This is no shock if you are friends with any teachers or have kids of school age. My wife and I have 5 close friends who are all public school teachers (2 of the 5 are a married couple). 4 of the 5 send their kids to private schools. I think that says a lot, given that they aren't paid well and choose to sacrifice and pay the tuition.
The harsh reality is that the pay sucks, you need a masters degree to even be a teacher, parents view public schools as glorified daycare system, and shitty bureaucrats run it all into the ground. Combined with the general lack of discipline and culture of disrespect among kids (I fault the parents), it's a completely miserable experience that was worsened by COVID and remote learning.
I've heard so many ridiculous stories from our friends that I'm shocked any of them remain doing it. In fact, 1 of the 5 I mentioned had enough and threw in the towel for the 21-22 school year. She's doing something else now, like running a study abroad program in association with the local honors university. She only gets the smart, disciplined kids who want to be there. The house of cards that is public education is coming down.
Teachers are paid quite poorly, expected to do a ton of work, beyond their purview, unsupported by their administration, and regulated like crazy.
It's a labor of love. People become teachers because they love the idea of being in that profession.
Unfortunately, governments, corporations, parents, and even students, see this as carte blanche to pay them even worse, and yank all support from them.
IT is a crazy field. People make a lot of money here, and we are used to being given a fairly free rein. Most folks in IT like their jobs, don't question whether or not we made the right life choices, are valued by our employers and customers, and, on top of that, we make great money.
Night and day. It's fairly hard for people to understand what teachers face.
I know quite a few.
Despite all the crying about teaching jobs being open, it's actually really difficult for teachers to find work; especially work that doesn't involve a two-hours-each-way commute, to teach in neglected urban schools, while being paid far too little to live near their work.
Probably a "duty of care" thing... if two teenagers are having a knife fight on the basketball court, sure, it's not reasonable to expect a teacher to break that up. Two seven year olds brawling over trivial nonsense? That sort of thing should be easily broken up by a teacher, and in fact involving police would be both a waste of police time that would be better spent on real crime, and also a drastic overreach - that's how you end up with those ridiculous "primary schooler arrested for holding a stick vaguely shaped like a gun" headlines.
Teaching as a profession is in an awful state, but involving more police is not the solution. Better pay, student to teacher ratios, and so on would go a long way towards making it an attractive profession again. Also, in my opinion education (even at the tertiary level) has become too "customer service" focused, and many children are no longer taught to respect educators by their parents, which leads to appalling behaviour. There needs to be an overall attitude shift to help repair the teacher-student relationship.
>Because involving police during an assault is not the solution?
>Kids who punch others should be punished by law enforcement.
It really depends on the situation - in my jurisdiction the age of criminal responsibility is 10 years old, below that age it is not possible to press criminal charges. And for children aged 10 to 14 'the onus is on the prosecution to prove that the young person alleged to have committed the crime had a sufficient understanding of the criminality of their actions. That understanding must amount to the knowledge that the actions were criminally wrong, and not just naughty"' [1]. Again, it would be highly inappropriate to get police involved except in the most drastic circumstances.
For older teens, sure, but they generally have the sense to not brawl on-campus / within the school's duty of care. I'm mainly referring to breaking up squabbles between primary to middle schoolers. Teachers should be compensated more for having to put up with this, but I believe it's an unavoidable part of school yard/classroom management.
I will note that here in Australia we don't have a police officer stationed in schools as (many? most? of) the USA does, so maybe the cost/benefit changes if you have a dedicated resource and aren't diverting police from useful work off-site. But I still feel it's inappropriate.
>Teachers have no authority to punish a kid whatsoever.
What would you do, bring back spanking? I agree with you, kids get away with things that would not have gone unpunished when I was a lad, but you have to remember that the goal of the system is (at least in theory) to nurture and educate children. If you keep excluding or eventually expel students they won't get educated, if you on calling parents in to collect their misbehaving kids they might get punished at work or eventually fired for being unreliable (which certainly will make the child's home life more difficult, and if it's a troubled family may actually result in the child being physically harmed), and so on.
It's a very tough problem and I don't have a good answer for it. But I do believe that children need to be taught more discipline at home so that teachers can maintain effective control in class, and that this whole trend of parents wanting to be their child's friend over parenting them effectively is very bad for society.
Getting police involved often makes things more dangerous for everybody. It's absolutely not something teachers should be doing except in extreme circumstances.
It's a police officer's job to violently tie people up and seperate them from family and community. They aren't the nearest solution to any school problem.
Who says educators want the unaccountable police force to assault their students and drag them to jail if there's a bullying problem? Where is this idea coming from?
At a minimum, calling someone in with a state monopoly on violence is unpredictable, and you do not know what the police officer will do or if/ to what extent they will hurt people.
Likewise parents should only parent. That is why I call the cops on my kids when they fight. They need to learn that assault and battery are serious crimes that I'm not equip to handle as an untrained person. It's best left up to people who are trained and specialized to deal in the matter.
Do you have kids who’ve needed steering? If Bobby cuts one of Suzy’s pigtails, you perp-walking him and printing him, throwing him juvie for 60 days? Of course there’s the possibility of criminal behavior, but most of it is better served long-term by other means. I am speaking from looking a a couple of generations of influence here, both sides of the perpetration fence.
There are infractions that need police, but the majority are best handled without.
The original comment on this thread conflated bullying and violence with all discipline of all kinds (did not nuance between them). Cops don’t care about bullying anyway, it’s not against the law.
Yeah, if adult go around with scissor cutting people's hair? That is fucked up.
> you perp-walking him and printing him, throwing him juvie for 60 days
You came up with a strong punishment just to support your argument.
The punishment could be a warning as well unless it is repeated offender.
The punishment could be fining a parent.
Instead of coming up with a better solution like this, we let teachers handle it.
This is why bullying is not often resolved. This is why school has the strange zero tolerance policy. They don't even care about justice. They just want the problem to go away.
> Teachers are paid quite poorly, expected to do a ton of work, beyond their purview, unsupported by their administration, and regulated like crazy.
Everyone can claim the same. Very few people will claim they are paid too well, or they don't have to do thing that don't exactly fit their job description, or their administration/management does not provide them the support they deserve, etc. Oh, and regulation? Lots and lots of trades have to deal with unreasonable regulation, don't ask me how I know.
Here's the thing. This is a free country. Nobody's putting a gun at anyone's head and asking them to be a teacher. The teacher job may suck from some points of view, but it probably is quite ok from other points of view (like vacation, maternity leave, maybe benefits, etc). One way or another millions of people decide to be teachers.
In the end, I like to tell people: 98% of jobs suck 98% of the time. If you manage to make your job suck only 90% of the time, you're having 5 times more fun than the average worker out there. If your name is Feynman, then probably your job sucks 0% of the time. But your name is not Feynman.
If you can't pay a mortgage or feed a family, summers off and pension aren't useful. Teachers don't have equity like many other industries. They pretty much universally don't get bonuses. The mindset that teachers have something that offsets the embarrassingly low salaries that we offer them is the result of decades of politicians trying to justify cutting money from education.
What is the money being spent on? It's hard to get actual data on this down to the granular level of pens and paper. I've read tons of statements that it mostly goes to administrator salaries, various "initiatives" (but how does an initiative cost separate money? never answered) and infrastructure costs. I believe that's likely, but I also haven't seen raw data.
Next question to me is: what actually needs funding? Teacher salaries, sure, easy argument. But then what? What supplies? Books, laptops, projectors, software licenses, crayons, play-doh, stencils, rulers, graph paper, craft paper, what? And how often?
Comparing my elementary school experience 80's to my children's (now); Technology and Curriculum materials are much more prevalent.
I find the use of so many single use materials surprising. Most of the subjects won't have a textbook in the traditional sense, they've a 'math program' that includes a workbook, any number of handouts, worksheets, and often an application or website. Most of my textbooks were from the 60's, we made brown grocery bag bookcovers for them and were expected to return them with minimal wear. While this generates increased reoccurring revenue for the publisher, I'm unconvinced it's an improvement.
What are the lifetime cost differences on chalkboards vs. smartboards or overhead projectors vs digital projectors.
It's not like my kids don't have all the technology at home, chromebooks, tablets, etc. I don't think they need it school too, especially when often all they do with it is the app from the subscription they have in place of a textbook.
The huge increase in infrastructure costs are seriously under-appreciated.
This is an article from 2002 about new schools being built in Baltimore. One for $14M and one for $13M. The article laments how much school construction costs are rising.
That data doesn't look to be adjusted for inflation, no? 1990 dollars are worth essentially half of today's dollars, so those charts don't say very much, even if they only go to 2005.
Edit: it's also the case that the population has grown by 50 million people since 1990, which would bring an expected increase of 15-20% in expenditure. Accounting for both, I'm surprised we don't spend more.
Considering the average pay was about $65k, I'd say that most states seem to have decent pay. That's slightly higher than the average pay in the US, and significantly higher than the median.
My state has good teacher pay. I know someone working as a secondary ed biology teacher making a little more than I do as a dev (about $90k; both of us have masters).
Average isn't a useful metric here because you'd be hard pressed to find an "average" school. Teacher salaries generally don't do a good job of tracking the cost of living. $65k might be a good salary for some parts of America, but if a bigger chunk of those teachers are in dense urban areas with high costs of living (see: the bay area) it's not good at all. It's also not useful if you lump public school teachers in with private school teachers.
If it's not a useful metric, then it seems the article has no support for it's argument about teacher pay. If you also look in the article, it mentions that many of the states with higher costs of living also have significantly higher average pay, while states with lower cost of living have lower pay. It seems to generally track.
Now there could be localized areas that have pay problems, like the bay area. But are these widespread? Or is this a symptom of some underlying problem like locale specific policies or preferences (property taxes, housing prices/zoning/preferences, and the largest income inequality in the country)? Using other anecdotes, like in my area, there doesn't seem to be a problem.
So basically, if we can't use averages, what quantitative evidence is there that teacher pay being low is a widespread problem? Or is it possible that the audience on this forum is used to pay which falls in the top 5-10%, and thus skews the perception of what is "good" pay?
"Teacher salaries generally don't do a good job of tracking the cost of living."
You make this claim, but is there evidence to back that up? Because I don't see it in the article nor the comments.
>$65k might be a good salary for some parts of America, but if a bigger chunk of those teachers are in dense urban areas with high costs of living
Seems like the location of teachers would match the location of workers and children. It seems reasonable to compare the average worker salary to the average teacher's (or public teacher if that is your main interest)
Public school teachers belong to unions and have lifetime pensions. Many of them have their educational loans forgiven after a certain number of years of service.
Not in all states. In my state (North Carolina), teachers participate in the public employees retirement/pension fund. However, public employees are prohibited by law from joining/forming a union.
Yes, the get "summers off", but there are also mandatory continuing education requirements that must be completed, so they're still working (unpaid) during those two months.
Teachers also cannot request a vacation day. If you need to call in sick, you're responsible for securing a substitute (school provides the list of approved people, better start calling them frantically).
Neither of those benefits, if they exist in a state, negate the hardships of a low salary. Thinking of paying off the loan which got you the job as some sort of luxury is wild. We could also just pay them more so loans didn't need to be forgiven.
But this and the previous comment is true for all jobs. How can you compare a job where it takes years and years of dedicated study and very special set of skills and aptitude to match the remuneration of a job that is less valuable and only requires certification?
Can we expect school teachers to be paid as much as a project manager or surgeon? It is not an easy job or an unskilled one, but it is not at par with the more you well paid jobs as well.
Cities want to have a mixed housing and diversity and all kinds of income earning citizens. But then the low wage earning populace start complaining that pay isn’t good enough and wages need to be increased. You can’t have the cake and eat it too. We can create subsidized affordable homes in expensive Ca zip codes but we can’t bring down cost of living…because it’s the high cost of living that supports the rest of the pyramid by way of high cost of goods and services. And taxes. From gas to utilities to restaurants, everything costs more. So those on the lower wages who are subsidized will always have a lag in cost of living no matter what.
It’s all relative. The govt should make infrastructure and basic support systems equal to ALL cities with diverse cost of living index. That’s all we can do in terms of equality.
Completely random google search and this about rural schools : https://hechingerreport.org/rural-schools-have-a-teacher-sho.... [..] “People arrive here, and they can’t deal,” said Kohl of the many teachers who come for a few years but don’t stay. “Yeah, the mountains are beautiful, but they’re nine hours away. If you want to fly anywhere, you drive 325 miles to Billings.”[..] For many reasons, including low pay, isolation and scarcity of housing, hanging on to local talent is an especially acute problem in Montana.[…] you can’t fix isolation and lack of housing with higher pay. This is a govt failing.
How much does tutoring cost? It costs 10-12k per student per annum according to most schools budgets. And most school districts have 10-15k students.
Schools are for social reasons as well as educational. So children can learn from their peers..but consider what is happening in schools. There is violence, guns, bullying and drugs in school. They are becoming political and it’s like rounding up all the impressionables for any kind of indoctrination. Education has become secondary to politics in American schools.
Union negotiated working conditions are worse but pay is higher. Something is utterly rotten with American public education and it’s been this way for the past two decades. It has gotten worse in the last ten years. It might be beyond repair at this point and needs to be dismantled and rebuilt.
> Teachers don't have equity like many other industries.
What "many"? Are there any industries besides software and finance that offer equity compensation?
I had real jobs in a couple fields before I became a coder, and never once did they give me free stocks. I think one company you could use part of your pay check automatically _buy_ their stock at nearly market prices, which would have been a silly thing to do.
Sounds nice as long as things like the pension are actually funded. Not so great if you worked for years of lower pay only to find out that your pension is being cut because your employer didn't put aside as much money as they were supposed to.
And homeschooling is skyrocketing nationwide as more parents decide to pull their kids from government schools. Long-term, I think we will see an even greater move in this direction.
I'd like to be excited about homeschooling and other alternate-schooling, but unfortunately my anecdotal experience with people (acquaintances, sometimes co-workers) who were the outcome of homeschooling biases me. The theory is great: DIY things that you can do better than the "pros". I DIY almost all the maintenance on my house, so it makes sense that one could possibly teach better than public school teachers.
But then you look at the actual reasons people are homeschooling, and by and large, it's parents who are opposing some perceived "indoctrination": Fundamentalist Christians objecting to things like sex ed, biology, evolution. More and more now, it looks like it's not just being driven by religion but by political ideology. Our local "moms" group is full of people pulling their kids out to prevent them from "being indoctrinated by the liberals" and for anti-vax reasons. For every 1 parent homeschooling because they really can provide a better education at home, there are probably 100 parents who are totally unqualified, will leave huge gaps in their kids' education, and are only doing it for ideological reasons.
In theory, having a smart parent at home DIYing their kids' education sounds like a great idea, but in practice, it's all the wrong people doing it for all the wrong reasons.
Everyone I know that has the funds are pulling their kids out primarily for the indoctrination aspect, and I plan to do the same.
I would dispute that this is the wrong reasons. The most common complaint I hear is around racial theory/ identity politics/ or whatever you want to call it. People don't like their 1st grade child being taught that they are an oppressor by virtue of their birth and guilty and responsible for generations of injustice.
These are views that I believe are harmful and untrue. I would feel the same way if the school was was teaching the earth revolved around the sun, or God made women to be subservient to men
I don't think leaving huge holes in someone's education, because a parent (or one of these co-ops) can't teach it properly, is a good trade-off for shielding him/her from perceived indoctrination. Notice I specifically said perceived because it's mostly exaggerated or outright untrue. If merely teaching kids that the Civil War happened, and that it was actually about slavery is now indoctrination, then anything can be considered indoctrination. There are a lot of parents out there that oppose teaching facts they personally disagree with, and these people are the ones who least should be homeschooling.
>I don't think leaving huge holes in someone's education, because a parent (or one of these co-ops) can't teach it properly, is a good trade-off for shielding him/her from perceived indoctrination.
I generally agree that forgoing basic education is not a solution. Most parents I know readily admit that they don't have the bandwidth for homeschooling and choose private schools as a solution.
I'm not to interested in tilting at individual facts, so hopefully we can skip that part, and agree that different world views are instilled in children as part of their education (by whatever means).
I often hear it parroted that certain people are oppressors by virtue of their birth and guilty and responsible for generations of injustice. I do not want my children to internalize this message.
With that context, perhaps we can agree that all parents are opposed to teaching children ideologies they don't personally agree with.
I would further suggest that many parents currently pulling their children from schools are doing so based on the message above.
I often hear the same strawman from right-wing sources. Usually the actual content is benign, like GP mentioned (topics like the US Civil War was fought over slavery). I've never heard any teacher or curriculum say the things being alleged or seen any evidence that they were said, which returns to the bulk of GP's comment: people are having degraded education over falsely perceived indoctrination.
The nice thing is that it doesn't matter what I believe is deserved or not the thing is that there was wrong doing and that the wrong doing should be teached in school. Imagine Germany not teaching their children about the second world war. LOL
I think we are talking about entirely different topics/ talking past eachother. I too agree that school should include the darker parts of history and lessons learned from them.
I don't think that you and I can have a discussion unless we agree on the subject we are even talking about.
well technically it revolves around the ever-shifting center which is only approximated by the center of the sun by virtue of its mass, or something along those lines I dunno I'm no scientist
I don't think the parent was arguing necessarily that its wrong for parents to want their children to be taught certain things or a certain way. I think the argument being put forth was that most parents don't have what it takes to teach their kids. Let's say you take your kid out of school because you don't like what he's being taught in history class or whatever. Okay, well do you have what it takes to teach your kid music, art, geometry, calc, English, physics, biology, chemistry, etc. Most people I would say don't have that kind of broad capacity.
So what happens is parents start forming homeschool support groups, they pool resources, divide responsibilities based on expertise and knowledge, and eventually recreate the concept of a school from scratch. I guess it can then eventually undergo the same moral fracture and the cycle repeats.
> Let's say you take your kid out of school because you don't like what he's being taught in history class or whatever. Okay, well do you have what it takes to teach your kid music, art, geometry, calc, English, physics, biology, chemistry, etc. Most people I would say don't have that kind of broad capacity.
Anyone who was able to graduate high school back when that meant something can teach all of those subjects to the end of primary school if they’re willing to read and put in some work, by any reasonable standard.
The homeschool support groups add a lot in this context and I foresee a time where every suburb and neighborhood will have one or more of them. That, combined with all of the curricula available offline and online, there isn't much specialized knowledge that parents need to have in order to get started. By the time kids hit middle school and high school, they are able to do quite a bit of learning on their own and are taught how to seek out help if they need it.
> The homeschool support groups add a lot in this context
Also was home schooled for 5 years. From watching others I can fairly confidently say my parents were far above average for the time and area in terms of being educators and trying to get ahead of the "socialization" curve. They had degrees and tried their best to teach to lesson plans prepared by professionals, modifying as they saw fit.
These groups tout how well-rounded they are, but many are bluntly filled with extremist nutjobs. Abusively so in many cases. My parents were utterly blind to this, and to this day like to talk about how "well rounded" socially I was.
I was not. I was exposed to the nutjobs and crackpots of society in a fairly intimate manner at a very young age, with very little supervision other than whichever adults were performing a given lesson at the time.
Not saying this to scare anyone away from home schooling. If done thoughtfully, carefully, and evidence-based it certainly can have great outcomes. I just have my hairs stand on end when I hear folks talk about these groups as some sort of fix for the problem - when in fact they are the problem to begin with in my experience.
Homeschool may be becoming more "mainstream" but I think a lot of folks just now starting out due to the pandemic are in for some very hard truths in the next couple years.
You can barely get kids to do the assigned reading, what indoctrination do you think is happening? Same goes for any areas of higher education where people think the universities are turning their kids into liberals.
This has a whole satanic panic feel about it from people who should know better.
I get where you are coming from with the satanic panic. I do think that some of the "excitement" around the topic is over the top. But even without it, I think there a some fundamental considerations and choices for people to make about how their kids are educated.
You response beggs a really interesting question: where do new ideas come from and how do they spread in society. It is clear that there are generational difference in opinion that change over time, so kids get new ideas somewhere. Clearly their friends and the media are a big part of it too, but where do those opinions come from?
I think education is a big part of this, even if it isn't always overt (sometimes it is). If most of your teachers buy into a specific ideology, that certainly colors what they teach. If you are teaching soft subjects like literature, history, ect, there is a lot of subjectivity in how to interpret things and frame them.
For the overt stuff, my friends 2nd grader recently became obsessed with climate change. Their teacher had them making protest signs and marching around the elementary school, and now they ridicule gifts that aren't eco friendly and think the world is doomed. While I believe in climate change, I think it is a complex topic that most adults fail to comprehend, let alone a 2nd grader.
I think you just made the case for more homeschooling. Families are allowed to educate their children with their own values, whether or not we all agree on the same things.
Agreed 100%. I personally plan to homeschool my own kids with the skills and values I believe will lead them to success in future life: piety, virtousness and a practical skill in the trades. There has been a big shift towards PC culture and STEM which may not even be applicable to the future.
I also think that most history taught in US public schools has been severely rewritten to support a liberal agenda, which strays so far from the truth it borders on fantasy.
I think given current trends giving your kid a linux computer without internet access at an early age and teaching them programming will secure a much more successful life than any trade, and they will have the finances and flexibility to pursue any physical/non-software hobby they want.
I totally get manual labor being a virtue and I agree we should all seek it out to some extent, but making it your primary profession, in my opinion, does not hold a candle to software development for life quality.
"We agree on the same facts, but differ in our definition of fact and the conclusions made from and consequent to those facts" seems more appropriate. There are a lot of "facts" that are really just assertions, with varying levels of evidence or proofs or universal applicability. The idea of rights is a good example of facts per this definition.
If it's facts like mathematical or logical axioms, or similar such things that are virtually undisputed except by the utmost extreme fringe elements of humanity, probably we agree what a fact is. If it's "scientific consensus" well... maybe still, but it's getting hazy. If it's "lived experience" or "history as written by the victors" then we aren't agreeing on what a fact is anymore, in my opinion. And there are many levels of variability below that.
The conclusions made based on a fact are progressively more impacted by the amount of variability. The consequences arising from making decisions based on those conclusions even moreso.
If the conclusion is "my children will be treated like prisoners in public school and informed subtly through virtually every lesson plan that their skin color changes how they are supposed to behave and how they should view their positions in life" are that I vote for somebody who supports charter schools and voucher systems, the consequences might be that I end up campaigning for that single issue regardless of party or candidate.
Or maybe it's just taking my kids out of school and using one of the many pre-made self-learning curricula for a variety of topics and give them a laptop and frequent checkups to ensure they're learning. Or maybe I outsource it to my church. Or maybe I outsource it to YouTube and Wikipedia.
Or maybe I say fuck it and let them go play in the yard all day, or go to the mall, or go to their own protests all day, or join a street gang, or try to get tiktok views, or invent some thing, or write a book, or overdose, or chat on discord all day, or get a job, or join a club. Lot of options, lot of ways to "fail to educate" on any given topic.
"and informed subtly through virtually every lesson plan that their skin color changes how they are supposed to behave and how they should view their positions in life".
Frankly, everyday life will do that for a lot of folks.
It’s good that you are aware these individuals have influenced your bias in this area.
The “DIY vs professional” mental model is not as helpful as other perspectives when evaluating homeschooling. Homeschooling is an extension of parenting, something we do not outsource outside of extreme situations, often involving criminal behavior. The ideal child-curriculum-pedagogy fit for each stage of growth for each child varies so much that understanding the child is a valuable educational skill. Parents are in a unique position to exercise this skill.
Where teachers do outperform parents as professionals is in leading a group of students to achieve standards in tandem within a large bureaucracy. The skill of deep per-child customization and response becomes less important than skills like public speaking, organizational psychology, reporting and forming rapport with strangers. Trained teachers outperform any particular child’s parent in these tasks.
My wife is teacher in the elementary school, and we have the same issues. Now with covid restrictions, changing all the time, is really hard to be sure that you are not braking any rule. One consideration however regarding your comment:
" parents view public schools as glorified daycare system"
We shouldn't forget that it is not just for the teachers that the world is getting complicated. Almost everyone is lost with family, job, personal happiness and etc.
That sets a cap on the salary. In the US southeast (last place I took a long look at the numbers, in NC and GA, but other states had similar numbers I just didn't study them closely), typically capping out with a bachelors at between $50-60k/year after 20-30 years. A masters degree often confers a $5-10k increase in salary, and a doctorate of education getting another $10k+ increase.
So, no, you don't really need a masters to be a teacher in the US. But you will be perpetually at the bottom of the pay scale if you don't get one, aren't in an in-demand subject area, or obtain some useful and in-demand specialist certificates.
The T-# levels are certification levels, largely dependent on getting a graduate degree or specialists degree or certificate. Without those, you will stay at the lower tiers. School districts do offer pay above and beyond this, but unless you're in a wealthier district you won't get much past these numbers.
Yeah, I'm familiar with the pay being tied to the attributes, location, etc. That's why I was asking if there was a state that actually requires a masters.
Teacher training and Masters Degrees both involve a roughly-similar amount of coursework. I think someone once used it as an analogy and it stuck too well.
I think that's really only true if you do it separately after receiving a bachelor degree (adds 1-2 years). If done from the start, they have separate courses for educators that satisfy both the subject and teaching requirements/strategies for that material. Sort of like how you can take the business version or math version of stats - they cover similar material but from different angles (both have a math prefix but any math major will tell you the business one is less rigorous).
> 4 of the 5 send their kids to private schools. I think that says a lot, given that they aren't paid well and choose to sacrifice and pay the tuition. […] it's a completely miserable experience that was worsened by COVID and remote learning.
Some parents around me simply decided to go ahead with a learning pod [0] during the pandemic. They hired a tutor (burned out local teacher really) and it’s been night and day. They are considering doing it again next year. Last I heard, they wanted to structure it as a non-profit so they could at least get a tax break on their contribution to it (really makes no sense to use post-tax dollars for this). At least now, I guess they won’t be double paying for initiatives like this [1] or curriculum where math is considered racist [2].
You make it sound like variety and incorporation are less important than math and physics. If only we lived in a democracy where people had a chance to make Orwell fiction again. Do you know which party the very same teachers' union contributes to by a large margin? Those teachers and their families failed to recall CA governor given a unique chance. They contributed to the 2020 election fiasco. Forget about school vouchers, people are happy with the ruling party abolishing algebra and cancelling magnet schools.
No. The only teacher in the group who doesn’t send their kid to a private school is unmarried or married to a non-teacher. The married teacher couple must send their kid(s) to private school based on what was said.
Schools are very limited in the ways they can discipline children. On top of that, they are dealing with ~30 children to one adult. A child's guardian is the only one in a position to effectively teach them to be respectful of others.
Well, that's sort of why I asked the question. The poster may blame the parents for not teaching their children; or may blame the parents for hamstringing the schools' ability to foster a respectful environment.
I was successful in raising a respectful child. However, I also pulled him out of two very negative school environments (one public, one private).
Regardless of what lessons I taught him, I am sure it would not have been easy to encourage that respect if he had remained in an environment where he was not respected and where he saw adults and children alike treated with disrespect without consequence.
My wife is a 1st grade teacher, has been for 11 years now. She has incredible patience and genuinely enjoys helping children succeed and grow.
A few years ago, she got her first salary increase in seven fucking years after her union threatened a strike. And it was 7%. This all during one of the biggest economic run ups ever. While the district and admins had all gotten consistent wage increases every year she didn’t.
She has multiple children who literally take off their clothes, flip over tables, and try to climb the fences of the school to leave every single day. Not kidding, multiple grown adults have to intervene multiple times a week to protect these kids and their peers. And literally nothing changes, absolutely no support from admin to get these kids support they clearly need. I have zero respect for the professional abilities of school administrators, I’ve regularly interacted with them and wondered how they are employed, it’s crazy.
School administrators are by and large bureaucratic idiots that are incapable of innovating or improving schooling. The pandemic proved this perfectly. My wife was required to do 3 hours of real time education a day, to 6 year olds, including filling out a physical piece of paper for attendance at the beginning of the day, then taking a photo and sending it in.
For virtual school.
For 6 year olds.
She has to perpetually pull individual children to test their progress against state standards, while the rest of the class has to occupy themselves with activities.
6 year olds.
The amount of bullshit wrapped around public education, along with completely upside down incentive structures, will be ripping apart the very concept of school over the next ten years.
She wants to educate, but we are already working on pursuing that as a small business vs being a public educator.
> School administrators are by and large bureaucratic idiots that are incapable of innovating or improving schooling.
This can’t be overstated and, unless you have first hand experience, impossible to comprehend. We’re talking the very basic levels of competence like don’t smoke weed in your car before school because you’re the principal of a middle school level of competence.
Meanwhile, at least back in the mid-2000s when I was in school, they’re doing stuff like stationing cops at every school so they can run drug dogs through the halls and arrest + throw into juvie any kid they find with a jacket that smells like weed in their locker.
> School administrators are by and large bureaucratic idiots
I think that the size and uselessness of the para-ecudational layer should not be underestimated. The ministry, committees, the commercial education ecosystem; they have been extremely successful in absorbing whatever money we have been trying to poor in. It's like a ship with two seamen and a council of 5 captains and 20 contractors to keep the messhall's leisure PC running in exchange for 80% of personell expenditures.
It's ridiculous. And if that was not enough, some people believe even more privatisation is the solution.
Privatization changes the incentive structure for administration. If the school needs to turn a profit they are less likely to hire unnecessary or incompetent staff. That is just a waste of money. Public schools get away with hiring excess staff because they get paid by the number of kids in the school regardless of performance.
Quite the contrary. Private schools spends even more on excess. Their business model is after all to make money, which they do, like any modern capitalist venture, with brand management.
I was a teacher and my experience was that I always felt administration as a whole was counter productive, but almost all of the administrators I could think of were really great. They were great teachers who had great relationships with students and knew how to teach well. So it stands to reason that the problem is with the system and incentives, not the individuals.
> She has multiple children who literally take off their clothes, flip over tables, and try to climb the fences of the school to leave every single day
All serious potential legal issues. Whatever happened to expulsion? No way I'd accept students like that. If your child is that out of control they're your problem to deal with.
Yeah, my wife actually intentionally hasn't gotten certified to allow her to legally physically retain children because it's such an obvious litigation minefield.
School is frequently viewed as a day care more than a house of education unfortunately.
I think this is they way things are heading. Learning pods with private teachers based off a accredited college approved prep curriculums. I hope your wife does well.
People (rightly) ask: Why would anyone be a teacher?
For some it's genuinely a calling, a vocation. The buzz you get from seeing the lights go on, from making a difference, from seeing a student blossom, is unequalled.
But external pressures are squeezing that out, and the utter neglect of the teachers and utter contempt for the profession is finally catching up.
The warning signs have been there for decades, the momentum is growing, and it may now be too late.
I think the biggest indicator of a problem is that now even those people for whom it’s a “calling” are leaving the field. Epecially those in public education
Presumably the "calling" is the aspect that has been abused in order to underpay teachers. In my experience they are underpaid across the board but particularly in public sector roles (at least in the UK).
What's interesting, and isn't something the article covers, is that demand side at the high end is nearly insatiable. Private schools in London consistently increase fees well above inflation year after year and never fail to fill places. The teachers there do okay but it's hardly stellar pay and although many of the schools discourage teachers tutoring it's commonly the way that income is boosted.
I have several teachers in my family and have been teaching for 11 years. In my life I have met at most four people for whom teaching is a calling. Teaching is a job, not a priesthood. Some people really like their job but when they retire they wave goodbye and that’s it. A very large majority of teachers view it as a job.
I was lucky. I taught high school in northern California for almost a decade and it was a lovely job. Sure, the work expands to fill your nights and weekends, and part of every summer vacation I worked on improving my lesson plans, but it was an enjoyable job with good students, great fellow teachers, a supportive administration, a wonderfully diverse and accepting student body, and only the occasional annoying parent.
Benefits were decent, pay was decent, and psychological rewards were tremendous. It was far more rewarding than the previous fifteen years I spent in software development. I felt I developed software not because the world needed it but just so some rich guy could get a little richer and maybe a bit of that richness would filter down to me. Not an inspiring reason to get up in the morning.
I could tell right away I had an impact on my students, introducing them to new areas of knowledge (in my case it was chemistry). My goals were to be a role model; for them to know what kinds of questions chemistry addressed; and for them to just maybe fall in love with science a little bit. I had no illusions they were going to grow up to be chemists.
I would have remained a teacher if I hadn't decided to leave the US. I am fortunate to have left before COVID because teaching online sounds really hard.
Two things I would have liked to see added to this article:
1) regarding state differences in pay, how does that compare to cost of living? California pays more than Florida, sure but its cost of living is higher also (https://www.insure.com/cost-of-living-by-state.html). Looking at how cost-of-living-adjusted pay varies between states would be more informative. California probably still pays more, but how much more? It's like comparing housing costs now and 20 years ago without adjusting for inflation.
2) how many of these teachers are leaving the profession entirely, vs. going into private or religious schools or tutoring? Knowing that would help tease out how much of the issue is due to how the public schools are administered, vs. how much they are afraid of contracting covid-19, vs. whatever else.
3) how does the labor shortage in teaching compare to the labor shortage generally? The article gives the impression that it's worse, and I could believe it, but I'd like to see some comparisons.
What the article had was a lot of quotes, and not much in the way of facts or good analysis. Which is probably because the reporter in question had 1 hour to write it, perhaps from their bedroom or their parents' basement, before they had to move on to the next article. Disclaimer: I have no facts to back up that last sentence.
If anything, the facts they presented seem to go against their case. A salary of $65k is not low. Compared to the median US income, it is quite good. Especially depending on the local cost of living, as you point out.
So the fact that one of the most powerful unions (at least in my state, CA) has orchestrated a pay scheme in which new entrants to the field do not benefit whatsoever is not in the least bit surprising.
Teachers unions don't exist to help students, they don't exist to help those who might want to become teachers, they exist to help entrenched teachers maximize the amount of money they pull out of the state.
This is why in California entry level teachers, who are doing the same job as 65 year old teachers, are making less than half.
> maximize the amount of money they pull out of the state
the root "cause" of the problem is that the money spent on education does not produce profit (to fund the endeavour). It is reliant on a taxation scheme, which means the source of funding is adversarial to the payment of wages.
Private schools _do_ align the profit motives, but it also breaks the social good that free public education has. I dunno how one can solve this problem.
Weirdly (to me, at least) private school teachers make substantially less than public. The ones I know say it's worth it to be free of the onerous beauracracy that plagues public education.
- a lot less paperwork and mind bending BS.
- flexibility is higher. Hey, we're going to teach outside on stumps during the pandemic -> no problem. This is with most things. That said private schools tended to stay open with modifications (so if you didn't want that public school would be better to be at to check out during pandemic).
- Teacher has a lot of authority in their class.
- Teachers / teacher aids etc that don't work out, pretty simple process not to bring them back for the following year - so peer group tends to enjoy working with each other.
- You don't have to wade through the massive teacher certification processes necessarily.
- Admin often has your back on discipline issues.
Some downsides too.
- You can be let go easily if school feels its not working out (practically, if you have things covered its hard enough to find teachers they will work to keep you).
- Pay is lower.
- Expectations can be higher at good schools ie, you might need a masters etc.
- Quality of programs varies WILDLY!
Unfortunately one of those onerous bureaucracies involves having an actual education in how to educate, or a teaching certification. Which is how my private catholic high school had a baseball coach as a history teacher who didn't really know how to teach history.
I had a few former scientists (left the field after PhD) teach me in high school and holy shit it was amazing, leagues above anything my friends were learning in the local public school. There are pros and cons, but the point I was at in high school I found much more value in talking to those science teachers than the ones that had an education in education with science as a secondary concern. Teaching certifications have a place but I also think it is a good thing most private schools don't require them.
Private schools (non charter, non voucher) have more engaged parents and by being selective and flexible may have a lower number of children with special needs, behavioral disorders, and/or more flexibility in providing services for them.
That's not surprising, the private teachers are not unionized. I think a lot of the hate for teachers' unions is driven by decades of propaganda - both from private institutions and both of the major political parties. Slashing teacher salaries by ~20% is the wet dream of many "education reform" advocates. Though I wonder what effect that will have on society and the quality of education, especially for those that can't afford the top tier private schools.
A big part of the hate for teachers unions is the inability to fire bad teachers.
>California has more than 1,000 school districts and 300,000 teachers, yet only 667 dismissal cases were filed with the Office of Administrative Hearings between January 2003 and March 2012, according to the Los Angeles Unified School District”s chief labor and employment counsel, Alex Molina. Only 130 of those actually got to the hearing stage, and 82 resulted in dismissals — fewer than 10 a year.
Not only that but a career public school teacher in many places can retire with a nice pension, private school teachers don't. Even if you look at some of the best private high schools in the country the teacher salary just isn't great.
The only way it makes sense financially to teach at a private school is if you have kids you want to go there. Many schools will do reduced or even free tuition for teachers' kids. It's relatively common for private school teachers to either be early retirees from a more lucrative field or have a spouse that works.
That said, many private school teachers do it because they have more flexibility in designing a curriculum, are much less likely to encounter disruptive students, etc. Private schools also don't actually do 180 days. So it is a more enjoyable job day to day for sure.
Shame on whoever thinks the salary difference goes to the education management companies behind the charter school movement. (Looking at you, Edison Schools failing the young people of Philadelphia!)
This makes sense to me (and matches the facts I've found) -- when folks talk about private industry being "more efficient" they often mean cheaper, which also often means those near the bottom rung are the worst paid relative to work and experience. It's unnecessarily explosive and results in qualified and motivated teachers leaving the industry prematurely.
We are seeing the outcomes at universities. We are getting football teams and really fancy gyms but not better education. On the contrary, if you fail students who shouldn't really be there you get in trouble with the administration. The naive free market solution does not work.
>We are getting football teams and really fancy gyms but not better education.
This is an often flouted myth. Football pays for itself and then some. There's more money in education, per capita, inflation adjusted, then there ever has been ever.
It's not a money problem, and it's not a sports problem.
The government doesn’t actually do this. Your eligibility for such loans is means-tested and you’re only obtaining them at a discounted rate. And they cannot be discharged during bankruptcy in most cases.
It’s like saying home mortgages are free money because they’re also partially backed by the fed.
It's pretty much universally accepted at this point that the flood of government student loan money has both distorted the higher education market, and created a trap for millions of people who have gotten an ineffective education with that "free" money.
Your analogy to mortgages is right on, but you've drawn the wrong conclusions. Fed-backed mortgages absolutely functioned as free money. Because the risk of unqualified borrowers was assumed by the government and by opaque, byzantine, and corrupt securitization schemes, banks were incentivized to hand over money to people who weren't able to pay it back.
This was, in every sense that matters, "free money". And it led directly to a financial crisis that many millions of people have never fully recovered from.
This is how the American higher education system works.
The problem with this approach for public schools in the US is that there are multiple taxing authorities involved in determining how much $$$ gets attached to a student, and most of it comes from local property taxes.
> Teachers unions don't exist to help students, they don't exist to help those who might want to become teachers, they exist to help entrenched teachers maximize the amount of money they pull out of the state.
This isn't true at all. I know of teacher unions (that my family members belong to) that have refused deals because they weren't fair to their younger members. My local teacher's union refused a deal that wouldn't have applied to substitute teachers. Just because California has an entrenched entitled boomer problem doesn't mean all unions are bad. You're using one of the worst examples in the country to generalize unions with.
I lived in California for 10 years (I moved to Chicago last July). The entrenched power is just ridiculous- old politicians never retire, it's all political machines everywhere, and while there are a lot of amazing activists they're fighting huge uphill battles. At the same time costs in lots of areas have risen a huge amount, and Prop 13 incentivizes people being landlords and forces higher prices on newly purchased property to make up for subsidized taxes on those landlords.
> The entrenched power is just ridiculous- old politicians never retire, it's all political machines everywhere, and while there are a lot of amazing activists they're fighting huge uphill battles.
You've probably figured this out by now, but that sentence describes Illinois as well as it does California.
Yeah, it’s great paying 10x the tax of our neighbors with similar house values because they moved here 30 years ago. The argument is always “people shouldn’t be forced out of their homes because of rising prices!” but we shop at the same grocery stores, eat at the same restaurants, pay the same power and gas bills…
What we end up with is neighborhoods with literal multi-millionaires in >1m properties living next to squalor, and people living in such a situation can’t afford to move anywhere else within 50 miles. They stay and try to scrape by until they can’t take it anymore and move somewhere cheaper, or pass away and the property is promptly torn down, rebuilt, and sold by the family for a ~1m profit. The reality of someone who can barely afford that even massively-reduced tax bill living in a million-dollar house that they can’t sell without moving out of state isn’t pretty, but these are the situations that Prop13 advocates are supposedly protecting (when really they just want to keep their own much lower tax bill forever in a vacuum detached from reality).
A lot of the really bad Prop13 offenders are businesses though. I don’t have much sympathy for landlords, but I have even less for Disney paying 1/100th of their property tax because of prop 13: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/dis...
Unfortunately, boomers and existing home owners will keep voting against ANYTHING that reduces Prop13’s benefit to businesses because they all think it’s a slippery slope and that they’ll come for residential next.
Most states have some variety of "homeowners" or "homestead" tax policy that gives deductions for people who live in their own home. I don't mind that, as long as it is fair. In California it isn't fair, and it isn't limited to a the home someone lives in.
From what I understand her coworkers at the agency were all ideologically motivated to hate her and stonewall everything she did, so it was difficult to make progress. This was her philosophy:
> states and local districts should make education policy, not the U.S. government.
It would be a breath of fresh air for a philosophy like this to be implemented but you would have to fire everyone in the department of education and start over to actually get anything done.
I think the most infuriating thing about "growing up" and becoming an adult is that obvious problems you think should simply be fixed without any particular ideological emphasis end up becoming bogged down by people who know the least about a problem(and, in my view, the kind of people least likely to be experts on anything) trying to make sure the solution conforms to their uninformed world views.
I read somewhere (that I can't find now) that the quality of teachers has gone down as the workforce has opened up opportunities for women. Jobs like teaching and nursing used to be some of the only socially acceptable professions for women, so overall the quality of teachers (and nurses) was higher. And since it was traditionally "women's work", with an expectation that a man would be providing a larger income to support the family, they were underpaid. (Fields like healthcare and teaching still are.)
It makes sense. Why go into teaching for the bad pay and terrible hours when you can go be a doctor or some kind of highly paid professional?
Teacher pay in the US doesn't attract stellar candidates. Further in the comments here people claim that 65k a year for a field that typically requires a bachelors/masters is great, when those are mid career earnings and if you have a modicum of drive or ambition, those earnings are what you could get as an entry level salary at any tech company.
Anecdotally, I can't think of many smart, ambitious people that I personally know that went into teaching. My experiences aren't a statistical sample, but its telling that its not a career choice that anyone talks much about aspiring into.
There's probably some truth to this-- but I think people should look at these kind of notices with some skepticism.
Consider who is quoted as an expert: someone who makes money training teachers. Seems like someone who will profit from greater funding of the general system.
A while ago, a friend of mine read articles in the newspaper about a dire shortage of math teachers. So he enrolled in a teacher training program, put in the hours and couldn't find anything anywhere. He's a personable guy. Polite and very sociable. So when he couldn't find anything anywhere, I started to believe that this is one of those self-serving fibs circulated by the unions and the teacher prep programs. There may be some truth to it, but it may be wildly inflated.
i left teaching in 2 years, and I wanted to leave it pretty much as soon as i started...took me 2 years to get out...what a mess... my day was full of personal conflict...not something I ever enjoyed...but I did grow as a person, but it was certainly not a pleasant process...
the main problems? Inability to punish students, lack of respect...back in my day, if we disrespected the teacher, we got licks in front of the classroom...
also, kids don't read that much anymore, making it hard to teach them
Not sure why I'm sharing these stories, but...they are amusing.
My father, 84 years old, remembers his elementary school teacher kicking him full-force on his flank (for fooling around with his buddies). Probably not the best approach, but he remembers it to this day.
He also remembers students being forced to kneel on hardened kernels of corn as punishment.
And I was repeatedly told when I was in elementary school, "If you were stupid enough to go home and complain to your parents that your teacher beat you, you just got beaten twice as hard."
They’re not amusing, they’re horrible. The fact that these stories are re-told just goes to show how traumatising they were as experiences for those involved.
Not all painful memories or memories of pain have to be catastrophised into "trauma". Some can be simply instructive ("hot surface hurts") without needing to go into provoking an irrational response.
one other problem is that the classes are not separated as to ability anymore...now in each classroom you are going to have one or more kids who have mental issues and who will wind up in prison, maybe for most of their adult lives...think about that--you have to ride herd on kids who are future lifer convicts...you can tell that these people will be in prison from an early age...they are really messed up...from birth, most likely...these kids are angry at the world because they do not fit in...and they take it out on the teacher...a lovely situation...the teachers warn each other about these kids...you can spot them fairly easily...naively, society believes you can get them on your side...you think we don't try? It does not work, long term...these kids fail at everything and cannot succeed at anything...
Going to public schools in KY, I look back at how we were grouped by horse families (e.g. thoroughbreds were gifted, clydesdales the laborers) based on academic achievement. Teachers could easily and openly identify which type of student by asking which family they belonged to, and students being entirely unaware of the joke unless they were aware of different types of horses and their applications.
Imagine you are the kid which will end in prison. Wouldn't you feel betrayed from society if society can already see that you will end in prison and is doing nothing against it?
You can we haven't accepted the right answer though: more money for education.
Smaller classes, more support, proper trained psychologist
The United States already has below average class sizes, and spends 37% more per student than the average.
There is some evidence that large class sizes produce better results, and it would seem that whatever the US spends its education money on isn't working, because our students test much lower than our investment would predict.
I was a bad kid growing up. I ended up at a pilot program consisting of about 14 kids, mostly more screwed up than me, and about 3 psychiatrists and 5 support counselors. It did basically nothing for the kids. The thing that helped me the most was my parents moving away and putting me in normal school in a different state and peer pressure helping me be normal.
I think it’s become tragically obvious that a whole lot of children are born to parents who should’ve never had children and have no business being parents. These children end up dumped on educators with zero support at home, and so little social system support we could also say it’s zero.
This isn’t nature versus nurture per se (although I believe the data does show some ability and intelligence is genetic/inherent), but that it takes a lot for a human child to succeed unless they’re at the higher end of the bell curve (and even then it’s no guarantee).
Mostly outside of education. The US spends a lot on education and gets poor results for the investment because it also spends on lot on institutionalizing racism and reinforcing socioeconomic insecurity in the working class, which creates a lot for the education system to work against.
Sounds like the system dodged a bullet, but would be improved if it could have ejected you in less than 2 years. Bemoaning the lack of beatings and then making an analogy between your pupils and livestock? Nice.
I didn't think they were bemoaning a lack of beatings. It sounded like they were talking about how they don't have tools to discipline students. Stuff like some schools doing away with detention, etc. Then they put in their experience of corporal punishment growing up.
> back in my day, if we disrespected the teacher, we got licks in front of the classroom
The evidence that physical violence as punishment against children is counterproductive and harmful to their development is pretty overwhelming (and the evidence that it is harmful for those who merely witness and are under pervasive threat of it rather than actually punished with it is also strong.)
Promoting abuse of children just because you were raised in an environment where abuse was normalized (and one where that might have been excusable as nonculpable ignorance because the evidence of harm was not as compelling as it has since become) does little but demonstrate what the phrase “cycle of abuse” means.
Far from overwhelming. I thought so too, but that's largely from the correlation between poor quality households and use of severe physical abuse, as well as bucketing all corporal punishment from spanking to bashing them with closed fists.
Studies that separated measured corporal punishment from outright abuse found drastically different results.
Zero punishment is quite new. We are seeing the results of the first generation raised in such an environment.
We were well down this path when I graduated in '99, and went full steam ahead during my kid's primary school career. You either escaped to a (private or suburban) school not full of juvenile delinquents who had parents that still cared, or you simply gave up on having your child have an actual education.
The inner city school I had to attend in 1998 was more or less a daycare even back then, and the anecdotes I hear today have only gone further in that direction.
Young people are better behaved now then at periods you talk about. Drugs abuse goes down. Young people commit less violent crime. They drink less alcohol. They even get pregnant less often.
Young people now literally behave better wherever you look. The generation that grew in 90ties just was not better behaved.
> The generation that grew in 90ties just was not better behaved.
I'm not talking about better behaved. I'm talking about better behaved in school, or you got expelled very quickly. That left others who were there to learn (or at least not to be disruptive) move forward in peace. I have no opinion on if kids were better behaved outside the classroom - likely not, having grown up during that time.
A single kid can ruin an entire semester for 40 kids in the classroom. I've personally watched it happen, and there was nothing the teacher could do. Averages don't matter in this situation - only outliers do.
I'd go back to a "rougher" generation that learns to behave when appropriate (and those that don't learn, get removed) any day of the week over what we currently have in the average urban public school system.
Edit: Heck, I got suspended from a couple classes in high school due to attendance issues. Rightfully so since I was holding back other students on group projects and the like. Today that would be utterly unheard of in that same school system.
Except that, it does not seem to be the case. There is absolutely nothing to suggest kids were better behaved in schools. The rougher generation did not behaved better where appropriate. Even issues I mentioned were about them misbehaving when not appropriate.
You just idealize own generation, that is all. Which is odd, because at the time superpredators panic was going on and people fretted.
> You just idealize own generation, that is all. Which is odd, because at the time superpredators panic was going on and people fretted.
I still believe we're talking about entirely different things. One of my schools was incredibly rough. If you talked back to a teacher you'd get instantly suspended, and on the third one bounced to alternative schooling. I was one of those kids.
That no longer happens, and was starting to slip when I was due to graduate. These days I've witnessed students literally hurling desks at teachers and smashing windows only to be back in the classroom on Monday.
Yes, I totally agree violence was more in your face in the 90s. The utter disrespect towards teachers and those trying to learn with zero consequences for your actions was simply not there yet, at least in my small section of the world. Perhaps on the coasts and other major cities this was already the norm.
There simply is no mechanism to separate the small percentage of troublemakers from the general student population any longer, much less providing challenges for the high achievers. This drags down standards and morale on a massive fashion, and the results simply speak for themselves.
The "best" school I went to during my illustrious schooling career was an inner city private school where almost all the kids were on 90%+ needs-based scholarships. Selection bias where only the parents who cared enough to jump through the loopholes made that place bearable - so teachers that actually taught stuck around. The difference in attitudes and hope was utterly night and day. Almost entirely because the bottom 10% or so wasn't dragging everyone else down to their behavioural level.
Reminds me of this story[1] of Baltimore students repeatedly advanced despite passing essentially no classes.
>According to transcripts, France's son passed only three classes in his four years of high school, earning a 0.13 grade point average. What's worse is that her son's GPA puts him near the top half of this class. He was also late or absent to school 359 days.
In SF they've been having kids get A's despite no attendance. And the attendance figures were being fudged as well. Reason was they've had so many subs they don't know who is in class / just give everyone an A.
If students can't be held back why do we even test them? Ofc, it is helpful to show them their knowledge, but I think that is quite early... Or to discover where to try to improve process, but I think fear of being held back and losing the group could be reasonable tool to get at least part of the students to learn.
Afaik, it did not worked like that. Repeating grades did not lead to better success, which was one reason for ending it. The age difference between failed kid and younger kids in next class did not made anything easier either.
And kids at the very bottom have better and more support available now. It is not perfect, it often sux and is not available to everybody. I definitely don't mean to say it is somehow super great. But the kids at the bottom with cognitively issues or impulsive control issues have better chance to learn more then used to be normal.
When I was growing up you were bumped up still (to stay with age group), but you took basic courses until you were back up to speed, then you were moved to standard, then advanced, then AP. I sucked at AP, but standard / advanced were good. The AP kids must have studied so hard - I bombed those classes when I tried them.
But that also was seen as discriminatory I think because it wasn't that easy to move out of basic etc once you were there so I think they stopped this as well - I think system was called tracking.
This is the real issue. Zero repercussions. It also affects the quality of teachers. What stops some teachers from sleepwalking their way through the year if they know their students will move forward regardless of how poorly they’ve been taught.
Belt spanking is spanking. Paddle spanking is spanking.
It was literally never true that the word would refer to beating a kid by open hand only. The books that teach parents to spank also give advice to use instruments and call it spanking.
Old books that contain spanking use the word beating as synonyms. It started to be used as different word when people started to take issue with it more often.
I agree with you that paddles or switches can be used for "spanking", and that "spanking" is a form of "beating", but still the words are different. "Spanking" strongly implies that it is done to cause pain without serious or permanent injury. "Beating" has no such limitation.
I agree that it is not the right way to discipline a child, but I can recognize this distinction in meaning.
I find this interesting, actually, as a form of argument. The annihilation of semantic categories. It's like argument via Sapir-Whorf.
As a matter of language and connotations, you're right.
I assume people are so appalled by the concept of physical punishment (which, let's be clear, I don't do and barely experienced either), that they don't want to acknowledge... how English works.
"Spanking" implies an open palm or maybe a belt or thin switch, on the rump. It hurts; it may leave a bruise; it may be barbaric -- but it doesn't involve serious injury (say, to internal organs). The point is to inflict pain without serious injury.
"Beating" carries no such connotations of limited harm. It can be done with fists or blunt objects; it can target the face or internal organs like the kidneys; it can be severe enough to lead to death.
This difference in meaning is as much about connotation as denotation, but the connotational differences are very large. You might say that, logically, a spanking is a kind of limited beating, but not all beatings are spankings.
>This is beyond bad faith. Would you rather get a beating from your mother or a spanking from a drug lord?
This is in bad faith, a drug lord won't give you a spanking unless it's sexual in nature. I assume you know the difference between a sexual spanking and a beating in the street. Perhaps not. A parent can give a beating, but that is different from a spanking.
I think trying to equivocate a spanking with a beating is intellectually dishonest. If you can't tell the difference in both intent and intensity, I have no idea where you are coming from. You might be against spankings but to argue the words spanking and beating are synonyms is simply wrong, and quite honestly, juvenile in the level of reasoning. As the OP said, words matter.
That's very dramatic. Maybe if people would stop being so comfortable with meaningless hyperbole such as yours, we'd re-learn how to communicate better.
did you read and understand the article?...i got out because I COULD get out...lots of teachers cannot get out or are pushed out before they can find an exit option. You think you understand, but you do not...
I did read the article. It didn’t say anything about teachers inability to punish disrespectful students.
Rather, it said things like this:
> One of the things that students benefit from (diverse educators) is this idea of seeing themselves not only leading classrooms, but also in the curriculum
Do you see the difference? They want to engage students by empowering them. In contrast, you wanted to demand respect through fear of punishment. It’s not hard to imagine why your days were plagued with interpersonal conflict.
My wife also left elementary school teaching shortly after the pandemic. She had a child throw a sizable textbook at her, only missing her head by an inch or so. Felt the air as it wizzed by. She sent the kid to the vice-principal for their grade level. Thirty minutes later the kid was right back in her class, and once again causing disruptions.
They lack any ability or willpower to meaningfully hold students accountable. My wife felt physically unsafe with this student in her room, yet apparently nothing could be done.
When I was growing up in Texas, most teachers had a wooden paddle, often prominently displayed. To be spanked by a paddle was called "getting licks". Female teachers would sometimes delegate the paddling to a coach or other male teacher. Most all this that I recall occurred in Junior High (what they now call middle school. Grades 7-9). By high school, "licks" were quite rare, as most students had learned how to behave better by then.
To people today this all sounds barbaric. However, there were far fewer "broken people" coming out of that system than is produced today. That generation was not filled with sociopaths and 'challenged" people -- quite the opposite. It's the system today that produces those. Lack of ability to administer punishment is part of why teachers get so little respect.
The past 2 years was very revealing as to how our modern public schools are failing today. It's embarrassing, and I understand and support the moves many parents are making to private or home schooling.
But the teacher-student violence only normalizes violence in the minds of the victims. Consider that as the practice receded in the US so did the violent crime. I claim it's no coincidence. Yeah, I know, leaded gasoline etc. Whatever. That's my story and I'm sticking to it - violence begets violence.
People will argue this until they’re blue in the face, but pulling a deadly weapon out escalates the situation, when de-escalation would likely lead to a less physically harmful outcome.
What do you see as the alternative to punishment when trying to maintain an environment that students can learn in?
I was generally a good and respectful student, and I was punished on the occasions I misbehaved or was disruptive. I think that punishment was necessary and helpful.
I thought they were talking about in general and threw in a personal experience of themselves having corporal punishment. Some schools have done away with detention.
As a child I was punished three times without cause, including once when I was a straightforward victim and had several witnesses; and twice by a teacher who disliked me only because a troublesome family member had been her former student. One of those times I was "convicted" on the word of my bully for something I had not done and my bully regularly did. They tried to get me to admit to things in each case, but even though I denied it throughout, I was still punished.
As a father, I remember the only time my kid got in trouble at school. I received a strongly worded letter from my child's school that my child had been disrespectful to a teacher and that he was going to receive detention. It was like pulling teeth to get them to tell me what my child had actually done that was disrespectful. When asked (in email) they just kept repeating that he was disrespectful and they talked a lot about the teacher's feelings but never told me what my specifically kid had done or said. I wrote them back a last time suggesting I meet with the principal and the teacher in person to discuss the issue. They never replied to me, but I found out through my kid that they dropped the detention. I'd have pressed further, but we were already moving our kid to another school because of other shenanigans and overall low education quality.
I asked my kid for his version of events. He said that he took a test about the field trip they had been on, and he had left the last question "What did you learn?" blank. The teacher suggested he answer the question. My kid said leaving it blank was his answer and the teacher left to check on the other kids. If this bothered the teacher, it wasn't even addressed at the time.
Now, I had a good talk with my kid about the situation and I agree that he shouldn't have left that question blank. (I also sympathized with him because the field trip was the same each year and not exactly information rich. It was overall I think a good learning moment for him.) But this was what hurt the teacher's feelings and she found disrespectful? If the kid refuses to answer the question let his score reflect it. If you're not okay with blank questions, make that a detention-worthy offense. But to bring me your hurt feelings and how my kid was disrespectful... and then to not even be willing to tell me about it? I thought maybe my kid had a tone or was otherwise rude in his delivery of his decision; but if so, they wouldn't tell me about it. And I've talked to my kid about this incident since, and even as an adult he has no idea why the teacher had the reaction she seemed to have had.
Anyway, the point of this is that discipline in schools is mostly unfair, arbitrary, and not clearly effective. In the general case there are no trials, no weighing of the evidence, or anything to protect the student from unfair treatment or abuse.
I don't know what the solution is; parents suck and let their kids get away with murder. But many current parents also experienced such 'guidance' and have no desire to see their kids experience it as well.
"One of those times I was "convicted" on the word of my bully for something I had not done and my bully regularly did. They tried to get me to admit to things in each case, but even though I denied it throughout, I was still punished."
"Anyway, the point of this is that discipline in schools is mostly unfair, arbitrary, and not clearly effective. In the general case there are no trials, no weighing of the evidence, or anything to protect the student from unfair treatment or abuse."
To be fair, the criminal "justice" system works the same way - abuses of power, arbitrary punishments, recidivism, etc. And, you can have a trial if you feel like starting a law suit, but I don't know how much justice one finds there either. Up to 10% of the incarcerated are wrongfully convicted. I think we should be working to fix both systems, but given this it's perhaps better to learn that this is how the system works when the stakes are detention vs prison.
One of my best friends has been a teacher for ~20 years or so. They said the parents and the kids treat you insanely terribly. Society also barely respects what you do and treats you like glorified baby sitting. The only cool part is the 3 months off a year my friend used to use to go live in Italy or something and explore/learn about the world. Most jobs don't provide you with that time.
Public schools are a nightmare. My wife is long time middle and high school teacher but decided to quit after this year. It’s not the kids, it’s the administration and how utterly incompetent they are. We’ll see what’s next for her but I hope my wife gets a chance to work with functioning adults at least once in her life.
It's it the admin or the politics. At least in some areas there is such pressure around graduation rates, attendance (for the money) and such sensitivity around disparate impact (ie, poor/minority students with higher than average detentions etc) that you end up with basically no failing allowed, attendance is everything including students who are massively outside of classroom ability to manage in a large class, and limited discipline
Both my parents were teachers. My mother was a teacher in public schools. When we would talk about this very thing, she said whenever they would fail students, it would glut up the system and it would start to cease to function. It's a tough problem. When I was young, they had alternate schools for bad kids. At least two levels. The bad kid school, then if you got kicked out of that, the really bad kid school. If you got kicked out of that, you didn't go to school anymore. I don't know why we stopped doing that. The public school system was bad then and it's bad now, so it might not matter.
It's complicated. At least in SF race is a major item - there is a real push to avoid disparate impact. Things like D's and F's they have shown disparately impact certain groups. Race is a major topic at least in SF school district.
"A gay dad volunteers for one of eight open slots on a parent committee that advises the school board. All of the 10 current members are straight moms. Three are white. Three are Latina. Two are Black. One is Tongan. They all want the dad to join them.
The seven school board members talk for two hours about whether the dad brings enough diversity. Yes, he’d be the only man. And the only LGBTQ representative.
...
The gay dad never utters a single word. The board members do not ask the dad a single question before declining to approve him for the committee."
They have trouble recruiting for these spots. He was white. His credentials, interest, commitment, skills he might bring to the position were not relevant.
I don’t know who in their right mind would want to be a teacher. Bad pay, hard work, ungrateful students and parents, and limited opportunities for growth.
The median wage for teachers seems to be equal to the median pay for college graduates, maybe a bit higher if you account for benefits.
It's not terrific by Hacker News standards, but should be a living wage in most places especially if you marry or room with someone who can split housing costs with you.
Media entry level wage is typically pretty good. The problem is it doesn’t scale as fast as most other professions. Look at mid-career salary and it is a bit different story.
Remember educators also have to get a master’s within 5-10 years in most states.
The $ per hour and quality of life at work are terrible though. You do not get to browse the internet whenever you want, take on enormous liability dealing with children, and of course, entitled parents.
The number of synchronous commitments teachers have every day would be a disqualifier on its own for me. Teachers have a highly structured schedule of daily "meetings" (class sessions), and they are conducting every "meeting" rather than being just a participant. And they are probably doing so on their feet. That just sounds exhausting.
That wasn't really necessary? Your point is taken and some of us are indeed grateful (and I don't doubt GP is or was), but I think we're in the minority. And it seems a general thing in Western societies? There's a lot of teacher bashing in France too, and also a difficulty to find ones. The pay, the teaching conditions, the permanent bashing and ridiculing by the elites, the ruling class, and any class really...
I mean, when your secretary of education tells teachers during the first covid lockdown, most of them fighting to keep classes running, to go help pick strawberries instead. Err... When you can't even fund 5 kn95 masks (to be reused) for every teacher and you relax all covid constraints because the economy is grinding to a halt. 15 euros... Not even that. Even my company pays for 2 daily kn95 masks and I'm not exposed to kids.
Yes, it's a woefully underappreciated and underpaid job. But unlike what must of us fully-hatched adults do with our lives - I do feel that (good) teachers are in fact doing something very valuable and important, and ultimately, at least some of their students will appreciate their efforts long after the fact.
It’s definitely not hard work relative to other fields. That plus 3 months off and a relatively short day and low barriers for entry make this a no brainer for many, many people.
I think it would be mentally exhausting dealing with ~30 children all day. It's not a job where you can take a quick mental break if you're feeling overwhelmed since the kids will be there regardless.
> relatively short day
Citation needed. Teachers I know spend a ridiculous amount of time prepping, marking, and going to meetings outside of class hours.
I work less than half as much over the course of a year as a senior tech consultant than I ever did as a public school teacher. No question. And my salary doubled within 2 years, is set to hit triple now in year 6, and my stress is so much lower as to be negligible.
Teachers have a lot of vacation, sure. But all the teachers I had were at school from 7-4 minimum every day and worked much, much harder than I ever have as a developer. And I make 3 times as much as any of them.
Massive drama but low probability; twice as many people are killed by lightning strikes every year. Beyond that, the "mass shooting" tallies often include gang fights and cartel wars, which most of us do not need to worry about.
Low probability, but it happens each year and several times. Just in 2021 it happened 32 times. I bet that each time a mass shooting happens in a school it affects emotionally to all teachers in the country.
As teacher is normal to deal with problematic, or even very twisted children sometimes, but the feeling in Europe is very different. I can perfectly understand somebody that leaves after experiencing such traumatic events non-stop each ten days.
Because it’s something you can actually react to. There’s almost no chance a tornado will hit your school but schools do tornado drills. All schools and businesses do fire drills. There was a time they did nuclear bomb drills and many buildings from the era have fallout shelters.
So yes it’s unlikely to occur. But it could and it requires very little effort to be prepared.
The main effect of these drills is to cause kids stress and anxiety, but I also wonder if it's possible that there may be some marginal benefit of increasing awareness and vigilance of warning signs among the kids and teachers.
Older American folks here may remember doing nuclear attack drills in school, where the kids were told to crouch under their desk.
This enrollment decline is across the board in education. While not high paying, education was at least once considered a safe and reliable profession in a respected field. It is really none of those things anymore.
The job has gotten harder and more involved and the pay has gotten, relative to cost of living, much worse. In many districts teachers do not know if and when their next raise will come. It could be next year or in 10 years.
If as a society we value education we need to fund it.
Every time this topic comes up on HN I see a lot of comments along the lines of "Don't try to fix the problem; just move kids to private schools", an incredibly privileged, net harmful point of view... very sad to see.
The reality is that teachers in America make horrific wages for a job that requires a degree, are treated like garbage, held to impossible standards, constantly subject to budget cuts, and then we wonder why America, the wealthiest country in the world, ranks 14th in education. It's not a mystery. Teachers deserve better.
Some teachers deserve better, to be sure. The reality is that educational spending in the U.S. is quite high by developed-country standards. But the system still fails to reward the best teachers, and many teachers are quite simply not properly qualified for what they're supposed to teach. "Education" degrees are practically meaningless.
I agree that a mistake that has been made has been to force teachers to get graduate degrees and largely incentivize that they earn their master's degree in education. It would be more valuable if they received a master's or doctoral degree in literally anything else.
The problem is that measuring the efficacy of a teacher is a dubious task. What would probably work the best is to incentivize teachers to get advanced degrees outside of the field of education by providing a substantial pay increase upon completion. Right now it is actually harder to get a degree in a field outside of education because in many districts you would need explicit permission from a supervisor to be reimbursed for a non-education degree versus an education degree that requires no permissions for reimbursement.
An advanced degree does not make a great teacher, but it does provide some solid foundational knowledge.
Is this true the world over or just the USA? I have a friend that complained his high paying FAAMG job didn't get him any respect when applying for a home loan at a Japanese bank but his wife's college professor job got lots (both of them are foreigners).
Probably not globally, every country will be different, though I suspect a similar thing is playing out across numerous western countries. My knowledge is of the American educational system.
My wife is a college prep (public charter) high school math and physics teacher. She noted recently, that she could make as much money working at a local department store, or fast food joint, as she does at the school. And when she'd return home, she could put the other work out of her mind.
She works about 14 hour days during the week, and 12 hours per day on weekends. Hourly equivalent is about 1/2 the department stores.
She told me about the new safety policy the police advise to use in the event of a shooter, after the Oxford MI incident (about an hour from us). The idea is to barricade the door, get anything you can use as a weapon, and defend the kids. Alternatively, you can break out a window and run away. Of course, they won't let the teachers open carry weapons, which, honestly, would turn the soft targets into very hard ones.
Aside from that obvious solution, the problem is, what do you do if you have a kid who doesn't want to leave for any reason? This literally becomes a trolley problem, decide whose life is more important. Should she stay with the reluctant child, or should she save her own life and as many of the others as she can?
And I don't know if I mentioned it, but the pay really really sucks.
Add to this, parents who don't work with the teachers to help their kids. Often major communication problems with parents who don't speak english. Parents who only sometimes take their kids to school. Kids who just don't care enough to do any work, and then come begging at the end of every quarter/semester for "extra credit", which they are ineligible for, given that they have not completed a majority of their work. Often any work at all.
I hear about this. Every day. It is burning her out.
But more than that. I see what these schools are producing, see the attempts not to make the kids unhappy by giving them a 50% score for doing no work, not even showing up to class, or tests. Letting them retake tests to improve grades. All these little things we do to coddle, and protect people from the consequences of their own decisions.
And I think what sort of adults we are unleashing. Which explains much of what we see in society now.
> She told me about the new safety policy the police advise to use in the event of a shooter, after the Oxford MI incident (about an hour from us). The idea is to barricade the door, get anything you can use as a weapon, and defend the kids. Alternatively, you can break out a window and run away. Of course, they won't let the teachers open carry weapons, which, honestly, would turn the soft targets into very hard ones.
Wait so the correct way to defend yourself against an active shooter is to... seek cover and run away? Why can't she simply carry a weapon, as the second amendment gives her the inalienable right to?
The failure of public schooling would mean a reversal of much of the public safety and poverty gains we made over the past 50-70 years. So here’s hoping it turns around.
It’s a difficult job for not enough pay and an expectation to work far more than 40 hours per week, and that was before the COVID-19 pandemic. (I got out to raise my child and support my employed spouse)
Education is ripe for disruption. The US should move to a South Korean model where a few very good superstar teachers lecture thousands of students simultaneously.
In the USA though we'd need another couple hundred "enforcers" to make sure kids stayed in their seats and didn't hit one another during lecture.
And that (in my opinion) may be part of the reason so many teachers are leaving the field. Teaching is very rewarding, playing social service aid giver and municipal cop not as much.
Questions are overrated. Most people will never ask for social reasons, and most of the time either the teacher won't understand the question or the student won't understand the answer. You can't really learn with an audience.
It’s one thing to suggest the Socratic method may not be the best learning strategy, but it’s quite another to suggest that questions are overrated. Questions are so fundamental to increasing our knowledge in an intuitive way - just look at Stack Overflow, Quora, etc. for the success in helping people find answers (of decidedly varying quality). There is no limit to creative questions a group of people can ask but there is a limit to how much a single human thinks they know about a subject or can write in a single lecture, article, or book.
You can do both. Flipped classroom, where the students watch video lectures ahead of time on their own schedule, and the time in the classroom is for supplemental recitation sessions and/or getting practice with the material.
That is just bullshit buzzword. Overwhelming majority of classes involve both exercises and lecture like segments. They switch.
Plus, watching and reading stuff does not mean teacher can skip it. It still needs to be said again, either because many kids read only half of it or because they forgot it all due to not switching between active and passive learning by themselves.
Jeff Bezos can't get his employees to do the same, apparently. That's why meetings at Amazon start with a reading period, to ensure that everyone has read the memo that's on the agenda. The "flipped classroom" is an edfad than only works in advanced courses. Even worse: process-oriented guided inquiry with students who don't want to be there.
How many hours per week do teachers work? How many months in a year? I hear exaggerated accounts of teachers working 11 hour days and 60 hour weeks.
Sorry..if those are their working hours, there is something wrong. It’s just odd. All public schools teachers are unionized. All the teachers here spout the same numbers for work hours and talk about spending from their pockets for school supplies and working at home.
Only in the USA, the teachers are ‘overworked’. And the results aren’t stellar compared to the rest of the world. Maybe something’s got to change. I am not buying it anymore. Unless there is something in American tap water that is making all the kids dumb as rocks.
My wife was an elementary school teacher. She worked 7am-4pm, then came home had dinner and time with the family. After our son went to bed, she'd spend 8pm-11pm grading papers and working on lesson plans for the following week. She also spent time on the weekends developing lesson plans. That's a nine hour work day, plus three (or more) hours most evenings. That's easily a 60+hr work week.
Ohh, and there were no breaks during the work day. Most days she was required to be supervising/helping kids in the lunchroom during her "lunch break", so she couldn't really sit down to eat her own food. Good luck finding a time to use the restroom.
There are no vacation days. You can't say, "I'd like Friday off because my son has an event on Saturday and we need to travel there the day before".
If you were sick, you were required to find your own replacement from a list of substitutes that the school provided.
There are no public employee unions in our state (North Carolina). She made low $40k when she quit. Per-hour it was less than minimum wage. I've always made double or triple her salary in Tech, for half the hours.
The summers are "vacation", but they're also unpaid. She was only paid for 10 months out of the year. Ohh, and she had mandatory teacher workdays over the summer (unpaid), which were essentially 3-4 days of all-day training. We couldn't just leave for vacation.
Fast food is really a better gig. You can leave the work at work when the day is done, and it pays better too.
Ohh, and yes. We spent plenty ($100's) of our own money on school supplies at Wal-mart and teacher supply stores. The kids also had an extensive supply list that parents were asked to purchase, but it was never enough.
this just proves that the public education is broken at management level. china and india sends more immigrants and students to the states. i dont ever remember having 'aids' or 'supplies' to study. all you need is study material. perhaps america would do better if we got rid of the current methods of education. it is unacceptable that parents think that their children whose free education is funded by tax payer money still dont take responsiblity to fill the gaps. the whole 'teachers buying supplies' point has been flogged to death everytime the union negotiates for raises which results in more taxes. spending a couple of hundred dollars in decorating material and side walk chalk is a fair trade for emotional bargaining brownie points and portrayal of teachers as selfless strangled bleeding hearts for the kids.
here is my question: all teachers are represented by a union that negotiates on their behalf. the teachers union in california is the most hard ass and powerful lobby. why isnt the union bargaining for better hours and better spending of literally 40% of california's annual state budget? more than 70% of our school budget goes towards salaries. schools are overcrowded and crumbling. many have cancelled programs and every year, we increase teachers' salaries(noone earns less than 100k) with lifetime pensions(including for dependents after they die). A union that can negotiate all this and coordinate with the ginormous pension management fund cannot bargain better working hours and useful school supplies? its almost as if they advise the teachers to do this so they use the 'sacrificing teachers' as a bargaining chip for more raises and votes. i have been watching this in ca for almost a decade now and it blows my mind.
Schools need security guards in some counties and they have become hotspots for political agitation. In the bay area schools, students walked out of class and demostrated during lunch break in support of teachers union. they are using the kids as their weapons against the tax paying parent who are literally held hostage. the unholy union and melding of political agendas between the UC system and CA public schools is another nail on the coffin of california public education system.
if anything, education costs should be coming down. personal story: the biggest expense when i was a student in school was notebooks because i had a lovely but a somewhat benevolent dictator as a math tutor who would make me to do 100 math sums everyday. it just had to be any kind of math..her method was that i had to sit down and have the discipline to set aside the time for math. i was always scrambling for paper. and it was getting expensive. finally my mother got permission to use her old office ledgers where accounts were only recorded on one side and were meant to be pulped. and every weekend, we'd have to burn them because even though it was 5 plus years old, we couldn't just discard them.
i marvel..MARVEL...at the tablet and the computer now. i rented a computer on a weekly basis to learn programming at home. i am so envious of the kids these days. and education is FREE for all!! i am SO MAD that this dumbass state of california is fighting to remove mathematics from school curriculums amongst other shenanigans and no disrespect to your wife, i dont feel like i can throw my support or show sympathy to the teachers. if there is a mafia and a godfather, the henchmen still dont get my sympathy.
education should be CHEAPER now! education should be more evolved now and tailored to suit individual children according to their aptitude. we had textbooks and one teacher for 40 students. in a country of about close to a billion. why isnt america better in 2022? every child should be able to be the best of what they can be and not some cookie cutter failed method that is unevolved even by developing countries standard.
if i were a conspiracy theorist, i would say that unionised public schools are america's soft underbelly where the poisoned dagger will be thrust to destroy the country. without a doubt, the educational system of this country(i dont know about the rest of the country..but at least speaking for california) is how the children will be weaponised against this nation. maybe ten years ago, there might have been a way to reverse this downfall. It is too late now as a whole generation has been poisoned. it starts with making an entire generation dumber. and teachers have been complicit.
> all teachers are represented by a union that negotiates on their behalf
No, this is not true. Some teachers are represented by unions. In our state (North Carolina), public employees are prohibited by law from organizing into unions and cannot strike.
There is a "teacher's association" that lobbies on their behalf, but the republican-controlled legislature pretty much ignores the association. Without the option the strike, the association is pretty much powerless. They publish opinions and give feedback about what they'd prefer to have happen, but they have no leverage to actually make any changes.
The money spent out-of-pocket is not just decorations and sidewalk chalk. It's pencils, paper, erasers, folders, name tags, cleaning supplies, sticky notes, pencil sharpeners, "prize box" rewards (because you have to have a behavior reward system, it works wonders at practical level for elementary students). It's all of the practical things that make a classroom function on a day-to-day basis. Heck, sometimes they'd run out of paper for the copy machine and we'd buy a few reems just so she could have a particular activity the next day.
https://www.businessinsider.com/teachers-buy-supplies-own-mo... : also..this includes decorations for the classrooms… how is that ‘school supplies’? And side walk chalk? can we please ban teachers from buying school supplies until we can figure out how much it costs to educate a child. I am just tired of the histrionics and hyperbole. Also: Stop decorating classes.
My friends buy cases of wine and gifts and swag bags for their kids’ teachers..and the parents have to spend mandatory volunteer hours. And the teachers still complain about buying school supplies. Maybe ask for school supplies instead of wine club membership? Especially with younger students, they are holding the parents hostage. And the teacher who had an after school tutoring outfit for which they only accepted cash. Almost every single kid I know has extra tutors.
Education is an area where I believe private competition against the public sector can have huge gains. If the local school board cannot implement simple evidence-based education reform, then they've failed to provide the community's children their most fundamental need.
Maybe a startup to facilitate the founding of private schools is in order?
It's a shame teachers are held in such low esteem in U.S. society. In Asia, the teaching profession is prestigious (if not highly paid) and the students pay teachers a lot more respect. When I lived in Taiwan, I witnessed it: from kindergarten through university, students stand and bow when the teacher enters the classroom, and the same when he or she leaves. Of course there were terrible teachers there, as well, but at least they probably enjoy higher job satisfaction than our teachers (both good and bad).
Asian countries haven’t had decades of social programs advocated for by “activists” that have encouraged people to abandon the family structure and devalue personal responsibility. So we have a large part of society that is completely dysfunctional and reliant on the state to raise their child. Many people consider these people heroes even.
Who wouldn’t want a job that pays a pittance while also being so underfunded that some of that tiny salary has to be used to buy resources needed for the job? While also being continuously attacked for everything and being threatened with fines for doing your job properly
I implore you to look up starting teacher salaries in your area. Where I live, a single family homes average $550k, and teachers start at $35,200. For a career that requires a degree that is horrific, and far from 'generous'.
Ok, I did. They are in the process of raising salaries (most teachers make in the range I was talking about anyway now). Now they will be starting at 50K with many making 70K.
They should take it up with their unions. We could probably pay good teachers what they are worth if we had a market for them. But we don’t. Unions negotiate their pay and unions exist to protect the group, not individuals.
So, good teachers who want to be rewarded on merit should seek to abolish their unions and abolish public schools generally speaking. Let parents compete for the best teachers in part by using taxes to fund children and not administrations and unions.
The inability to discipline children I think has greatly contributed to the power and balance for teachers in the classroom. It means bullying, and misbehavior can just fester.
That’s not really true. They get amazing benefits, pensions with retirement in their mid-50’s, and lots of time off throughout the year.
Additionally in most cases their unions negotiate their compensation. Clearly they wouldn’t work if their unions didn’t believe they were being compensated fairly.
> They get amazing benefits, pensions with retirement in their mid-50’s
Those benefits are for those who stick it out as teachers. More and more, new teachers don't even last until their benefits start vesting at 3 years, let alone 20 years!
It must be different in some parts of the country because the teachers I know are doing perfectly fine, even without the net present value of their pension.
The biggest complaint is they are just tired of all the nonsense with covid.
I feel like this conversation is pretty much a constant across time though that teachers are underpaid.
Underpaid compared to what? A plumber? Going to quit teaching to fix pipes in the cold?
Everyone is underpaid compared to this idealized job in the abstract that almost no one actually has.
Not really surprising to anyone really is it? I mean what other profession asks you to:
1. Manage a 25+ children
2. Be responsible for their learning/growth
3. Expected to be part-time law enforcement
4. Expected to be part-time psychologist
5. In some districts, carry weapons and tasked with keeping the peace
6. Get paid way below what skillset that requires
7. Get targeted by parents, politicians for under performing children when parents are not involved and politicians constantly cut funding
8. Have to go on strike just to get cost of living adjustments
9. Funding is so poor, that a lot of teachers have to reach into their own pockets to cover up the difference (voluntary, but still)
10. And after all that, to not be compensated financially is just pouring salt on the wound.
If you want people to pick teaching as a career path, we need a complete shift in the culture of America. As it stands, teachers get zero respect in our culture. The coach is put on a pedestal, the match teach - good luck. He is lucky if the only acknowledgement he receives are insults
In other countries, teachers are respected by parents and students. They are paid well. They are elevated to a higher station in society. In America they are put down, vilified and threatened.
The fact we call teachers "teachers" does not inherently mean anything valuable is being taught. Rote knowledge--easily accessible online--is not teaching, in my opinion. Where are the life skills? Where is the wisdom? It doesn't exist in school.
The entire model of how humans pass on knowledge and experience to others needs to change. To what, I'm not sure, but what I do know is the current system is woeful.
If my wife's experience in healthcare is representative of a larger phenomenon, then expect a massive shortage of health care workers just as boomers need them most.
People are getting sick of shitty jobs, regardless of pay, and I think it's going to force us to redefine some roles. Unless the economy absolutely crashes and makes people desperate enough to take these jobs, I think the trajectory is clear.
We might be able to import enough workers to fill the gap, but with the attitudes towards immigrants changing in the US, I'm not so sure.
My dad always told me that during the 40s and 50s children would be paddled for being disrespectful. Students wore uniforms. Parents would be angry at their children if a teacher or administrator scheduled a meeting. The parents would be mad at the kids. it is clear that times have changed dramatically so I think it’s insane to expect the model of the old times to work. If you want a good result for your child then enroll them in a program that is suited for these times. I suspect private school is the only good option.
There's middle ground, I think, but we don't live in a time of balance, and we have completely swung the other way in terms of raising children. Ironically, we may be doing more psychological damage to them in the long run than we did when we paddled them or put soap in their mouths or make them chew spruce gum (not that I condone any of that).
The key difference is that it's a conscious choice on the part of the parents to invest in the child's education. But there are other factors. For example, most private education at the gradeschool level requires heavy parent involvement and even volunteerism. Private schools are generally much smaller. The school also has the ability to kick out troublemakers or those who obviously don't want to be there. Not to say there aren't problems in the private schools - there are. But you don't have to deal with people who are just there because the state law says they must attend school.
Selection and Ejection. If you can say that a child is a bad fit for your school because they’re not academically gifted so you won’t accept them you’re ahead of the game. Even more true if you can kick out violent or disruptive students, which public schools can’t for much short of assault resulting in prison time.
IMO it's pretty clear the root cause is we kept this 18th century of public school and teachers are pumped out as if they were the result of an assembly line by the education apparatus. This is still the model of education all over the world even if kids get ipads or chromebooks to do the work. I'm not an educator so I don't know the fix but we sure as hell can't keep going on like this.
Any field that has too much government activity in it will end up like this. It's no surprise. Let schools and teachers compete in a free market unhindered by pointless regulation and bureaucracy, and watch the best teachers rise up to meet the challenge.
Being a teacher just keeps getting worse and worse as a job.
It was bad enough when the worst parts of the job were standardized testing, and that you were paid little and had to spend your own money on school supplies for your classroom.
Then it got worse when school shootings became so commonplace that bulletproof backpacks and active shooter drills became a thing. Of course you still have to pay for your own school supplies, but now you also have to pay for body armor, ammo for target practice, and therapy.
Now there's covid, and it's more of a shitshow than it's ever been. Inability to find substitutes. Bus driver shortages. Staff shortages. Faculty shortages. Even though there's a vaccine, there's no mandates for vaccination. Here's a running tally of educators and staff in Georgia who have died since July [1]. The average age of 42 teachers on this list who have died is 46 years old. FORTY SIX! The youngest was in their 20s!
And then on top of it all, if you think that maybe your workplace is dangerous for you as your colleagues drop dead around you, and you'd prefer to teach from home or at least offer some protections at work, then you are called lazy and unamerican by parents in your district. If you hold the opinion that there should be a vaccine mandate at your workplace you are called a Nazi. Meanwhile, legislators are working to pass laws empowering students to sue you personally (for an amount which is maybe 25-30% of your annual salary) if they feel what you're teaching goes against their religious beliefs [2]. You have a moral panic over Critical Race Theory which has metastasized into rumblings about book burnings [3], and moral busybodies combing their way through your library...
Yeah, it's no wonder teachers are leaving and it's hard to find replacements.
You're confusing the US's requirement for religious freedom with the education model. It's not like you're forced to pick a school that teaches things you don't agree with.
For every one of these schools teaching kids religious nonsense that is clearly wrong, there is some other school using that freedom to try alternative ways of running classroom. If you don't allow this you end up with a pretty rigid system that basically everyone but educational board members hates, like the Common Core requirements that are so tight that teachers basically have to design their entire quarter around them.
If they receive public money, they may not introduce religious concepts into science courses. A chain of charters in Texas does indeed seem to be working around the ban on religious doctrine, a ban tested in court, by using tricky language e.g. "Evolution is one theory; there are competing theories." However sooner or later they'll probably be taken to court and lose. Probably nationwide, 99% of charter schools are secular and do indeed teach proper broadly accepted science and other subjects.
Yeah, there’s a real problem with people generalizing from sensational news about isolated incidents. It seems to be creating really distorted mental world models.
It's been an ongoing fight in Texas for a few decades. This is a major issue since Texas buys so many school books they tend to drive the market but this is lessening a bit.
Now imagine the same government bureaucratic policies being used to run public healthcare in the US. What do you think is going to happen to the supply of healthcare professionals?
That could dovetail with the pandemic demographic contractions where births have declined 25% during the pandemic. This is compounded by the fertile generationX is smaller than normal. And immigration has been politically reduced. This could wreck havoc on institutions that depend on youth cohorts like schools, colleges and low-skilled jobs.
I don’t understand why usa is so adverse to metal detectors at the door for public institutions like schools. I spent a few years in India having to be metal detected to enter any metro, mall, or hotel. And they have far fewer weapon and terrorism concerns than USA does. It’s annoying and you get used to it.
Small steps like these could improve the confidence of those working in schools and the many parents trusting schools to safely educate their children
Like other physical security measures (tall fences, razor wire, bars on windows, steel doors) it’s a sign that you are in a low-trust, high-crime environment.
If in fact you are, then those things are important, but most Americans don’t want to think of their local communities this way and resent developments that reify such a perception. Especially when it comes to children. We really don’t like young children being cognizant of evils and threats and other such “adult” concerns. Innocence is important.
My elementary school was like this. No doors on any stalls or the bathrooms themselves. It wasn't a safety thing, it was a 'kids are dumb' thing. Kids would hang on the doors and break them, pee on them, smear excrement on them, crush other kids body parts in them (which I guess is a bit of a safety thing...), etc. Finally they just gave up and got rid of the doors entirely.
Nobody ever seemed to care, but I sure never set foot in those bathrooms.
Many American schools do have metal detectors. The public school in the area where I grew up (known as a "good" school district) not only had metal detectors, but required everyone to use flimsy backpacks made of clear vinyl so staff could always see the contents.
My school had metal detectors. Wasn't a big deal. They were only for when you enter in the morning though. If you wanted to bring something in you could do it at any other time and leave it in your locker.
The harsh reality is that the pay sucks, you need a masters degree to even be a teacher, parents view public schools as glorified daycare system, and shitty bureaucrats run it all into the ground. Combined with the general lack of discipline and culture of disrespect among kids (I fault the parents), it's a completely miserable experience that was worsened by COVID and remote learning.
I've heard so many ridiculous stories from our friends that I'm shocked any of them remain doing it. In fact, 1 of the 5 I mentioned had enough and threw in the towel for the 21-22 school year. She's doing something else now, like running a study abroad program in association with the local honors university. She only gets the smart, disciplined kids who want to be there. The house of cards that is public education is coming down.