11 ms·

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

72 points by ojbyrne 16y ago

js2 16y ago
Direct links to the relevant McKinsey reports referenced in the article: http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_practices/Education/Knowledge_Highlights/~/media/Reports/SSO/Closing_the_talent_gap.ashx http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_prac... [Sept 2010, 2.2 MB] http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_Systems_Final.pdf http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_... [Sept 2007, 10 MB]
necubi 16y ago
My mother was for many years an elementary school teacher in a district that was almost entirely Hispanic, where a large percentage of the students could barely speak English and where many were the children of migrant farm workers who never stayed in one school for the entire year. When NCLB hit, her school was unsurprisingly deemed "failing." The response was to focus exclusively on test scores, eliminating any program (art, sports, music) that did not directly traslate into better performance on the benchmark test. And yet, because the students still couldn't speak English, nothing much changed and the school was taken over by the state, which meant the principal and many of the teachers were fired. How does this sort of thing make any sense? How are the teachers to blame for their unprepared students? These teachers are working in the hardest districts with the most students of greatest need, and our national response is to punish them. It's distressing to see in many of these discussions exactly the attitudes described in the article: teachers are lazy, they're overpaid, they even get summers off! Never mind that their salaries are so low that many need to find alternate work for the summer to make ends meet, or that it is impossible to get all the work done during the school day, necessitating often long nights. There are bad teachers, just as there are bad programmers and bad doctors. We should try to help them become better teachers, and fire them if that's not possible. But we shouldn't castigate an entire profession as a result, and we should acknowledge that if we actually wanted good teachers, we will have to pay for it.
- davatk 16y ago
  I would be a lot more sympathetic to teachers if their pay system wasn't seniority based, or if it wasn't so hard to fire teachers.
  - BudVVeezer 16y ago
    Teachers generally have yearly contracts. It's not hard to fire them.
    - lsiclait 16y ago
      false. in the united states, as a result of the teachers' unions, it is very difficult to fire a teacher. http://www.newsweek.com/2010/03/05/why-we-must-fire-bad-teachers.html http://www.newsweek.com/2010/03/05/why-we-must-fire-bad-teac...
      - anigbrowl 16y ago
        You're both half-right. due to the state and county segmentation of education, union influence and educational job security varies widely. In places like New York, unions are very powerful and dismissals are difficult. In some places, it's far easier. Likewise, some places have very high academic standards, and in other places creationism is considered a valid element in science currricula. Academic quality is not strongly correlated to unions' bargaining ability, as far as I can tell.
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    Dude, their pay system is seniority based because otherwise they'd never get a raise at all.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - Eliezer 16y ago
    ...neither of the problems you cite is actually any individual teacher's fault.
BudVVeezer 16y ago
My sister was Teacher of the Year for LAUSD, and if she doesn't spend her own money on supplies for her students, they simply have nothing to write on or with. She has never had a class size under 35 that I'm aware of. Yet, her job is on the line based solely on the test scores of her kids, many of whom are mainstreamed special Ed kids. In what way is this a recipe for success?
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  The Arts School in downtown L.A. was originally budgeted as a $70 million project, then raised to $120 million before construction began, then finished with a final cost of $573 million. Giving LAUSD more money to manage seems like a bad idea to me.
  - Caballera 16y ago
    It would be interesting to see where the money really goes. Cause it's NYC it's sure not to the teachers or for getting the students books. Not that the students would even use the books, and whatever books they get they never return at the end of the year.
    - maxxxxx 16y ago
      I have read somewhere that the ratio of administrators to teachers goes up constantly. That would also explain the rise in college tuition. More and more administrators and consultants to pay. Wish I could find hard numbers somewhere. But as with all political discussions real data is hard to find..,
- Caballera 16y ago
  That's pretty much what my wife goes through. Her kids have iPhones, Blackberrys, Android phones, (a lot of them are dealers) yet they can't bring a notebook or a pen/pencil, she's got to supply them or nothing would be done. She's teaching 9th grade Biology and Earth Science, yet her students are often 10th, 11th and 12th graders who fail year after year. Some of the 'kids' are 20 years old. 3 of her classes are special ed who's she's suppose to have a special ed co-teacher, but doesn't have one. As well as class size with over 35 students. She's expected to get them all to pass the NY State regents, nothing else matter. One of the biggest problems is students don't show up consistently and class length is only 40 minutes.
kenjackson 16y ago
There are bad teachers. Sure. But there are good ones too. And teachers are the largest professional field in the US (about 6.2M, versus, for example 1.2M lawyers). This indicates a couple of problems: 1) The thought you can rid yourself of all or even most bad teachers is absurd. You can't easily chop off the bottom 10% each year and bring in an additional 500,000 new teachers. 2) With a population that large the quality of teaching will regress to the mean. We just realistically can't expect an all-star team of 6M of anything. So what do we do? The first thing is to realize the big problem is in the inner-city and rural areas -- in underserved communities. And honestly, I think we need to focus a bit more on the community and less on the classroom proper. Like I'd really like to see summer reading programs in these communities, with some strong incentives. I also think things like Khan Academy would actually really help. I'm probably overly optimistic, but I think getting kids to listen to lectures is easier than getting them to do homework at home. My experience is that good schools and good students actually do quite well. The biggest thing that probably will get overlooked, even by what I'd like to do, are bright students at poor schools.
- Eliezer 16y ago
  > You can't easily chop off the bottom 10% each year and bring in an additional 500,000 new teachers. Yes you can. You just have to offer high enough salaries.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    In the US we graduate about 100k engineering students each year(http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/11/50-of-us-engineering-students-dropout---why.html http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/11/50-of...). So even if we hired every engineering graduate from US schools every year, we wouldn't fill the gap, by a long shot. My point is that for a population this huge you're not going to be able to backfill for any reasonable dollar amount or you have to significantly lower your standards, in which case you're probably hiring people that will largely fall into that same bottom 10% next year.
  - earl 16y ago
    Fine. Amend kenjackson's statement to say that, in the real world, voters have demonstrated in practice they are unwilling to pay sufficient taxes to attract a high quality group of people to teaching as a profession.
Lost_BiomedE 16y ago
To get a better look at the real pay, benefits should also be taken into account. Any government job should be compared to a similar skill-level private sector job, again pay plus benefits. When it comes to schools, I don't think you can talk about pay or costs without also focusing on the administration. It is a system. Requiring a part of funding to go to teacher salaries would allow upping just that part of the equation, if need be. If this requirement already exists, and pay plus benefits are poor, then something higher up the food chain is broken and should be what is focused on.
caterping 16y ago
The low pay wouldn't be so much of a problem if teachers got more support from parents and administration. For example, when a teacher has to send a student out of the room for bad behavior, the student should have hell to pay from parents and the vice principal. Instead, what often happens is parents complain about the teacher's discipline and the vice principal calls you in to "have a discussion" with the student and to "hear their side of the story". It's a fucking circus. Also, grading is a bitch. I left the profession mostly because of the insane hours you need to spend grading (well, high school anyway). Students will nickel and dime you for every point while comparing with their peers. "Sally missed the minus sign in step C of problem 4 but got the same number of points as me? WTF?" WTF indeed. Silly waste-of-time after-school meetings about meeting standardized testing goals is also a complete waste of time as well. Add to that, you have to be up and out of the house every morning by 6 am or so to be on time. If you have kids, forget about seeing them for breakfast before their school day starts. And that means giving up your evenings too because you need to be in bed early. As an aside, I knew a teacher who "retired early" basically due to a mental breakdown from the stress. I suspect most teachers know someone who's done the same. Edit: And if you're male, all it takes is an unsubstantiated claim of impropriety from a female student to end your career immediately. Easily the worst and most stressful job I've ever had. And it really sucks because I was an excellent teacher. Got great reviews from observers and students. My students learned a ton. I really liked teaching too.
- tokenadult 16y ago
  Why don't you go into teaching in private practice? http://www.mackinac.org/953 http://www.mackinac.org/953 http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/31/us/new-breed-of-teachers-become-entrepreneurs-and-roving-innovators.html http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/31/us/new-breed-of-teachers-b... I am a teacher in private practice. I like teaching through my community nonprofit organization much better than I would like teaching with a lot of school bureaucracy, and I can give my clients better service too.
  - caterping 16y ago
    Thanks. That could possibly help me personally, but I'm not sure it addresses the larger problems brought up in the original NYT article. Also, I don't see how it helps the kids who's parents can't or won't pay for it.
tokenadult 16y ago
Note the rhetorical sleight of hand in this op-ed piece. The op-ed piece, and the advocacy group sources it cites to back up its claims, take care to write about "teachers’ salaries" rather than write about "compensation packages for teachers." The rhetorical reason for this is to divert attention from how expensive it actually is to taxpayers to provide the total compensation package for a typical schoolteacher, including subsidies for "professional development" (which most professionals pay for out of their own pocket), family health care benefits, and defined-benefit pensions. And that's not even to mention the issue of schoolteacher job security http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-05-06-teachers-tenure_n.htm http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-05-06-teachers-t... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41956922/ns/nightly_news/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41956922/ns/nightly_news/ http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0414/Why-N.J.-teacher-tenure-reform-plan-matters-to-the-rest-of-America http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0414/Why-N.J.-te... which exceeds the job security of almost all other forms of employment in the United States http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/28/nyregion/teachers-and-tenure-rights-vs-discipline.html http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/28/nyregion/teachers-and-tenu... http://www.schoolmatch.com/audit/jacksonville/articles/teach1.htm http://www.schoolmatch.com/audit/jacksonville/articles/teach... whether or not the teachers are able to teach the subjects they are hired to teach. http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.nctq.org/p/ http://www.nctq.org/p/ http://educationnext.org/evaluating-teacher-effectiveness/ http://educationnext.org/evaluating-teacher-effectiveness/ Education reform is not a simple issue, and much basic research still needs to be done and assimilated to bring about improvements. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2066577,00.html http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2066577,00.ht... But to begin to get United States schools on track to meet the standards met in other countries, policy analysts in the United States have to be honest about what the overall framework of regulation now is, and just exactly what teachers are accountable to do, for what level of compensation, under current contracts in most school districts. P.S. I should make clear that an effective teacher is worth the teacher's weight in gold, and currently the best teachers in the United States are mostly substantially underpaid. But they are underpaid, in large part, because they haven't mobilized their own political participation to unshackle their pay from the lockstep pay scales that also are granted to ineffective teachers. That's why I do my teaching on a contract basis with public school districts or through my own nonprofit organization, so that I can deliver quality lessons without bureaucratic interference and gain professional recognition for the results of my teaching.
mikealle233 16y ago
We don't blame soldiers, while we do blame teachers, because almost everyone has personal experience dealing with lazy, bad teachers as a student. Many people also have direct experience with lazy friends who became teachers for lack of other options.
gojomo 16y ago
Here was another NYTimes op-ed in March, drawing upon the same McKinsey international comparisons: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html Previous HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318265 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318265
yequalsx 16y ago
Let's fire the bad teachers! That's a great idea. Except, how do you define bad teachers? I've been a teacher for many years. I'm an average teacher. Not great, not horrible. Some students really like me and others not so much. As far as I can tell society wants three things: 1. Almost everyone to have access to a great education. 2. Almost everyone to pass. 3. Almost everyone who passes to know the material. The fact is, you can have any two of these but not all three and society is not willing to come to grips with this reality. Society is also not willing to come to grips with the fact that the truly great teachers are, well, truly great. A rarity and it will always be this case as long as truly inspirational people can better be fulfilled doing something other than teaching. Think you know the answers? Then get into a classroom and lead the way. What? The low pay, lack of respect, long hours, emotional stress aren't worth it? I see.
- schmittz 16y ago
  Can you elaborate on why you can only have two of those three things? They seem very subjectively defined and I don't see why you can't have all three. I'm not a teacher (I have tutored and TA'd), so I'm curious where this opinion comes from.
  - yequalsx 16y ago
    It is my belief that not everyone is capable of mastering each topic. That there aren't enough potential great teachers to make this possible unless you do some sort of selection method. Harvard gets great results but they select who enters the university. If you want almost everyone to pass and to know the material then some sort of pre-selection criteria must be met.
    - schmittz 16y ago
      Your conclusions from your example are factually not true, because there are schools where everyone gets a "good education" that do not have pre-selection criteria. I would also agree that not everyone is capable of "mastering each topic," but why do you need to master them and why do they need to know each topic? I'm sorry, I just don't feel like you answered my question. I don't think you need great teachers to have everyone learn material. The onus of learning should be on the student and our goals for what students should learn are maligned with this concept. The fact that there isn't a definition for bad teachers doesn't mean there aren't bad teachers (you have to agree with this) and that something shouldn't be done about them. The way that I look at the three points you have numbered is that the first one follows from the other two. By working to redefine classroom expectations to closer align with placing responsibility on students for doing the learning, we can realize that more people can effectively learn appropriate material to a satisfactory comprehension level.
drm237 16y ago
If an article complaining about teacher salaries doesn't mention that most teachers get their summers off, I find it difficult to believe any other points it tries to make. I knew a few teachers that worked jobs in the summer to supplement their income and that seems pretty reasonable given that the vast majority of people I know work all 12 months.
gojomo 16y ago
Here was another NYTimes op-ed in March, drawing upon the same McKinsey international comparisons: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html (Kristof included a link to the McKinsey report, http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_practices/Education/Knowledge_Highlights/~/media/Reports/SSO/Closing_the_talent_gap.ashx http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_prac... , and supporting material can be found at http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_practices/Education/Knowledge_Highlights/Closing_the_talent_gap.aspx http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_prac... .) Previous HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318265 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318265
Ratufa 16y ago
Is there any good evidence that the main problem with our schools is bad teaching? In other words, if you're going to spend money on improving educational outcomes, should you spend it on "better" teachers or on something like early childhood interventions, as per arguments like this: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/03/james-heckman-education-achievement-gap http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/03/james-heckman-educ... (Ignoring for the moment that spending people's tax dollars on better teachers is politically more acceptable than spending it on targeted interventions.)
- caterping 16y ago
  > Is there any good evidence that the main problem with our schools is bad teaching? Not to my knowledge. Ask any teacher (and they are the ones who know) what the main problem is, and they'll tell you that the problem isn't necessarily the schools, or teachers, or administration -- it's the parents. If parents do their job and make their kids' learning a priority, that would make the biggest improvement to the situation by far.
schmittz 16y ago
I would be very curious to see what effect increased student punishment had on education quality. Some rules should be more lax (I once spent twenty minutes having to explain why I was in the hallway after the bell rang in order to avoid detention [the answer was that my locker was on the other side of the building from my classroom]), but most systems are too lax. We try to keep students around who have no interest in learning because it "keeps them off the streets." This has two results. First, even if they make it to the end, they probably wind up on the streets anyway. Secondly, they drag down those who do want to learn or would be willing to learn such that their chances of excelling are minimized. We should have more remedial job training (not sure how well this would work, but other analogous programs such as rehab over jail have proven quite successful) and stricter rules about whether students can stay in school or not. These shouldn't be performance based per se, so much as based on a student's effort to complete assignments, pay attention in class, etc. We consequently end up paying a lot of money for people who don't learn anything and bring down those who could. We'd also have to pay for the job training, but it's shorter curriculum would serve to save money and probably increase their chances of gainful employment. I'm not sure how well this would work, but we've certainly never tried it in the US, at least that I'm aware of.
- caterping 16y ago
  > We try to keep students around who have no interest in learning because it "keeps them off the streets." The reason this is done is because they are children -- not adults. They are immature and may be making bad decisions. They might have a rotten home life with bad role models. The point is, you try to help them anyway in case they do indeed see a reason to turn their life around. Why do you think schools have so much sports education? One reason is because it keeps some kids around who otherwise would simply drop out. And every good teacher knows that you can often get a problem kid in your class to focus and learn something by having one or more of their coaches get on their case.
  - schmittz 16y ago
    Mmm, yes. I agree to a certain extent. I guess my belief is that there are ways to engage a child outside of a formal education system that would have the same effect while concentrating on something they want to do, since learning is not that thing. I haven't thought this entirely through, but it seems that the current paradigm isn't optimal. You're absolutely right that sports and arts programs provide outlets auxiliary to a standard education, but for students with no interest in traditional learning, maybe it would be better to focus on those things they do enjoy and leave off those that they won't engage in. It would be analogous to the perception that everyone should attend college because it leads to a better life, when in fact many students should be attending post-secondary technical schools. Why not start the split earlier for those who actively refuse to be educated?
dpatru 16y ago
If the earth-moving industry were like the education industry, the hand shovel would still be the tool of choice and bulldozers, backhoes, and other machines would not exist. A basic problem with education is that the technology has stagnated. The public school classroom has not changed much in 50 years. Teachers still have live lectures during class, kids still do homework at home. Each teacher's class size is the same as the other teachers' in the school. There's no innovation aimed at dramatically reducing costs and raising outcomes. The cause for this stagnation is obvious: the education industry is controlled by people who have a strong interest in keeping the education process inefficient and labor intensive. When was the last time you heard a teachers' union or a department of education support a technology that promised to reduce the cost of education and the number of teachers? Instead, the public education industry is focused on making education more inefficient: requiring teacher certification, reducing class sizes, increasing funding, etc. The most promising recent developments in education have come from outside the establishment. Wikipedia makes it possible to get a fairly good understanding of any subject quickly and for free. Khan Academy features thousands of ten-minute long micro-lectures covering most of the math and science taught in schools through high school along with software to test mastery and help students tutor each other. Flash card sites help students memorize. These are the "bulldozers" of the education industry which will enable one person to do the work of hundreds. These are the technologies which will "fix" education.
georgieporgie 16y ago
This is too low quality even for a weekend HN post.
gregatragenet 16y ago
From the article: We don’t say, "It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!" It's a good thing our military isn't unionized.. мы все были бы говоря России.
kazoolist 16y ago
I'm late to the discussion, but want to add a few things. First, is there really a large group of people who think that teachers a.) are whom to blame for the state of American education; and b.) are paid too much? The only time I hear about people making such arguments is in op-eds like this one that try to refute them. I think such op-eds are battling straw men. That said: 1. If you look at total compensation broken down by per-hour-worked (which I think is a fair metric), teachers are paid within the norms for their level of education, etc. There is a reasonable write up on this here: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/hate-the-deception-not-the-teacher/ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/hate-the-deception-not-the-te... 2. I think a growing number of people are outraged at Teachers Unions, and Teachers Unions try to associate themselves back to just being "teachers". It's a dirty trick. People don't want employment contracts dictating how their kids are taught. They want teachers to be able to work longer hours if they're inclined to, try creative strategies, etc. They want to attract and keep the best teachers by paying them more than less effective teachers. Many (most?) union contracts dictate terms that disallow this kind of stuff. People are upset at the obstacles the union is putting up, not with the teachers that often are forced to have to join that union. 3. I am upset that we, as a country, continue to spend more and more per-pupil on education and have stagnant-at-best results. Something like only 40 cents per dollar spent on education actually make it into the classroom ("citation needed", I know). I'd like to see education spending done more effectively. If this means moving dollars spent on bureaucratic waste into higher teacher salaries, I'd welcome that change.

72 points by ojbyrne 16y ago

js2 16y ago

Direct links to the relevant McKinsey reports referenced in the article: http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_practices/Education/Knowledge_Highlights/~/media/Reports/SSO/Closing_the_talent_gap.ashx http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_prac... [Sept 2010, 2.2 MB] http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_Systems_Final.pdf http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_... [Sept 2007, 10 MB]

necubi 16y ago

My mother was for many years an elementary school teacher in a district that was almost entirely Hispanic, where a large percentage of the students could barely speak English and where many were the children of migrant farm workers who never stayed in one school for the entire year. When NCLB hit, her school was unsurprisingly deemed "failing." The response was to focus exclusively on test scores, eliminating any program (art, sports, music) that did not directly traslate into better performance on the benchmark test. And yet, because the students still couldn't speak English, nothing much changed and the school was taken over by the state, which meant the principal and many of the teachers were fired. How does this sort of thing make any sense? How are the teachers to blame for their unprepared students? These teachers are working in the hardest districts with the most students of greatest need, and our national response is to punish them. It's distressing to see in many of these discussions exactly the attitudes described in the article: teachers are lazy, they're overpaid, they even get summers off! Never mind that their salaries are so low that many need to find alternate work for the summer to make ends meet, or that it is impossible to get all the work done during the school day, necessitating often long nights. There are bad teachers, just as there are bad programmers and bad doctors. We should try to help them become better teachers, and fire them if that's not possible. But we shouldn't castigate an entire profession as a result, and we should acknowledge that if we actually wanted good teachers, we will have to pay for it.

davatk 16y ago
I would be a lot more sympathetic to teachers if their pay system wasn't seniority based, or if it wasn't so hard to fire teachers.
- BudVVeezer 16y ago
  Teachers generally have yearly contracts. It's not hard to fire them.
  - lsiclait 16y ago
    false. in the united states, as a result of the teachers' unions, it is very difficult to fire a teacher. http://www.newsweek.com/2010/03/05/why-we-must-fire-bad-teachers.html http://www.newsweek.com/2010/03/05/why-we-must-fire-bad-teac...
    - anigbrowl 16y ago
      You're both half-right. due to the state and county segmentation of education, union influence and educational job security varies widely. In places like New York, unions are very powerful and dismissals are difficult. In some places, it's far easier. Likewise, some places have very high academic standards, and in other places creationism is considered a valid element in science currricula. Academic quality is not strongly correlated to unions' bargaining ability, as far as I can tell.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  Dude, their pay system is seniority based because otherwise they'd never get a raise at all.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- Eliezer 16y ago
  ...neither of the problems you cite is actually any individual teacher's fault.

BudVVeezer 16y ago

My sister was Teacher of the Year for LAUSD, and if she doesn't spend her own money on supplies for her students, they simply have nothing to write on or with. She has never had a class size under 35 that I'm aware of. Yet, her job is on the line based solely on the test scores of her kids, many of whom are mainstreamed special Ed kids. In what way is this a recipe for success?

waterlesscloud 16y ago
The Arts School in downtown L.A. was originally budgeted as a $70 million project, then raised to $120 million before construction began, then finished with a final cost of $573 million. Giving LAUSD more money to manage seems like a bad idea to me.
- Caballera 16y ago
  It would be interesting to see where the money really goes. Cause it's NYC it's sure not to the teachers or for getting the students books. Not that the students would even use the books, and whatever books they get they never return at the end of the year.
  - maxxxxx 16y ago
    I have read somewhere that the ratio of administrators to teachers goes up constantly. That would also explain the rise in college tuition. More and more administrators and consultants to pay. Wish I could find hard numbers somewhere. But as with all political discussions real data is hard to find..,
Caballera 16y ago
That's pretty much what my wife goes through. Her kids have iPhones, Blackberrys, Android phones, (a lot of them are dealers) yet they can't bring a notebook or a pen/pencil, she's got to supply them or nothing would be done. She's teaching 9th grade Biology and Earth Science, yet her students are often 10th, 11th and 12th graders who fail year after year. Some of the 'kids' are 20 years old. 3 of her classes are special ed who's she's suppose to have a special ed co-teacher, but doesn't have one. As well as class size with over 35 students. She's expected to get them all to pass the NY State regents, nothing else matter. One of the biggest problems is students don't show up consistently and class length is only 40 minutes.

kenjackson 16y ago

There are bad teachers. Sure. But there are good ones too. And teachers are the largest professional field in the US (about 6.2M, versus, for example 1.2M lawyers). This indicates a couple of problems: 1) The thought you can rid yourself of all or even most bad teachers is absurd. You can't easily chop off the bottom 10% each year and bring in an additional 500,000 new teachers. 2) With a population that large the quality of teaching will regress to the mean. We just realistically can't expect an all-star team of 6M of anything. So what do we do? The first thing is to realize the big problem is in the inner-city and rural areas -- in underserved communities. And honestly, I think we need to focus a bit more on the community and less on the classroom proper. Like I'd really like to see summer reading programs in these communities, with some strong incentives. I also think things like Khan Academy would actually really help. I'm probably overly optimistic, but I think getting kids to listen to lectures is easier than getting them to do homework at home. My experience is that good schools and good students actually do quite well. The biggest thing that probably will get overlooked, even by what I'd like to do, are bright students at poor schools.

Eliezer 16y ago
> You can't easily chop off the bottom 10% each year and bring in an additional 500,000 new teachers. Yes you can. You just have to offer high enough salaries.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  In the US we graduate about 100k engineering students each year(http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/11/50-of-us-engineering-students-dropout---why.html http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/11/50-of...). So even if we hired every engineering graduate from US schools every year, we wouldn't fill the gap, by a long shot. My point is that for a population this huge you're not going to be able to backfill for any reasonable dollar amount or you have to significantly lower your standards, in which case you're probably hiring people that will largely fall into that same bottom 10% next year.
- earl 16y ago
  Fine. Amend kenjackson's statement to say that, in the real world, voters have demonstrated in practice they are unwilling to pay sufficient taxes to attract a high quality group of people to teaching as a profession.

Lost_BiomedE 16y ago

To get a better look at the real pay, benefits should also be taken into account. Any government job should be compared to a similar skill-level private sector job, again pay plus benefits. When it comes to schools, I don't think you can talk about pay or costs without also focusing on the administration. It is a system. Requiring a part of funding to go to teacher salaries would allow upping just that part of the equation, if need be. If this requirement already exists, and pay plus benefits are poor, then something higher up the food chain is broken and should be what is focused on.

caterping 16y ago

The low pay wouldn't be so much of a problem if teachers got more support from parents and administration. For example, when a teacher has to send a student out of the room for bad behavior, the student should have hell to pay from parents and the vice principal. Instead, what often happens is parents complain about the teacher's discipline and the vice principal calls you in to "have a discussion" with the student and to "hear their side of the story". It's a fucking circus. Also, grading is a bitch. I left the profession mostly because of the insane hours you need to spend grading (well, high school anyway). Students will nickel and dime you for every point while comparing with their peers. "Sally missed the minus sign in step C of problem 4 but got the same number of points as me? WTF?" WTF indeed. Silly waste-of-time after-school meetings about meeting standardized testing goals is also a complete waste of time as well. Add to that, you have to be up and out of the house every morning by 6 am or so to be on time. If you have kids, forget about seeing them for breakfast before their school day starts. And that means giving up your evenings too because you need to be in bed early. As an aside, I knew a teacher who "retired early" basically due to a mental breakdown from the stress. I suspect most teachers know someone who's done the same. Edit: And if you're male, all it takes is an unsubstantiated claim of impropriety from a female student to end your career immediately. Easily the worst and most stressful job I've ever had. And it really sucks because I was an excellent teacher. Got great reviews from observers and students. My students learned a ton. I really liked teaching too.

tokenadult 16y ago
Why don't you go into teaching in private practice? http://www.mackinac.org/953 http://www.mackinac.org/953 http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/31/us/new-breed-of-teachers-become-entrepreneurs-and-roving-innovators.html http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/31/us/new-breed-of-teachers-b... I am a teacher in private practice. I like teaching through my community nonprofit organization much better than I would like teaching with a lot of school bureaucracy, and I can give my clients better service too.
- caterping 16y ago
  Thanks. That could possibly help me personally, but I'm not sure it addresses the larger problems brought up in the original NYT article. Also, I don't see how it helps the kids who's parents can't or won't pay for it.

tokenadult 16y ago

Note the rhetorical sleight of hand in this op-ed piece. The op-ed piece, and the advocacy group sources it cites to back up its claims, take care to write about "teachers’ salaries" rather than write about "compensation packages for teachers." The rhetorical reason for this is to divert attention from how expensive it actually is to taxpayers to provide the total compensation package for a typical schoolteacher, including subsidies for "professional development" (which most professionals pay for out of their own pocket), family health care benefits, and defined-benefit pensions. And that's not even to mention the issue of schoolteacher job security http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-05-06-teachers-tenure_n.htm http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-05-06-teachers-t... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41956922/ns/nightly_news/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41956922/ns/nightly_news/ http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0414/Why-N.J.-teacher-tenure-reform-plan-matters-to-the-rest-of-America http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0414/Why-N.J.-te... which exceeds the job security of almost all other forms of employment in the United States http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/28/nyregion/teachers-and-tenure-rights-vs-discipline.html http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/28/nyregion/teachers-and-tenu... http://www.schoolmatch.com/audit/jacksonville/articles/teach1.htm http://www.schoolmatch.com/audit/jacksonville/articles/teach... whether or not the teachers are able to teach the subjects they are hired to teach. http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.nctq.org/p/ http://www.nctq.org/p/ http://educationnext.org/evaluating-teacher-effectiveness/ http://educationnext.org/evaluating-teacher-effectiveness/ Education reform is not a simple issue, and much basic research still needs to be done and assimilated to bring about improvements. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2066577,00.html http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2066577,00.ht... But to begin to get United States schools on track to meet the standards met in other countries, policy analysts in the United States have to be honest about what the overall framework of regulation now is, and just exactly what teachers are accountable to do, for what level of compensation, under current contracts in most school districts. P.S. I should make clear that an effective teacher is worth the teacher's weight in gold, and currently the best teachers in the United States are mostly substantially underpaid. But they are underpaid, in large part, because they haven't mobilized their own political participation to unshackle their pay from the lockstep pay scales that also are granted to ineffective teachers. That's why I do my teaching on a contract basis with public school districts or through my own nonprofit organization, so that I can deliver quality lessons without bureaucratic interference and gain professional recognition for the results of my teaching.

mikealle233 16y ago

We don't blame soldiers, while we do blame teachers, because almost everyone has personal experience dealing with lazy, bad teachers as a student. Many people also have direct experience with lazy friends who became teachers for lack of other options.

gojomo 16y ago

Here was another NYTimes op-ed in March, drawing upon the same McKinsey international comparisons: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html Previous HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318265 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318265

yequalsx 16y ago

Let's fire the bad teachers! That's a great idea. Except, how do you define bad teachers? I've been a teacher for many years. I'm an average teacher. Not great, not horrible. Some students really like me and others not so much. As far as I can tell society wants three things: 1. Almost everyone to have access to a great education. 2. Almost everyone to pass. 3. Almost everyone who passes to know the material. The fact is, you can have any two of these but not all three and society is not willing to come to grips with this reality. Society is also not willing to come to grips with the fact that the truly great teachers are, well, truly great. A rarity and it will always be this case as long as truly inspirational people can better be fulfilled doing something other than teaching. Think you know the answers? Then get into a classroom and lead the way. What? The low pay, lack of respect, long hours, emotional stress aren't worth it? I see.

schmittz 16y ago
Can you elaborate on why you can only have two of those three things? They seem very subjectively defined and I don't see why you can't have all three. I'm not a teacher (I have tutored and TA'd), so I'm curious where this opinion comes from.
- yequalsx 16y ago
  It is my belief that not everyone is capable of mastering each topic. That there aren't enough potential great teachers to make this possible unless you do some sort of selection method. Harvard gets great results but they select who enters the university. If you want almost everyone to pass and to know the material then some sort of pre-selection criteria must be met.
  - schmittz 16y ago
    Your conclusions from your example are factually not true, because there are schools where everyone gets a "good education" that do not have pre-selection criteria. I would also agree that not everyone is capable of "mastering each topic," but why do you need to master them and why do they need to know each topic? I'm sorry, I just don't feel like you answered my question. I don't think you need great teachers to have everyone learn material. The onus of learning should be on the student and our goals for what students should learn are maligned with this concept. The fact that there isn't a definition for bad teachers doesn't mean there aren't bad teachers (you have to agree with this) and that something shouldn't be done about them. The way that I look at the three points you have numbered is that the first one follows from the other two. By working to redefine classroom expectations to closer align with placing responsibility on students for doing the learning, we can realize that more people can effectively learn appropriate material to a satisfactory comprehension level.

drm237 16y ago

If an article complaining about teacher salaries doesn't mention that most teachers get their summers off, I find it difficult to believe any other points it tries to make. I knew a few teachers that worked jobs in the summer to supplement their income and that seems pretty reasonable given that the vast majority of people I know work all 12 months.

gojomo 16y ago

Here was another NYTimes op-ed in March, drawing upon the same McKinsey international comparisons: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html (Kristof included a link to the McKinsey report, http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_practices/Education/Knowledge_Highlights/~/media/Reports/SSO/Closing_the_talent_gap.ashx http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_prac... , and supporting material can be found at http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_practices/Education/Knowledge_Highlights/Closing_the_talent_gap.aspx http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_prac... .) Previous HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318265 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318265

Ratufa 16y ago

Is there any good evidence that the main problem with our schools is bad teaching? In other words, if you're going to spend money on improving educational outcomes, should you spend it on "better" teachers or on something like early childhood interventions, as per arguments like this: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/03/james-heckman-education-achievement-gap http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/03/james-heckman-educ... (Ignoring for the moment that spending people's tax dollars on better teachers is politically more acceptable than spending it on targeted interventions.)

caterping 16y ago
> Is there any good evidence that the main problem with our schools is bad teaching? Not to my knowledge. Ask any teacher (and they are the ones who know) what the main problem is, and they'll tell you that the problem isn't necessarily the schools, or teachers, or administration -- it's the parents. If parents do their job and make their kids' learning a priority, that would make the biggest improvement to the situation by far.

schmittz 16y ago

I would be very curious to see what effect increased student punishment had on education quality. Some rules should be more lax (I once spent twenty minutes having to explain why I was in the hallway after the bell rang in order to avoid detention [the answer was that my locker was on the other side of the building from my classroom]), but most systems are too lax. We try to keep students around who have no interest in learning because it "keeps them off the streets." This has two results. First, even if they make it to the end, they probably wind up on the streets anyway. Secondly, they drag down those who do want to learn or would be willing to learn such that their chances of excelling are minimized. We should have more remedial job training (not sure how well this would work, but other analogous programs such as rehab over jail have proven quite successful) and stricter rules about whether students can stay in school or not. These shouldn't be performance based per se, so much as based on a student's effort to complete assignments, pay attention in class, etc. We consequently end up paying a lot of money for people who don't learn anything and bring down those who could. We'd also have to pay for the job training, but it's shorter curriculum would serve to save money and probably increase their chances of gainful employment. I'm not sure how well this would work, but we've certainly never tried it in the US, at least that I'm aware of.

caterping 16y ago
> We try to keep students around who have no interest in learning because it "keeps them off the streets." The reason this is done is because they are children -- not adults. They are immature and may be making bad decisions. They might have a rotten home life with bad role models. The point is, you try to help them anyway in case they do indeed see a reason to turn their life around. Why do you think schools have so much sports education? One reason is because it keeps some kids around who otherwise would simply drop out. And every good teacher knows that you can often get a problem kid in your class to focus and learn something by having one or more of their coaches get on their case.
- schmittz 16y ago
  Mmm, yes. I agree to a certain extent. I guess my belief is that there are ways to engage a child outside of a formal education system that would have the same effect while concentrating on something they want to do, since learning is not that thing. I haven't thought this entirely through, but it seems that the current paradigm isn't optimal. You're absolutely right that sports and arts programs provide outlets auxiliary to a standard education, but for students with no interest in traditional learning, maybe it would be better to focus on those things they do enjoy and leave off those that they won't engage in. It would be analogous to the perception that everyone should attend college because it leads to a better life, when in fact many students should be attending post-secondary technical schools. Why not start the split earlier for those who actively refuse to be educated?

dpatru 16y ago

If the earth-moving industry were like the education industry, the hand shovel would still be the tool of choice and bulldozers, backhoes, and other machines would not exist. A basic problem with education is that the technology has stagnated. The public school classroom has not changed much in 50 years. Teachers still have live lectures during class, kids still do homework at home. Each teacher's class size is the same as the other teachers' in the school. There's no innovation aimed at dramatically reducing costs and raising outcomes. The cause for this stagnation is obvious: the education industry is controlled by people who have a strong interest in keeping the education process inefficient and labor intensive. When was the last time you heard a teachers' union or a department of education support a technology that promised to reduce the cost of education and the number of teachers? Instead, the public education industry is focused on making education more inefficient: requiring teacher certification, reducing class sizes, increasing funding, etc. The most promising recent developments in education have come from outside the establishment. Wikipedia makes it possible to get a fairly good understanding of any subject quickly and for free. Khan Academy features thousands of ten-minute long micro-lectures covering most of the math and science taught in schools through high school along with software to test mastery and help students tutor each other. Flash card sites help students memorize. These are the "bulldozers" of the education industry which will enable one person to do the work of hundreds. These are the technologies which will "fix" education.

georgieporgie 16y ago

This is too low quality even for a weekend HN post.

gregatragenet 16y ago

From the article: We don’t say, "It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!" It's a good thing our military isn't unionized.. мы все были бы говоря России.

kazoolist 16y ago

I'm late to the discussion, but want to add a few things. First, is there really a large group of people who think that teachers a.) are whom to blame for the state of American education; and b.) are paid too much? The only time I hear about people making such arguments is in op-eds like this one that try to refute them. I think such op-eds are battling straw men. That said: 1. If you look at total compensation broken down by per-hour-worked (which I think is a fair metric), teachers are paid within the norms for their level of education, etc. There is a reasonable write up on this here: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/hate-the-deception-not-the-teacher/ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/hate-the-deception-not-the-te... 2. I think a growing number of people are outraged at Teachers Unions, and Teachers Unions try to associate themselves back to just being "teachers". It's a dirty trick. People don't want employment contracts dictating how their kids are taught. They want teachers to be able to work longer hours if they're inclined to, try creative strategies, etc. They want to attract and keep the best teachers by paying them more than less effective teachers. Many (most?) union contracts dictate terms that disallow this kind of stuff. People are upset at the obstacles the union is putting up, not with the teachers that often are forced to have to join that union. 3. I am upset that we, as a country, continue to spend more and more per-pupil on education and have stagnant-at-best results. Something like only 40 cents per dollar spent on education actually make it into the classroom ("citation needed", I know). I'd like to see education spending done more effectively. If this means moving dollars spent on bureaucratic waste into higher teacher salaries, I'd welcome that change.