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This seems to use private education as a benchmark for the entire argument. From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is

This seems to use private education as a benchmark for the entire argument. From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just above public salaries and conditions (meaning private education cannot be used as a benchmark for when someone is under-paid, over-qualified, or has too high of a quit rate because they are related). Personally I think someone required to have a degree (master's for quoted salary), continued education requirements, and licensing earning under $50K/year starting is too low. Plus no teacher is working 8-3, you'd have no opportunity for lesson planning, grading, and all those extra curriculars they are essentially guilted into organizing. The fact that I could walk out of college with zero experience and only a degree, and earn $20K more than that working only 9-5 in the same city seems unfair (as a programmer). But I have no idea how society decides salaries. It seems pretty arbitrary from my perspective. But it is great that at the end of a long career a few unicorn teachers can earn $100K, a salary I earned within 5 years and still no master's or licencing.

SamuelAdams 7y ago
> required to have a masters degree This isn't true from my experience. I have several friends who teach K-12 education. They only have a bachelor's degree, many times in different areas than what they are teaching (English degree teaching Math, for example).
- Someone1234 7y ago
  I updated the wording a little to be clearer. I was trying to say, to earn $50K starting salary quoted as a teacher you were required to have a master's degree ($43K otherwise ($45K otherwise)).
- noer 7y ago
  It varies state to state. Some states require you to have a masters degree, some require you to have a masters degree or being the process of obtaining one, some states require you to have a masters but will waive that requirement if there's a need and some states require only a bachelors degree. Edit: there is a list of state requirements here: https://www.asha.org/Advocacy/state/StateTeacherCredentialingRequirements/ https://www.asha.org/Advocacy/state/StateTeacherCredentialin...
  - panzagl 7y ago
    That list is for speech teachers, most 'regular' K-12 teaching positions only require a bachelor's.
- shantly 7y ago
  My wife's about to hit a wall on pay increases at right at $40k if she doesn't get a master's degree. Never get another real raise, just sub-inflation bumps every year. With quite a damn while left until retirement. Mind, the master's degrees most teachers get aren't exactly hard—there's a giant market for easy-as-pie degrees for teachers for exactly this reason, and that's what most universities deliver and what most teachers go for since it's not like you get paid more if you do study in a real program—but you still have to pay for it, and it's not cheap on a teacher's salary.
  - simonsarris 7y ago
    Why does the school require it? If everyone agrees its silly, why don't they just drop the requirement?
    - shantly 7y ago
      Dunno, they all do it though. I know school stats report the % of teachers with higher degrees and of course they all want those percentages to be higher. Possibly there are state incentives. Mostly it's just a bunch of people doing dumb crap without anyone having the power & motivation to fix it so they can all knock it off, which is a pretty common phenomenon, actually. [EDIT] I mean to you wanna be the superintendent reporting that proportion of district teachers with master's degrees is up by seven percent since you started, or the one explaining that most of those degrees are bullshit and you don't care about it and neither should anyone else? Bear in mind most people have zero idea what teacher education looks like.
      - sgerenser 7y ago
        Yup. NC recently got rid of the automatic pay bump for having a masters degree while simultaneously increasing base teacher pay and there was a huge uproar over it. Nobody wants to lose their boondoggle.
        shantly 7y ago
        Teachers' master's degrees are, in effect, a way to divert money from (mostly) teachers and (a little bit, some places) school districts to universities for no actual benefit, so that's great. Hope they manage to keep it up and that spreads. OTOH it'd be nice if there were still a way to reward teachers who'd done a real and relevant master's (which very few of them do now), but I don't think anyone's interested in nailing down that distinction. It's not even just degree mills, either, AFAIK the vast majority of postgraduate programs aimed at teachers are designed, primarily, to be pretty easy to pass and to have relatively low time commitments. They all want a piece of that action, and if they increase the rigor demand for their product will drop because a hypothetical very hard, non-bullshit teaching master's from a prestigious school brings the same pay bump as a very bullshit one from a third-rate state school.
sol_remmy2 7y ago
Don't you realize most people don't have the patience or ability to be a software engineer? That it is one of the most intellectually demanding jobs in society? And that 4 years computer science education is both expensive and difficult? Recognize your privilige - you are very smart and, for you, programming is easy. You are in the minority. How about dental hygienists? Dental Hygienists made a median salary of $74,070 (2017). https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/dental-hygienist/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/dental-hygienist/... That's a very easy job that only requires 2 years of training. Shouldn't they be paid less so teachers can be paid more?
- tathougies 7y ago
  > And that 4 years computer science education is both expensive and difficult? Exactly. As a point in favor of this worldview, I'll use my mother. She completed her economics and English degree in India (undergrad). She also completed her liberal studies undergrad and a graduate teaching credential again in the United States (they would not accept her foreign undergrad, so she had to repeat). She said that the teaching education was mostly a joke and her classmates absolute dunces. This was at a public university -- cal state fullerton, to be specific. Ultimately, teaching education, even graduate education, is not difficult and mostly a joke, which is what is reflected in their salaries.
  - shantly 7y ago
    > Ultimately, teaching education, even graduate education, is not difficult and mostly a joke, which is what is reflected in their salaries. Flip side: not enough people would put up with going through a "serious" teacher ed program to fill the demand, unless pay went way up. Not even close to enough.
    - tathougies 7y ago
      Flip side: intellectuals tend to like intellectual pursuits. Having a dumbed down teaching curriculum means turning these people away, not for monetary reasons, but for lack of stimulation that is easily accessible in the private sector. My mother, and many other people I know who wanted to go into teaching, wanted to do so because they wanted to be teachers, not the pay. What turned them off to the profession is the incompetence demonstrated by most teachers, professors of education, and school administrators.
tathougies 7y ago
> But I have no idea how society decides salaries. I think your confusion stems from the fact that society does not decide salaries. In the private sector, salaries are based on how much one's involvement in some endeavor causes that endeavor to generate more revenue (or how much you can convince someone your involvement generates more revenue), combined with how easy it would be to find someone willing to do the same job with the same impact at a lower rate. If the value add is high and there is no one able or willing to do what you do for cheaper, you will have a high salary. If you add little value, and no one is willing to do what you do, you will be fired and likely not replaced -- they'll do without. If you add lots of value, but someone else is willing to do your job for less, you will be kept around if you accept a lower salary. If you add little value and someone else is willing to do your work, they will be hired for a lower salary. This isn't rocket science.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  > In the private sector, salaries are based on how much one's involvement in some endeavor causes that endeavor to generate more revenue That's never been my experience. I've seen people add tons of quantifiable value to a business, including dock loaders, customer facing staff, and even cleaners but in spite of their value being quantifiable they weren't rewarded. Clients and customers would literally say that staff is why they came back, but nothing. Your post seems to be largely a THEORY of why salaries are set the way they are. In my experience social "value" seems to be a far bigger indicator of future salary rather than actual historical value. Meaning people are paying for perception, not measurements. You can see that just by looking at affluence typically white kids flowing from private schools, to named colleges, straight into the financial sector. When did they generate historical value for the business when they were hired at double the natural average salary?
  - crumpets 7y ago
    No, value to the business only sets the ceiling. The floor comes from the labor supply side of the market. (i.e. can the company find qualified people willing to do it at X rate)
shantly 7y ago
> From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just above public salaries and conditions Most of the private schools around here pay a lot worse than the public schools, especially if you factor in total comp w/ benefits. We have a tiny number with high enough tuition that they might pay well (but I wouldn't count on it), but almost none of the rest do, the bulk of which are Catholic or protestant religious schools.
- cproctor 7y ago
  You can make $42k teaching computer science at a private school in silicon valley.
- rconti 7y ago
  Yeah, I'm not in education, but I was surprised to 'learn' that private schools generally pay less than their public counterparts -- and I've continued to understand that to be the case, but I'd love more information on the matter to correct any misunderstandings I might have.
  - lazyasciiart 7y ago
    My secondhand understanding is that they make up for it by offering more control over the students, down to selecting and expelling them.
  - analog31 7y ago
    Less competitive, at least in my state. The higher paying public school districts have a lot of applicants, who are often more senior and have either higher degree levels, or degrees related to the subject they would be teaching. The parochial schools are seen as being somewhat of a stepping stone for new teachers or those who are trying to get a foothold in a desirable location.
gridlockd 7y ago
> The fact that I could walk out of college with zero experience and only a degree, and earn $20K more than that working only 9-5 in the same city seems unfair (as a programmer). So what? With many other degrees, you can walk out six figures in debt and land a job at McDonalds. Is that fair? > But I have no idea how society decides salaries. In the open market, it's (supposed to be) supply and demand. If salaries are high, that's a signal that there's too few people in the profession. Programmers are privileged for now, but lots of people are joining in. Once supply outweighs demand, salaries will fall. Just wait for the next recession when the bullshit startup train will go off the rails.
crumpets 7y ago
>how society decides salaries. It seems pretty arbitrary from my perspective. Society doesn't "decide". It's a decided by the labor market. Nobody wants to pay programmers six figures. It's a myth that we think teachers are less important than programmers because they make less on average. There is just a larger supply of qualified teachers willing to work at lower prices. Wait until you find out how little art history masters holders make. Amount of training is irrelevant to how much money you get.
- crdoconnor 7y ago
  The labor market is a tool of society. It's like any other tool: it can be fixed or supplemented or even swapped out with something else if it doesn't perform its function effectively.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It's true, and while I also believe teachers should be paid more relative to other occupations, labor market has one thing going for it that makes it hard to replace - it's a very simple process that doesn't require any central coordination.
    - SamReidHughes 7y ago
      How much would a 10% teacher pay bump improve educational outcomes?
      - prepend 7y ago
        Teacher pay is not correlated to outcome. The US pays more for its teachers than Finland and other counties with much better outcomes. I think the challenge is just measuring and comparing education. If we could, reliably, then we’d likely pay tons more for teachers.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
filmgirlcw 7y ago
I would note that at least based on the educators I know, private schools often tend to pay LESS than public. Obviously, this may be dependent on area, but in Georgia at least, teachers at private schools typically make less once you factor in things like 401k, retirement, and health insurance. A lot less. This is an anecdote but my cousin's wife quit her job at a public high school to work at a private school, allegedly for a more flexible schedule/slightly better base pay. She was then diagnosed with cancer (and at 35, that wasn't something she/her family was expecting) and the benefits for sick leave, not to mention medical costs, were so much worse, it was basically a nightmare. Fortunately, her husband kept his education job for the county so the insurance situation was a lot better -- but she lost access to a lot of other benefits that had a very high monetary and quality of life value. I have other friends back home who left public schools for private, thinking they'd make more money -- found out the grass was not greener -- and then had a hell of a time getting a job back in their old school system. It may be true in some areas with really poor public schools that private is going to pay better -- but public or private, as you say, in many cases, the pay just isn't going to be great.
- mehhh 7y ago
  Private schools are a 10k to 15k pay haircut in Seattle, most require a morality clause that makes being LGBTQ+ a firable offence, and the vaccination rates are appallingly low compared to public schools. Seattle's Catholic Schools are single handedly bringing back Measles & Rubella as a latent disease, where it used to not exist. With Running Start being an option for the last 2 years of High School (if your in public school), its much easier to advance your education rapidly if you so choose.
  - femto113 7y ago
    Seattle has hundreds of private schools, I doubt more than a handful have anything like the morality clause you cite, and most that I am aware of are explicit about their support of LGBTQ+. Do you have some source for your claim?
    - mehhh 7y ago
darawk 7y ago
> The fact that I could walk out of college with zero experience and only a degree, and earn $20K more than that working only 9-5 in the same city seems unfair (as a programmer). But I have no idea how society decides salaries. It seems pretty arbitrary from my perspective. Salaries are set by supply and demand. Being a programmer is in greater demand relative to its supply.
mcguire 7y ago
Check the caption for the "Median Annual Wages..." graph: "Teacher salaries are adjusted based on the assumption of a 10-month work year." ...which is a good way to give them a virtual 17% pay raise. I wonder if the same applies to other professions like independent contractors or lawyers, who can only charge for part of their working time.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  Yeah, and this makes so much sense considering how easy it is to find a high-paying 2-month temporary job. /s It's the old "You don't understand, teachers only work 10 months out of the year!" argument but dressed in some nice statistical clothing. It's asinine to make that argument because teachers can't actually get paid for the other two months. When I was temping in a warehouse unloading shipping containers one summer, there were a few teachers there who were just making ends meet until the school year started.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    On the other hand, plenty of people working other jobs that would like to have 2 entire months off every year.
    - mcguire 7y ago
      Sure. It's one of the biggest advantages of teaching. But you still can't pay for groceries with time off.
      - darawk 7y ago
        You can't pay for groceries with health insurance either but you still have to include fringe benefits when calculating total compensation.
        XorNot 7y ago
        Well, in other first-world countries you don't.
droithomme 7y ago
> This seems to use private education as a benchmark for the entire argument. From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just above public salaries and conditions I read the article and over and over it mentions "public-school teachers" and "public-school students". It mentions that the union lobbying organization compares their salaries to that of private sector employees with different jobs, but Masters, and who are not in rural areas as much as teachers. The author then argues that may not be the best comparison. No where in the article do we see a look at private school teachers as you claim. It's fascinating you're the top voted comment and no one has noticed your thesis isn't true. This suggests no one here in this entire thread has read the article. Weird. Anyway, private school teacher salaries are generally lower than public school teachers anyway. Good teachers will take a salary hit to have better students, more control of their classroom and curriculum, and enforced discipline. When I went to a private school most of the teachers had PhDs and the classes were comparable to university level.
darawk 7y ago
> This seems to use private education as a benchmark for the entire argument. From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just above public salaries and conditions (meaning private education cannot be used as a benchmark for when someone is under-paid, over-qualified, or has too high of a quit rate because they are related). Huh? The article makes a ton of arguments. Most of which do not hinge on any comparison to private education. This is the most core argument being made: > Reporters might be more skeptical if they realized that EPI's own pay-gap methodology leads to some other conclusions that are, to put it delicately, less intuitive. Using the same Census data and the same basic techniques that EPI applies to teachers, we find that registered nurses are "overpaid" by 29%. Meanwhile, telemarketers deserve a big raise, as they currently suffer a 26% salary penalty. Aerospace engineers are apparently overpaid by 38%, but "athletes, coaches, and umpires" are paid 21% less than their skills are worth. Photographers should consider going on strike, as they make 16% less than comparable workers. Firefighters are moochers by contrast, taking in 25% above their rightful salaries. > If all this sounds ridiculous, it's because EPI's method is so simplistic. To arrive at its 21% pay gap, EPI merely compares teacher salaries with the salaries of people who have roughly the same number of years of education and the same demographic characteristics. More specifically, EPI performs a regression analysis using Census Bureau survey data, in which respondents provide information on their salaries along with their age, education, region of residence, marital status, and other factors that are predictive of earnings. Included in this analysis is a "dummy variable" indicating whether the individual is a public-school teacher. The coefficient on the dummy variable represents the effect on salary of being a teacher after controlling for all of the other factors listed above. Nowhere is private education mentioned.
WalterBright 7y ago
> I have no idea how society decides salaries. Supply and demand.
WalterBright 7y ago
> But it is great that at the end of a long career a few unicorn teachers can earn $100K, Teachers tend to get very generous benefits packages, including retirement pay.
kissickas 7y ago
> Personally I think someone required to have a degree (master's for quoted salary), continued education requirements, and licensing earning under $50K/year starting is too low. Take away the master's degree (which many teachers don't have) and just say degree, and you've got a great description of a hair stylist. Look into how many hours are required for licensing a hair stylist in your state. Does $50k/year sound too low for that profession, as well? It may, but if not, you have to admit there are more factors at play than just education and training.
barry-cotter 7y ago
> Personally I think someone required to have a degree (master's for quoted salary), continued education requirements, and licensing earning under $50K/year starting is too low. The effects of M.Ed. and other educational training on teacher effectiveness is not reliably distinguishable from zero. This contrasts with experience which increases teacher effectiveness up to six years and subject matter expertise. So if continuing education and the most common teacher’s Master’s degree does nothing for students and costs money we shouldn’t reward it. By all means encourage and subsidize things we know help students, like a Master’s in Math for Math teachers or in English for English teachers, but M.Ed.s and Ed.D.s don’t do squat for anyone except the teachers who get better pay and faster promotions.

SamuelAdams 7y ago

> required to have a masters degree This isn't true from my experience. I have several friends who teach K-12 education. They only have a bachelor's degree, many times in different areas than what they are teaching (English degree teaching Math, for example).

Someone1234 7y ago
I updated the wording a little to be clearer. I was trying to say, to earn $50K starting salary quoted as a teacher you were required to have a master's degree ($43K otherwise ($45K otherwise)).
noer 7y ago
It varies state to state. Some states require you to have a masters degree, some require you to have a masters degree or being the process of obtaining one, some states require you to have a masters but will waive that requirement if there's a need and some states require only a bachelors degree. Edit: there is a list of state requirements here: https://www.asha.org/Advocacy/state/StateTeacherCredentialingRequirements/ https://www.asha.org/Advocacy/state/StateTeacherCredentialin...
- panzagl 7y ago
  That list is for speech teachers, most 'regular' K-12 teaching positions only require a bachelor's.
shantly 7y ago
My wife's about to hit a wall on pay increases at right at $40k if she doesn't get a master's degree. Never get another real raise, just sub-inflation bumps every year. With quite a damn while left until retirement. Mind, the master's degrees most teachers get aren't exactly hard—there's a giant market for easy-as-pie degrees for teachers for exactly this reason, and that's what most universities deliver and what most teachers go for since it's not like you get paid more if you do study in a real program—but you still have to pay for it, and it's not cheap on a teacher's salary.
- simonsarris 7y ago
  Why does the school require it? If everyone agrees its silly, why don't they just drop the requirement?
  - shantly 7y ago
    Dunno, they all do it though. I know school stats report the % of teachers with higher degrees and of course they all want those percentages to be higher. Possibly there are state incentives. Mostly it's just a bunch of people doing dumb crap without anyone having the power & motivation to fix it so they can all knock it off, which is a pretty common phenomenon, actually. [EDIT] I mean to you wanna be the superintendent reporting that proportion of district teachers with master's degrees is up by seven percent since you started, or the one explaining that most of those degrees are bullshit and you don't care about it and neither should anyone else? Bear in mind most people have zero idea what teacher education looks like.
    - sgerenser 7y ago
      Yup. NC recently got rid of the automatic pay bump for having a masters degree while simultaneously increasing base teacher pay and there was a huge uproar over it. Nobody wants to lose their boondoggle.
      - shantly 7y ago
        Teachers' master's degrees are, in effect, a way to divert money from (mostly) teachers and (a little bit, some places) school districts to universities for no actual benefit, so that's great. Hope they manage to keep it up and that spreads. OTOH it'd be nice if there were still a way to reward teachers who'd done a real and relevant master's (which very few of them do now), but I don't think anyone's interested in nailing down that distinction. It's not even just degree mills, either, AFAIK the vast majority of postgraduate programs aimed at teachers are designed, primarily, to be pretty easy to pass and to have relatively low time commitments. They all want a piece of that action, and if they increase the rigor demand for their product will drop because a hypothetical very hard, non-bullshit teaching master's from a prestigious school brings the same pay bump as a very bullshit one from a third-rate state school.

sol_remmy2 7y ago

Don't you realize most people don't have the patience or ability to be a software engineer? That it is one of the most intellectually demanding jobs in society? And that 4 years computer science education is both expensive and difficult? Recognize your privilige - you are very smart and, for you, programming is easy. You are in the minority. How about dental hygienists? Dental Hygienists made a median salary of $74,070 (2017). https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/dental-hygienist/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/dental-hygienist/... That's a very easy job that only requires 2 years of training. Shouldn't they be paid less so teachers can be paid more?

tathougies 7y ago
> And that 4 years computer science education is both expensive and difficult? Exactly. As a point in favor of this worldview, I'll use my mother. She completed her economics and English degree in India (undergrad). She also completed her liberal studies undergrad and a graduate teaching credential again in the United States (they would not accept her foreign undergrad, so she had to repeat). She said that the teaching education was mostly a joke and her classmates absolute dunces. This was at a public university -- cal state fullerton, to be specific. Ultimately, teaching education, even graduate education, is not difficult and mostly a joke, which is what is reflected in their salaries.
- shantly 7y ago
  > Ultimately, teaching education, even graduate education, is not difficult and mostly a joke, which is what is reflected in their salaries. Flip side: not enough people would put up with going through a "serious" teacher ed program to fill the demand, unless pay went way up. Not even close to enough.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    Flip side: intellectuals tend to like intellectual pursuits. Having a dumbed down teaching curriculum means turning these people away, not for monetary reasons, but for lack of stimulation that is easily accessible in the private sector. My mother, and many other people I know who wanted to go into teaching, wanted to do so because they wanted to be teachers, not the pay. What turned them off to the profession is the incompetence demonstrated by most teachers, professors of education, and school administrators.

tathougies 7y ago

> But I have no idea how society decides salaries. I think your confusion stems from the fact that society does not decide salaries. In the private sector, salaries are based on how much one's involvement in some endeavor causes that endeavor to generate more revenue (or how much you can convince someone your involvement generates more revenue), combined with how easy it would be to find someone willing to do the same job with the same impact at a lower rate. If the value add is high and there is no one able or willing to do what you do for cheaper, you will have a high salary. If you add little value, and no one is willing to do what you do, you will be fired and likely not replaced -- they'll do without. If you add lots of value, but someone else is willing to do your job for less, you will be kept around if you accept a lower salary. If you add little value and someone else is willing to do your work, they will be hired for a lower salary. This isn't rocket science.

Someone1234 7y ago
> In the private sector, salaries are based on how much one's involvement in some endeavor causes that endeavor to generate more revenue That's never been my experience. I've seen people add tons of quantifiable value to a business, including dock loaders, customer facing staff, and even cleaners but in spite of their value being quantifiable they weren't rewarded. Clients and customers would literally say that staff is why they came back, but nothing. Your post seems to be largely a THEORY of why salaries are set the way they are. In my experience social "value" seems to be a far bigger indicator of future salary rather than actual historical value. Meaning people are paying for perception, not measurements. You can see that just by looking at affluence typically white kids flowing from private schools, to named colleges, straight into the financial sector. When did they generate historical value for the business when they were hired at double the natural average salary?
- crumpets 7y ago
  No, value to the business only sets the ceiling. The floor comes from the labor supply side of the market. (i.e. can the company find qualified people willing to do it at X rate)

shantly 7y ago

> From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just above public salaries and conditions Most of the private schools around here pay a lot worse than the public schools, especially if you factor in total comp w/ benefits. We have a tiny number with high enough tuition that they might pay well (but I wouldn't count on it), but almost none of the rest do, the bulk of which are Catholic or protestant religious schools.

cproctor 7y ago
You can make $42k teaching computer science at a private school in silicon valley.
rconti 7y ago
Yeah, I'm not in education, but I was surprised to 'learn' that private schools generally pay less than their public counterparts -- and I've continued to understand that to be the case, but I'd love more information on the matter to correct any misunderstandings I might have.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  My secondhand understanding is that they make up for it by offering more control over the students, down to selecting and expelling them.
- analog31 7y ago
  Less competitive, at least in my state. The higher paying public school districts have a lot of applicants, who are often more senior and have either higher degree levels, or degrees related to the subject they would be teaching. The parochial schools are seen as being somewhat of a stepping stone for new teachers or those who are trying to get a foothold in a desirable location.

gridlockd 7y ago

> The fact that I could walk out of college with zero experience and only a degree, and earn $20K more than that working only 9-5 in the same city seems unfair (as a programmer). So what? With many other degrees, you can walk out six figures in debt and land a job at McDonalds. Is that fair? > But I have no idea how society decides salaries. In the open market, it's (supposed to be) supply and demand. If salaries are high, that's a signal that there's too few people in the profession. Programmers are privileged for now, but lots of people are joining in. Once supply outweighs demand, salaries will fall. Just wait for the next recession when the bullshit startup train will go off the rails.

crumpets 7y ago

>how society decides salaries. It seems pretty arbitrary from my perspective. Society doesn't "decide". It's a decided by the labor market. Nobody wants to pay programmers six figures. It's a myth that we think teachers are less important than programmers because they make less on average. There is just a larger supply of qualified teachers willing to work at lower prices. Wait until you find out how little art history masters holders make. Amount of training is irrelevant to how much money you get.

crdoconnor 7y ago
The labor market is a tool of society. It's like any other tool: it can be fixed or supplemented or even swapped out with something else if it doesn't perform its function effectively.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It's true, and while I also believe teachers should be paid more relative to other occupations, labor market has one thing going for it that makes it hard to replace - it's a very simple process that doesn't require any central coordination.
  - SamReidHughes 7y ago
    How much would a 10% teacher pay bump improve educational outcomes?
    - prepend 7y ago
      Teacher pay is not correlated to outcome. The US pays more for its teachers than Finland and other counties with much better outcomes. I think the challenge is just measuring and comparing education. If we could, reliably, then we’d likely pay tons more for teachers.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]

filmgirlcw 7y ago

I would note that at least based on the educators I know, private schools often tend to pay LESS than public. Obviously, this may be dependent on area, but in Georgia at least, teachers at private schools typically make less once you factor in things like 401k, retirement, and health insurance. A lot less. This is an anecdote but my cousin's wife quit her job at a public high school to work at a private school, allegedly for a more flexible schedule/slightly better base pay. She was then diagnosed with cancer (and at 35, that wasn't something she/her family was expecting) and the benefits for sick leave, not to mention medical costs, were so much worse, it was basically a nightmare. Fortunately, her husband kept his education job for the county so the insurance situation was a lot better -- but she lost access to a lot of other benefits that had a very high monetary and quality of life value. I have other friends back home who left public schools for private, thinking they'd make more money -- found out the grass was not greener -- and then had a hell of a time getting a job back in their old school system. It may be true in some areas with really poor public schools that private is going to pay better -- but public or private, as you say, in many cases, the pay just isn't going to be great.

mehhh 7y ago
Private schools are a 10k to 15k pay haircut in Seattle, most require a morality clause that makes being LGBTQ+ a firable offence, and the vaccination rates are appallingly low compared to public schools. Seattle's Catholic Schools are single handedly bringing back Measles & Rubella as a latent disease, where it used to not exist. With Running Start being an option for the last 2 years of High School (if your in public school), its much easier to advance your education rapidly if you so choose.
- femto113 7y ago
  Seattle has hundreds of private schools, I doubt more than a handful have anything like the morality clause you cite, and most that I am aware of are explicit about their support of LGBTQ+. Do you have some source for your claim?
  - mehhh 7y ago

darawk 7y ago

> The fact that I could walk out of college with zero experience and only a degree, and earn $20K more than that working only 9-5 in the same city seems unfair (as a programmer). But I have no idea how society decides salaries. It seems pretty arbitrary from my perspective. Salaries are set by supply and demand. Being a programmer is in greater demand relative to its supply.

mcguire 7y ago

Check the caption for the "Median Annual Wages..." graph: "Teacher salaries are adjusted based on the assumption of a 10-month work year." ...which is a good way to give them a virtual 17% pay raise. I wonder if the same applies to other professions like independent contractors or lawyers, who can only charge for part of their working time.

jschwartzi 7y ago
Yeah, and this makes so much sense considering how easy it is to find a high-paying 2-month temporary job. /s It's the old "You don't understand, teachers only work 10 months out of the year!" argument but dressed in some nice statistical clothing. It's asinine to make that argument because teachers can't actually get paid for the other two months. When I was temping in a warehouse unloading shipping containers one summer, there were a few teachers there who were just making ends meet until the school year started.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  On the other hand, plenty of people working other jobs that would like to have 2 entire months off every year.
  - mcguire 7y ago
    Sure. It's one of the biggest advantages of teaching. But you still can't pay for groceries with time off.
    - darawk 7y ago
      You can't pay for groceries with health insurance either but you still have to include fringe benefits when calculating total compensation.
      - XorNot 7y ago
        Well, in other first-world countries you don't.

droithomme 7y ago

darawk 7y ago

> This seems to use private education as a benchmark for the entire argument. From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just above public salaries and conditions (meaning private education cannot be used as a benchmark for when someone is under-paid, over-qualified, or has too high of a quit rate because they are related). Huh? The article makes a ton of arguments. Most of which do not hinge on any comparison to private education. This is the most core argument being made: > Reporters might be more skeptical if they realized that EPI's own pay-gap methodology leads to some other conclusions that are, to put it delicately, less intuitive. Using the same Census data and the same basic techniques that EPI applies to teachers, we find that registered nurses are "overpaid" by 29%. Meanwhile, telemarketers deserve a big raise, as they currently suffer a 26% salary penalty. Aerospace engineers are apparently overpaid by 38%, but "athletes, coaches, and umpires" are paid 21% less than their skills are worth. Photographers should consider going on strike, as they make 16% less than comparable workers. Firefighters are moochers by contrast, taking in 25% above their rightful salaries. > If all this sounds ridiculous, it's because EPI's method is so simplistic. To arrive at its 21% pay gap, EPI merely compares teacher salaries with the salaries of people who have roughly the same number of years of education and the same demographic characteristics. More specifically, EPI performs a regression analysis using Census Bureau survey data, in which respondents provide information on their salaries along with their age, education, region of residence, marital status, and other factors that are predictive of earnings. Included in this analysis is a "dummy variable" indicating whether the individual is a public-school teacher. The coefficient on the dummy variable represents the effect on salary of being a teacher after controlling for all of the other factors listed above. Nowhere is private education mentioned.

WalterBright 7y ago

> I have no idea how society decides salaries. Supply and demand.

WalterBright 7y ago

> But it is great that at the end of a long career a few unicorn teachers can earn $100K, Teachers tend to get very generous benefits packages, including retirement pay.

kissickas 7y ago

> Personally I think someone required to have a degree (master's for quoted salary), continued education requirements, and licensing earning under $50K/year starting is too low. Take away the master's degree (which many teachers don't have) and just say degree, and you've got a great description of a hair stylist. Look into how many hours are required for licensing a hair stylist in your state. Does $50k/year sound too low for that profession, as well? It may, but if not, you have to admit there are more factors at play than just education and training.

barry-cotter 7y ago

> Personally I think someone required to have a degree (master's for quoted salary), continued education requirements, and licensing earning under $50K/year starting is too low. The effects of M.Ed. and other educational training on teacher effectiveness is not reliably distinguishable from zero. This contrasts with experience which increases teacher effectiveness up to six years and subject matter expertise. So if continuing education and the most common teacher’s Master’s degree does nothing for students and costs money we shouldn’t reward it. By all means encourage and subsidize things we know help students, like a Master’s in Math for Math teachers or in English for English teachers, but M.Ed.s and Ed.D.s don’t do squat for anyone except the teachers who get better pay and faster promotions.