7 ms·

First I agree the cost Michigan pays per prisoner is too high. Texas manages to get by at $13,000 per prisoner Michigan shouldn't need $40,000. But that's for

First I agree the cost Michigan pays per prisoner is too high. Texas manages to get by at $13,000 per prisoner Michigan shouldn't need $40,000. But that's for all the expenses to keep them alive (room, board, medical, etc...). So the comparison isn't an accurate one. But let me ask this: Michigan is a state where the average teacher makes $57,958 per year BEFORE benefits (http://www.teacher-world.com/teacher-salary/michigan.html http://www.teacher-world.com/teacher-salary/michigan.html). Benefits that include a lifetime pension after retirement. This is in a state with a median income of $44,627 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan) Yet they rank 30th in education: http://tinyurl.com/5wwq8ep http://tinyurl.com/5wwq8ep. I'm not saying teacher's shouldn't be well paid. If they were making 10% over the median income I would have no complaints. But they're well above that and that, as much as the prisons, is why the schools in Michigan have no money.

ChrisLTD 15y ago
If having good teachers is a priority, then teachers should earn whatever is required to lure qualified people away from private-sector employment.
- protomyth 15y ago
  Public sector teachers make more than private sector teachers. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_075.asp http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_075.asp
  - dhume 15y ago
    Ever wonder why the private school teachers are content with their lower salary? Public sector teachers have to deal with all of the problematic students that private schools can remove or refuse to admit in the first place.
    - protomyth 15y ago
      I would imagine some of it is lower bureaucracy and a bit more freedom. Problematic students exist in private schools and are often backed by serious money. I wouldn't make the generalization that behavior problems are only found in poor people.
lurker19 15y ago
That is not entirely fair. Median income is the position of low-skilled labor, not work that requires a college degree and a position of trust and responsibility for children. Income is closer a power law distribution, not a normal distribution bell curve.
skimbrel 15y ago
Really? Please don't blame the teachers for this. This line of reasoning has never made any sense to me -- why does everyone blame the public employees and want to take away their (hardly that great when compared to the rest of the country) salary and benefits? The solution isn't to cut them off at the knees; the solution is to raise everyone else up to the same standards. If you want someone to blame for this, start with the No Child Left Behind act that forces schools to waste their budgets on meaningless standardized testing, and then penalizes them for it when they do poorly, creating a vicious cycle where a failing school can never become successful because it loses more funding each year. Or you could just go back to the root of the problem and blame the robber barons who, through well-paid lobbyists, have convinced the federal government to dismantle itself and its services year after year since 1980 in the name of the free market. We forgot what happens when corporate influence runs unchecked; we're learning again, and we're learning the hard way. The American experiment is dangerously close to failure.
- matwood 15y ago
  I would be interested if that salary included only teachers or also administrators. Some districts have nearly a 1:1 ratio of administrators to teachers. To me that sounds really high.
- anamax 15y ago
  > This line of reasoning has never made any sense to me -- why does everyone blame the public employees and want to take away their (hardly that great when compared to the rest of the country) salary and benefits? Oh really? Public employees are far more likely to have pensions than the rest of us. Public employees earn significantly more too and have greater job security. We blame them because they have a huge effect on who gets elected, which directly affects how much we have to pay for them. > If you want someone to blame for this, start with the No Child Left Behind act that forces schools to waste their budgets on meaningless standardized testing, What's your method for determining whether children are learning? We tried trusting teachers and schools - that didn't work. > Or you could just go back to the root of the problem and blame the robber barons who, through well-paid lobbyists, have convinced the federal government to dismantle itself and its services year after year since 1980 Education spending steadily increased (after inflation) during that time, so if services went down, it wasn't because of spending. Note that the US Department of Education was a shadow of its current self in 1980, so if you're going to argue that the federal govt has dismantled itself wrt education, you get to explain why it's much bigger wrt education. The US govt collects about as much in taxes per person as the "high tax/high services" countries. (The US actually collects significantly more per person than Canada.) Yet, we don't get the services. More money can't solve that problem. Before you start about rates, they're not the only term in the equation. The US collects a smaller fraction of its economy, but it has a larger economy (per person). And, even with much higher rates, the US has never collected more than 22% of the economy in taxes. The sustainable max appears to be around 20%. (People "adjusted" to the 21.9% and got the number back to 20. That's going to happen when the tax code is used to encourage/discourage.)
scott_s 15y ago
The HN community generally accepts that companies should expect to pay good developers well. And, the corollary to that is if you're not willing to pay well, don't expect to get good developers.
- dasil003 15y ago
  The problem is that teaching isn't a meritocracy. We talk about how hard it is to evaluate coder skill, but it's infinitely easier than evaluating teacher skill. Throw in institutional, cultural, union factors, and how far-reaching the implications are to every single person in the country, and you can see why it's such a clusterfuck of a problem. That said, I think teachers are undervalued and scapegoated in society in a lot of ways that certainly harm our ability to produce great teachers.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    The problem is that teaching isn't a meritocracy. We talk about how hard it is to evaluate coder skill, but it's infinitely easier than evaluating teacher skill The interesting thing is that students know perfectly well who the good and bad teachers are. And really, the school principals should know this as well... and if they don't know then they could easily find out just by sitting in on classes and looking at the students' work. It's not really a big problem for a boss to know how well his individual employees are doing, bosses do that all the time.
    - jbooth 15y ago
      Students do not know perfectly well who the good and bad teachers are. Adults with hindsight can discern the good and bad teachers but I can think of multiple cases where I had my good/bad flipped as a student compared to later on when I compared my knowledge level to other adults. I had a writing teacher I didn't particularly like, then I got to a good college and found out I was one of the better writers. Turns out she was pretty damn good at her job.
    - rapind 15y ago
      The problem is that even the most astute principals can't do anything about their bad employees. They can only trade them off to other schools (and what do you think they get in return?). Once a teacher has tenure it is almost impossible to fire them... and they know it. The concept of tenure in general isn't necessarily an issue, it's just an incredibly bad implementation (only takes 3 years! come on!).
raganwald 15y ago
Your argument mixes numbers in a manner that confuses rather than enlightens. If you want to talk about how Michigan's education ranks in the nation and about how Michigan's teachers are paid, you need to compare Apples to Apples. If they're 30th in Education, how are their salaries relative to other teachers? Likewise, the ranking of 30th... Does that measure the teachers alone or the entire system? If it measures the entire system, how does the funding of $7,000 per student compare to other states? Maybe Michigan is actually doing amazingly well considering its funding. Or maybe not. But that should be the basis of comparison, not comparing their salaries to those of burger flippers in McDonald's.
lukejduncan 15y ago
As a former Michigander with family in education I can say that your comment on pension and retirement is wrong. My mom is about to retire and they just officially TOOK AWAY her retirement. Teaching is an interesting profession. In fact, teachers are often treated as if they aren't part of the professional class. We call them incompetent, fire the youngest members of the profession first, underpay them, and then public ridicule them. I would think people who live in the Silicon Valley world would agree: if you want to solve hard problems you need great talent. If you want great talent, you need to attract them, not repel them. Education is a hard problem and we treat teachers like unskilled labor.
- anamax 15y ago
  > In fact, teachers are often treated as if they aren't part of the professional class. They're not. Professionals are liable for malpractice. > fire the youngest members of the profession first That's what the teacher's unions demanded in negotation, so if you think that it's wrong....
  - lukejduncan 15y ago
    Teachers Unions are a part of the problem. We need more advocates like Michelle Rhee who both know it's wrong and are in the position to do something about it. >They're not. Professionals are liable for malpractice. I'm not sure where this definition is coming from. By that definition a software engineer isn't a professional. At least from Wikitionary (better source?) http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/professional_class http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/professional_class 1) A social and economic demographic, commonly identified as part of the upper middle class. 2) (plural) the groups in society composed of highly educated professionals
  - lukejduncan 15y ago
    Wait, I'm sorry, are you saying teaching isn't a profession?
    - Duff 15y ago
      With the exception of teachers, "professionals" are licensed workers who carry liability for their actions. If a Registered Nurse is negligent in the course of her duties, she can lose her license to work as a nurse and potentially be held personally liable. Teachers want to called "professionals" when negotiating for pay and benefits, but simultaneously want to retain strict union seniority, guaranteed employment and other benefits more commonly associated with regular civil service and blue-collar workers. I have a half dozen friends who got laid off from teaching jobs this year. These are really smart, bright people who should not have been let go. In the case of one of my friends ALL of the layoffs in his district could have been avoided had the folks with 30+ years who are eligible to retire at 75% pay decided to do so. In the "professional" world, those folks would have been laid off or forced to retire.

ChrisLTD 15y ago

If having good teachers is a priority, then teachers should earn whatever is required to lure qualified people away from private-sector employment.

protomyth 15y ago
Public sector teachers make more than private sector teachers. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_075.asp http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_075.asp
- dhume 15y ago
  Ever wonder why the private school teachers are content with their lower salary? Public sector teachers have to deal with all of the problematic students that private schools can remove or refuse to admit in the first place.
  - protomyth 15y ago
    I would imagine some of it is lower bureaucracy and a bit more freedom. Problematic students exist in private schools and are often backed by serious money. I wouldn't make the generalization that behavior problems are only found in poor people.

lurker19 15y ago

That is not entirely fair. Median income is the position of low-skilled labor, not work that requires a college degree and a position of trust and responsibility for children. Income is closer a power law distribution, not a normal distribution bell curve.

skimbrel 15y ago

Really? Please don't blame the teachers for this. This line of reasoning has never made any sense to me -- why does everyone blame the public employees and want to take away their (hardly that great when compared to the rest of the country) salary and benefits? The solution isn't to cut them off at the knees; the solution is to raise everyone else up to the same standards. If you want someone to blame for this, start with the No Child Left Behind act that forces schools to waste their budgets on meaningless standardized testing, and then penalizes them for it when they do poorly, creating a vicious cycle where a failing school can never become successful because it loses more funding each year. Or you could just go back to the root of the problem and blame the robber barons who, through well-paid lobbyists, have convinced the federal government to dismantle itself and its services year after year since 1980 in the name of the free market. We forgot what happens when corporate influence runs unchecked; we're learning again, and we're learning the hard way. The American experiment is dangerously close to failure.

matwood 15y ago
I would be interested if that salary included only teachers or also administrators. Some districts have nearly a 1:1 ratio of administrators to teachers. To me that sounds really high.
anamax 15y ago
> This line of reasoning has never made any sense to me -- why does everyone blame the public employees and want to take away their (hardly that great when compared to the rest of the country) salary and benefits? Oh really? Public employees are far more likely to have pensions than the rest of us. Public employees earn significantly more too and have greater job security. We blame them because they have a huge effect on who gets elected, which directly affects how much we have to pay for them. > If you want someone to blame for this, start with the No Child Left Behind act that forces schools to waste their budgets on meaningless standardized testing, What's your method for determining whether children are learning? We tried trusting teachers and schools - that didn't work. > Or you could just go back to the root of the problem and blame the robber barons who, through well-paid lobbyists, have convinced the federal government to dismantle itself and its services year after year since 1980 Education spending steadily increased (after inflation) during that time, so if services went down, it wasn't because of spending. Note that the US Department of Education was a shadow of its current self in 1980, so if you're going to argue that the federal govt has dismantled itself wrt education, you get to explain why it's much bigger wrt education. The US govt collects about as much in taxes per person as the "high tax/high services" countries. (The US actually collects significantly more per person than Canada.) Yet, we don't get the services. More money can't solve that problem. Before you start about rates, they're not the only term in the equation. The US collects a smaller fraction of its economy, but it has a larger economy (per person). And, even with much higher rates, the US has never collected more than 22% of the economy in taxes. The sustainable max appears to be around 20%. (People "adjusted" to the 21.9% and got the number back to 20. That's going to happen when the tax code is used to encourage/discourage.)

scott_s 15y ago

The HN community generally accepts that companies should expect to pay good developers well. And, the corollary to that is if you're not willing to pay well, don't expect to get good developers.

dasil003 15y ago
The problem is that teaching isn't a meritocracy. We talk about how hard it is to evaluate coder skill, but it's infinitely easier than evaluating teacher skill. Throw in institutional, cultural, union factors, and how far-reaching the implications are to every single person in the country, and you can see why it's such a clusterfuck of a problem. That said, I think teachers are undervalued and scapegoated in society in a lot of ways that certainly harm our ability to produce great teachers.
- hugh3 15y ago
  The problem is that teaching isn't a meritocracy. We talk about how hard it is to evaluate coder skill, but it's infinitely easier than evaluating teacher skill The interesting thing is that students know perfectly well who the good and bad teachers are. And really, the school principals should know this as well... and if they don't know then they could easily find out just by sitting in on classes and looking at the students' work. It's not really a big problem for a boss to know how well his individual employees are doing, bosses do that all the time.
  - jbooth 15y ago
    Students do not know perfectly well who the good and bad teachers are. Adults with hindsight can discern the good and bad teachers but I can think of multiple cases where I had my good/bad flipped as a student compared to later on when I compared my knowledge level to other adults. I had a writing teacher I didn't particularly like, then I got to a good college and found out I was one of the better writers. Turns out she was pretty damn good at her job.
  - rapind 15y ago
    The problem is that even the most astute principals can't do anything about their bad employees. They can only trade them off to other schools (and what do you think they get in return?). Once a teacher has tenure it is almost impossible to fire them... and they know it. The concept of tenure in general isn't necessarily an issue, it's just an incredibly bad implementation (only takes 3 years! come on!).

raganwald 15y ago

Your argument mixes numbers in a manner that confuses rather than enlightens. If you want to talk about how Michigan's education ranks in the nation and about how Michigan's teachers are paid, you need to compare Apples to Apples. If they're 30th in Education, how are their salaries relative to other teachers? Likewise, the ranking of 30th... Does that measure the teachers alone or the entire system? If it measures the entire system, how does the funding of $7,000 per student compare to other states? Maybe Michigan is actually doing amazingly well considering its funding. Or maybe not. But that should be the basis of comparison, not comparing their salaries to those of burger flippers in McDonald's.

lukejduncan 15y ago

As a former Michigander with family in education I can say that your comment on pension and retirement is wrong. My mom is about to retire and they just officially TOOK AWAY her retirement. Teaching is an interesting profession. In fact, teachers are often treated as if they aren't part of the professional class. We call them incompetent, fire the youngest members of the profession first, underpay them, and then public ridicule them. I would think people who live in the Silicon Valley world would agree: if you want to solve hard problems you need great talent. If you want great talent, you need to attract them, not repel them. Education is a hard problem and we treat teachers like unskilled labor.

anamax 15y ago
> In fact, teachers are often treated as if they aren't part of the professional class. They're not. Professionals are liable for malpractice. > fire the youngest members of the profession first That's what the teacher's unions demanded in negotation, so if you think that it's wrong....
- lukejduncan 15y ago
  Teachers Unions are a part of the problem. We need more advocates like Michelle Rhee who both know it's wrong and are in the position to do something about it. >They're not. Professionals are liable for malpractice. I'm not sure where this definition is coming from. By that definition a software engineer isn't a professional. At least from Wikitionary (better source?) http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/professional_class http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/professional_class 1) A social and economic demographic, commonly identified as part of the upper middle class. 2) (plural) the groups in society composed of highly educated professionals
- lukejduncan 15y ago
  Wait, I'm sorry, are you saying teaching isn't a profession?
  - Duff 15y ago
    With the exception of teachers, "professionals" are licensed workers who carry liability for their actions. If a Registered Nurse is negligent in the course of her duties, she can lose her license to work as a nurse and potentially be held personally liable. Teachers want to called "professionals" when negotiating for pay and benefits, but simultaneously want to retain strict union seniority, guaranteed employment and other benefits more commonly associated with regular civil service and blue-collar workers. I have a half dozen friends who got laid off from teaching jobs this year. These are really smart, bright people who should not have been let go. In the case of one of my friends ALL of the layoffs in his district could have been avoided had the folks with 30+ years who are eligible to retire at 75% pay decided to do so. In the "professional" world, those folks would have been laid off or forced to retire.