allocate the money to healthcare instead.

There’s also the cost for land and building maintenance, which are both unreasonably expensive in cities.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#806

Post by midoridensha »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #742
galaxyLogic wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teacher's job is no doubt stressful. Therefore I think we must invent new ways of automating the teaching, amplify the powers of a single teacher. That way there will be enough teachers to provide for every child. Not sure how to get there. But what about the adult population? I think large swaths of it are in need of more education. Math literacy, evidence-based evaluation of propaganda. Large portion of US populati…

Or, and hear me out: we could cut our military budget (which is larger than the next ten or so countries combined, both total and per capita) and start tipping the corporate tax share back towards the ~%50 it was sixty years ago and magically be able to: * pay teachers a fair wage * hire enough teachers, assistants, and admins so that teachers don't have to work at least another half a workday 'off the books' * fund…

>Or, and hear me out: we could cut our military budget (which is larger than the next ten or so countries combined, both total and per capita)

No, it's not. Russia, Israel, and Saudi Arabia all spend more as a percentage of GDP on their militaries than America.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#807

Post by sudosysgen »

peyton wrote: post #795
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but this is Hacker news. Blaming individual teachers validates the idea that there aren't major systemic problems in the country. It's not that teachers are underpaid and class sizes are exploding, it's simply the case that the existing crop of teachers aren't egalitarian enough to handle the job

I honestly don’t follow. Doesn’t paying more money or reducing class size (by hiring more teachers) directly imply the existing crop of teachers can’t handle the job? Or are you saying we pay the exact same people more money? And reduce class sizes how? Requiring students take fewer classes?

Even when they can handle it as best as you can expect from someone, it's still not going to be enough.

You can reduce class sizes by hiring more teachers. Their salaries aren't actually a huge fraction of education spending (only around ~15% if you assume one teacher for every 30 fulltime students and 80k TC per fulltime teacher, both of which are deliberate overestimates).

Hire 30% more teachers, give them a 30% pay bump, and reduce unneeded spending such as excessive sports spending beyond what is useful to the students. Remove unnecessary administrative load from the teachers. Reduce school hours that are very often lengthened for babysitting reasons.

You can even cut the last year of education and tack it into community college while making it optional.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#808

Post by midoridensha »

briHass wrote: post #788
KennyBlanken wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, and hear me out: we could cut our military budget (which is larger than the next ten or so countries combined, both total and per capita) and start tipping the corporate tax share back towards the ~%50 it was sixty years ago and magically be able to: * pay teachers a fair wage * hire enough teachers, assistants, and admins so that teachers don't have to work at least another half a workday 'off the books' * fund…

Why is it always about more money? The US is usually in the top 3 spending per student (beaten only by small countries that represent statistical outliers like Norway or Luxemburg), so really, it spends the most. Yet, as many are quick to point out, all that money results in educational outcomes well below many European countries and also many Asian countries that spend far, far less.

The US also spends something like 4x as much for a major construction project than other rich nations like UK or Germany.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#809

Post by Beltalowda »

kevingadd wrote: post #13
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.

By what standard is that actually "plenty"? Is that $13185 enough to properly fund all the services a child needs for a proper education? And if it's not, why not? How much do you believe we should be spending per student? You can point at a big number and say 'that's enough' but we spend large amounts of money on all sorts of things, the number being large doesn't mean it's sufficient. There are tons of children in…

The figure in the Netherlands is about €6.7k for an elementary school pupil (until age ~12, not sure how that compares to K-12 exactly).

So that's a little over half of what the US spends, and I think it's fair to say that Dutch elementary education is at least roughly comparable to US education (maybe one is a little bit better than the other, but I'd be surprised if the US one was twice as good).

I don't know about other countries, but this is one metric to give an approximation about what is "plenty", although there's the caveat that you can't compare this directly: I've heard about "school lunches" and "school nurses" in the US, and those kind of things are virtually unheard of over here.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#810

Post by auslegung »

peyton wrote: post #795
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but this is Hacker news. Blaming individual teachers validates the idea that there aren't major systemic problems in the country. It's not that teachers are underpaid and class sizes are exploding, it's simply the case that the existing crop of teachers aren't egalitarian enough to handle the job

I honestly don’t follow. Doesn’t paying more money or reducing class size (by hiring more teachers) directly imply the existing crop of teachers can’t handle the job? Or are you saying we pay the exact same people more money? And reduce class sizes how? Requiring students take fewer classes?

> Doesn’t paying more money or reducing class size (by hiring more teachers) directly imply the existing crop of teachers can’t handle the job?

Yes. Then the question becomes, is the job reasonable? I think the article author, as well as the person you replied to, would say No. Not to mention tens of thousands of recently former teachers across the US.

> Or are you saying we pay the exact same people more money?

I won’t speak for the person you’re replying to, but I’m saying that, as is the article author.

> And reduce class sizes how?

See “pay the exact same people more money”.

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