5 ms·

Do you really think of teachers as a community of people who try to perpetrate scams on the general public? I'm trying to count on one hand all the teachers I k

by gisely 8y ago

Do you really think of teachers as a community of people who try to perpetrate scams on the general public? I'm trying to count on one hand all the teachers I know who are sitting fat the money they bilked from the voters, but I'm just not getting very far. Perhaps a more plausible explanation is that education funding measures reoccur repeatedly because public education is chronically underfunded as a standard budget item?

bobcostas55 8y ago
Teachers are certainly not underfunded as a budget item. They're 1) well paid[0], and 2) there's no evidence that paying them more results in better outcomes.[1] That's mostly because teachers have almost no effect whatsoever: even the very best only improve student outcomes by a small amount, and the effect fades after a few years.[2] On the other hand there's evidence that teacher collective bargaining wastes hundreds of billions annually.[3] Just because they're not conspicuously wealthy does not mean that they're blameless or virtuous or unsuccessful as a special interest group. [0] https://www.city-journal.org/html/no-teachers-are-not-underpaid-15867.html https://www.city-journal.org/html/no-teachers-are-not-underp... [1] http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~kamurali/papers/Working%20Papers/Double%20for%20Nothing%20(Current%20WP).pdf http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~kamurali/papers/Working%20Papers/Do... [2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/19/teachers-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/19/teachers-much-more-than... [3] https://www.nber.org/papers/w24782 https://www.nber.org/papers/w24782
- metabagel 8y ago
  I see your cherry-picked articles, and I raise with my own cherry-picked articles. http://time.com/money/5228237/teacher-pay-charts/ http://time.com/money/5228237/teacher-pay-charts/ http://www.nea.org/home/12661.htm http://www.nea.org/home/12661.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/16/think-teachers-arent-paid-enough-its-worse-than-you-think/?utm_term=.7de1b3cc6ead https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/... Of note, teacher salary comparisons should be made to those with similar education attainment and should take into account the many hours they spend working outside of the school day.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I didn’t read the articles and my point is not to agree or disagree with either side. Also, my mom is a retired teacher so take that bias as you will. I’m just adding another data point. Teaching does have its downsides, but I know a lot of people who became teachers or stayed teachers (like my mom) because it can give you a great work life balance. You’re off during the summer when your kids are out of school and your holidays mostly correspond with thiers. When we got married, we were an “instant family” - my wife had two kids. We also got laid off at the same time before we got married - we worked together. I ended up with a contract job and she ended up with a job with crazy hours (nights and some weekends). That didn’t work for us. She took a significant pay cut to work in the school system at a job she liked a lot more and she had the same schedule as our sons. She has a stable job with good - expensive benefits. That allowed me to jump around from contract to perm back to contract and chase jobs solely for the money without worrying about benefits or the stability of the company. I know a small business owner whose wife works in the school system for the same reason - benefits. There are other non monetary benefits to being a teacher - especially in a two income household.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- um_ya 8y ago
  I personally like the school voucher idea Trump was proposing during his campaign... Each student is given a voucher, as good as cash, and schools compete for students, leaving the decision to families on which school to go to. This also brings students that live in poor neighborhoods the opportunity to travel to a better school perhaps outside their district. Schools might even buy new buses and pick up students further away if it means getting their voucher money.
  - megaman22 8y ago
    Man, if you could cash that voucher in for other educational materials, that would be an idea. What a library I could have had... Even in the broke, rural, low-cost-of-living area I came out of, the last school budget works out to more than $14k/year per student, mostly funded by local taxes.
    - um_ya 8y ago
      It would be competitive too, and certain schools could target special needs children or problem children. Online schools could be possible too. I could see it being VERY economical.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    And that leaves poor, sometimes young kids taking long bus rides to other parts of town. The more affluent districts are already well funded enough. Those parents are going to do everything they can to keep “them” from thier schools.
    - um_ya 8y ago
      I would rather take a bus a half hour to school rather than get stuck in a poor school district with bad teachers and students in similar conditions. It would be nice to have the option to take your kid out of that environment.
      - scarface74 8y ago
rukittenme 8y ago
Its not that one teacher is sitting fat. Its that all teachers both current and retired are receiving paychecks which are not sustainable in the long term. Consider a scenario where there are two retired teachers for every working teacher. To the working teacher they are underpaid. To the voters they are overpaid. The problem lies in the middle. If you stopped paying retired teachers you could triple the salaries of working teachers. Both parties would be satisfied with this arrangement. Of course retired teachers would hate this and rightfully so. They were promised a pension and now you're denying it to them. It calls into question the structure of compensation. Throw their money into a 401k rather than giving them 80-100% pay for the rest of their lives.
anoncoward111 8y ago
I'm sorry, but my mom made $125,000 pre tax as a teacher every year in NY and retired with a very similar pension payable to her and her husband until death. I am their son. I am college educated, I make $50,000 per year on average and I've been laid off 3 times over my 6 years of post college employment. I have never been offered a 401k, which is a particularly ineffective retirement tool anyway. How are teachers underfunded again? Maybe in certain underfunded neighborhoods, but not all. And their employment is pretty secure.
- e40 8y ago
  I don't have a problem with the salary. What I have a problem with: 1. Pension spiking. Happens for teachers, though not as much as other public employees. 2. The pension should be funded from investments, not some optimistic guess as to the return on those investments. 3. It should be easier to fire a bad teacher. I realize this is hard, but we've all heard the stories. In my excellent school district, you apparently have to be caught sexting teenagers to get fired, even though a lot of people had reported the offensive behavior, many times over many years. While most of my son's teachers are excellent, a few of them shouldn't be anywhere near students of any sort.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    "...It should be easier to fire a bad teacher.." This is a problem with most public employees though. It's not necessarily unique to teachers. Try to fire a bad cop for instance. Just won't happen. Or a bad database analyst at your State's Department of Administration or whatever. You just can't do it.
    - MrMember 8y ago
      A DMV employee slept several hours a day every day for years and wasn't fired. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/07/24/california-dmv-worker-slept-thousands-hours-job-report-says/830618002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/07/24/ca...
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
itbeho 8y ago
I don't think they are trying to perpetrate a scam. But I do know local educators that spiked their pensions by working overtime right before they retired. The vast majority of the local school district budget goes to support pensions, not fix peeling paint or removing weeds which are visible on almost all local school grounds. This isn't an issue of underfunding. This is a problem that has resulted from mis-management.
- TheBeardKing 8y ago
  Why are pensions not based on base salary? That seems like an easy and obvious fix.
thinkbiggerr 8y ago
Uh... education is ~52% of California's current enacted budget and ~52% of the proposed budget for the next year. It's the largest item on the largest budget of any state in the US. Prop 98 was passed in 1988 guaranteeing a percentage (~40%) of the state budget be spent on education. How exactly is that "chronically underfunded"? As for individual teachers "sitting fat [on] the money"... of course they aren't. Average teacher salary in California (according to California Teachers Association) is $78k -- and California is a very expensive place to live. FWIW, the CTA chiefs are making $300-400k+ and CTA controls a $300+ million annual budget. There's definitely plenty of money sloshing around the system, it just doesn't make its way to the teachers.
rayiner 8y ago
Education isn't underfunded. The U.S. spends more per student and more as a share of GDP than most other OECD countries: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows; https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-glob... https://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2016/sep/21/donald-trump/trump-us-spends-more-almost-any-other-major-countr https://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2016/sep/21/donal.... Teachers and other public workers have definitely created for themselves a bubble where they're insulated from the competition and stresses of the private sector, and they've done that at the public's expense. It's not a scam, but it's not innocuous either. At the end of the day, tax money is a scarce resource. Money that goes to providing retirements for teachers more comfortable than what people with similar qualifications could get in the private sector is money that doesn't go to school lunches for hungry kids, etc. Teachers use the plight of disadvantaged kids to get more funding for schools. But that funding goes primarily to paying teachers, who are relatively privileged to begin with (being college educated and disproportionately white). (Which is not to say that everyone shouldn't have a comfortable retirement--I'm all for raising taxes to Norway levels and funding a proper welfare state. But until we have Norway levels of tax dollars rolling in, our current expenditures on public employees is a misallocation of resources.)
- 1996 8y ago
  Using the plight of disadvantaged kids to get more money diverted to you, and keeping the kids disadvantage because tax money is a scarce resource as you said - pure genius! A self maintaining scam that can be milked as needed (well, every 5 years as indicated by the OP, to ensure voters have forgotten) No wonder why some people fight to maintain the status quo!
dragonwriter 8y ago
> public education is chronically underfunded It's not, though. The systems needed to deal with the social problems outside of schools that create difficulties for schools are chronically underfunded (and often designed poorly, as well), and teachers in many districts have impossible jobs as a result, but education itself isn't underfunded. But “the schools are broken” is a more mentally manageable idea than “the entire socioeconomic system is broken”.

by gisely 8y ago

bobcostas55 8y ago

Teachers are certainly not underfunded as a budget item. They're 1) well paid[0], and 2) there's no evidence that paying them more results in better outcomes.[1] That's mostly because teachers have almost no effect whatsoever: even the very best only improve student outcomes by a small amount, and the effect fades after a few years.[2] On the other hand there's evidence that teacher collective bargaining wastes hundreds of billions annually.[3] Just because they're not conspicuously wealthy does not mean that they're blameless or virtuous or unsuccessful as a special interest group. [0] https://www.city-journal.org/html/no-teachers-are-not-underpaid-15867.html https://www.city-journal.org/html/no-teachers-are-not-underp... [1] http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~kamurali/papers/Working%20Papers/Double%20for%20Nothing%20(Current%20WP).pdf http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~kamurali/papers/Working%20Papers/Do... [2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/19/teachers-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/19/teachers-much-more-than... [3] https://www.nber.org/papers/w24782 https://www.nber.org/papers/w24782

metabagel 8y ago
I see your cherry-picked articles, and I raise with my own cherry-picked articles. http://time.com/money/5228237/teacher-pay-charts/ http://time.com/money/5228237/teacher-pay-charts/ http://www.nea.org/home/12661.htm http://www.nea.org/home/12661.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/16/think-teachers-arent-paid-enough-its-worse-than-you-think/?utm_term=.7de1b3cc6ead https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/... Of note, teacher salary comparisons should be made to those with similar education attainment and should take into account the many hours they spend working outside of the school day.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I didn’t read the articles and my point is not to agree or disagree with either side. Also, my mom is a retired teacher so take that bias as you will. I’m just adding another data point. Teaching does have its downsides, but I know a lot of people who became teachers or stayed teachers (like my mom) because it can give you a great work life balance. You’re off during the summer when your kids are out of school and your holidays mostly correspond with thiers. When we got married, we were an “instant family” - my wife had two kids. We also got laid off at the same time before we got married - we worked together. I ended up with a contract job and she ended up with a job with crazy hours (nights and some weekends). That didn’t work for us. She took a significant pay cut to work in the school system at a job she liked a lot more and she had the same schedule as our sons. She has a stable job with good - expensive benefits. That allowed me to jump around from contract to perm back to contract and chase jobs solely for the money without worrying about benefits or the stability of the company. I know a small business owner whose wife works in the school system for the same reason - benefits. There are other non monetary benefits to being a teacher - especially in a two income household.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
um_ya 8y ago
I personally like the school voucher idea Trump was proposing during his campaign... Each student is given a voucher, as good as cash, and schools compete for students, leaving the decision to families on which school to go to. This also brings students that live in poor neighborhoods the opportunity to travel to a better school perhaps outside their district. Schools might even buy new buses and pick up students further away if it means getting their voucher money.
- megaman22 8y ago
  Man, if you could cash that voucher in for other educational materials, that would be an idea. What a library I could have had... Even in the broke, rural, low-cost-of-living area I came out of, the last school budget works out to more than $14k/year per student, mostly funded by local taxes.
  - um_ya 8y ago
    It would be competitive too, and certain schools could target special needs children or problem children. Online schools could be possible too. I could see it being VERY economical.
- scarface74 8y ago
  And that leaves poor, sometimes young kids taking long bus rides to other parts of town. The more affluent districts are already well funded enough. Those parents are going to do everything they can to keep “them” from thier schools.
  - um_ya 8y ago
    I would rather take a bus a half hour to school rather than get stuck in a poor school district with bad teachers and students in similar conditions. It would be nice to have the option to take your kid out of that environment.
    - scarface74 8y ago

rukittenme 8y ago

Its not that one teacher is sitting fat. Its that all teachers both current and retired are receiving paychecks which are not sustainable in the long term. Consider a scenario where there are two retired teachers for every working teacher. To the working teacher they are underpaid. To the voters they are overpaid. The problem lies in the middle. If you stopped paying retired teachers you could triple the salaries of working teachers. Both parties would be satisfied with this arrangement. Of course retired teachers would hate this and rightfully so. They were promised a pension and now you're denying it to them. It calls into question the structure of compensation. Throw their money into a 401k rather than giving them 80-100% pay for the rest of their lives.

anoncoward111 8y ago

I'm sorry, but my mom made $125,000 pre tax as a teacher every year in NY and retired with a very similar pension payable to her and her husband until death. I am their son. I am college educated, I make $50,000 per year on average and I've been laid off 3 times over my 6 years of post college employment. I have never been offered a 401k, which is a particularly ineffective retirement tool anyway. How are teachers underfunded again? Maybe in certain underfunded neighborhoods, but not all. And their employment is pretty secure.

e40 8y ago
I don't have a problem with the salary. What I have a problem with: 1. Pension spiking. Happens for teachers, though not as much as other public employees. 2. The pension should be funded from investments, not some optimistic guess as to the return on those investments. 3. It should be easier to fire a bad teacher. I realize this is hard, but we've all heard the stories. In my excellent school district, you apparently have to be caught sexting teenagers to get fired, even though a lot of people had reported the offensive behavior, many times over many years. While most of my son's teachers are excellent, a few of them shouldn't be anywhere near students of any sort.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  "...It should be easier to fire a bad teacher.." This is a problem with most public employees though. It's not necessarily unique to teachers. Try to fire a bad cop for instance. Just won't happen. Or a bad database analyst at your State's Department of Administration or whatever. You just can't do it.
  - MrMember 8y ago
    A DMV employee slept several hours a day every day for years and wasn't fired. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/07/24/california-dmv-worker-slept-thousands-hours-job-report-says/830618002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/07/24/ca...
- anoncoward111 8y ago

itbeho 8y ago

I don't think they are trying to perpetrate a scam. But I do know local educators that spiked their pensions by working overtime right before they retired. The vast majority of the local school district budget goes to support pensions, not fix peeling paint or removing weeds which are visible on almost all local school grounds. This isn't an issue of underfunding. This is a problem that has resulted from mis-management.

TheBeardKing 8y ago
Why are pensions not based on base salary? That seems like an easy and obvious fix.

thinkbiggerr 8y ago

Uh... education is ~52% of California's current enacted budget and ~52% of the proposed budget for the next year. It's the largest item on the largest budget of any state in the US. Prop 98 was passed in 1988 guaranteeing a percentage (~40%) of the state budget be spent on education. How exactly is that "chronically underfunded"? As for individual teachers "sitting fat [on] the money"... of course they aren't. Average teacher salary in California (according to California Teachers Association) is $78k -- and California is a very expensive place to live. FWIW, the CTA chiefs are making $300-400k+ and CTA controls a $300+ million annual budget. There's definitely plenty of money sloshing around the system, it just doesn't make its way to the teachers.

rayiner 8y ago

Education isn't underfunded. The U.S. spends more per student and more as a share of GDP than most other OECD countries: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows; https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-glob... https://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2016/sep/21/donald-trump/trump-us-spends-more-almost-any-other-major-countr https://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2016/sep/21/donal.... Teachers and other public workers have definitely created for themselves a bubble where they're insulated from the competition and stresses of the private sector, and they've done that at the public's expense. It's not a scam, but it's not innocuous either. At the end of the day, tax money is a scarce resource. Money that goes to providing retirements for teachers more comfortable than what people with similar qualifications could get in the private sector is money that doesn't go to school lunches for hungry kids, etc. Teachers use the plight of disadvantaged kids to get more funding for schools. But that funding goes primarily to paying teachers, who are relatively privileged to begin with (being college educated and disproportionately white). (Which is not to say that everyone shouldn't have a comfortable retirement--I'm all for raising taxes to Norway levels and funding a proper welfare state. But until we have Norway levels of tax dollars rolling in, our current expenditures on public employees is a misallocation of resources.)

1996 8y ago
Using the plight of disadvantaged kids to get more money diverted to you, and keeping the kids disadvantage because tax money is a scarce resource as you said - pure genius! A self maintaining scam that can be milked as needed (well, every 5 years as indicated by the OP, to ensure voters have forgotten) No wonder why some people fight to maintain the status quo!

dragonwriter 8y ago

> public education is chronically underfunded It's not, though. The systems needed to deal with the social problems outside of schools that create difficulties for schools are chronically underfunded (and often designed poorly, as well), and teachers in many districts have impossible jobs as a result, but education itself isn't underfunded. But “the schools are broken” is a more mentally manageable idea than “the entire socioeconomic system is broken”.