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In North America, teachers are grossly underpaid and their ability to discipline poor performance has been entirely eviscerated. It’s not just SF, look at what’

In North America, teachers are grossly underpaid and their ability to discipline poor performance has been entirely eviscerated. It’s not just SF, look at what’s happening in Vancouver: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-cutting-honours-programs-and-keeping-smart-kids-down-proves-the-silliness-of-inclusivity https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-cutting-honours-... The problem is the administration: The board that sets the standards and the parents and politicians who sit on those boards. The solution is this: Ban anyone without a minimum teaching experience of x years from participating on boards, bring all teacher salaries up to comfortable middle-class in every district and give them back their authority in the classroom. Otherwise this downward slide into illiteracy will continue until North America is dominated by an idiot majority.

hoka-one-one 5y ago
It doesn't have to be continuous. You can introduce a virus to kill off some of the illiterate and maintain some balance.
DSingularity 5y ago
You say “until we are dominated by idiot majority” as if it hasn’t happened. Just look at the platforms of the peoples vote to represent Americans. Rarely are they platform that would actually matter to the people and most of the time it is identity politics, nationalism, gun rights, and religion. We can’t even have a nuanced conversation about anything in politics that doesn’t devolve into an ideological/tribal argument. I think the US is already dominated by idiots in every state.
- Judgmentality 5y ago
  I fear I am feeding a political tangent here, but I think most of the problems you mentioned could be fixed in the US by recognizing (admittedly this would be a timely process) an official third electoral party. It's a lot easier for nuance to prevail when the system isn't designed to be binary.
  - meowkit 5y ago
    Recognizing a third party does little with the spoiler effect. Not sure if you are referring to this in your final sentence, but the voting system has to change first to some sort of runoff model so people can express their primary choice without fear of the spoiler.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      The spoiler effect is basically a non-issue with ranked choice voting. Some states are already adopting ranked choice.
    - exporectomy 5y ago
      The spoiler effect is a problem for tribal voters and for politicians but I don't think it matters for the actual outcomes of laws passed. If a minor party steals votes from a major one, that major party has an incentive to win them back by offering those voters what they want.
  - eldavido 5y ago
    Nice comment but I think this is a bit wide of the mark. Schools are a state and local issue in the US where party is less significant. Look at the difference between a "republican" in, say, California's central valley vs. the same in Alabama. In most other places, that'd be two different parties. Though I agree we'd be better off with something more like Germany or the UK, with coalitions.
  - kjkjadksj 5y ago
    The issue is not that we need n+1 political parties. Its that people don’t have time or much motivation to read actual policy.
- Lammy 5y ago
  > We can’t even have a nuanced conversation about anything in politics that doesn’t devolve into an ideological/tribal argument. I think the US is already dominated by idiots in every state. Gotta appreciate the irony of this statement. The Idiot Tribe are victims of The System, not driving it. They are not my enemy.
  - esyir 5y ago
    Agreed. If we're using education and related achievements as a barometer for "not idiots", the American ruling class are hardly uneducated dimwits. Those at the highest rungs of power in politics, academia and the mass media are almost without exception highly educated graduates of top institutes. If they fail, that's clearly on them, and not the "idiot tribe".
    - dexterdog 5y ago
      > highly educated graduates of top institutes Sorry, have you seen the educational record of the guy at the top right now?
      - esyir 5y ago
        Have you seen the university pool of your congress? Hell, even Bush was a Yale and harvard grad.
  - DSingularity 5y ago
    They are all victims. Nonetheless, the unfortunate reality is that the state persists precisely because this idiocy broadly holds.
YinLuck- 5y ago
Teachers are overpaid, not underpaid. What are you smoking?
barry-cotter 5y ago
https://www.heritage.org/education/report/assessing-the-compensation-public-school-teachers https://www.heritage.org/education/report/assessing-the-comp... > Workers who switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs receive a wage increase of roughly 9 percent. Teachers who change to non-teaching jobs, on the other hand, see their wages decrease by roughly 3 percent. This is the opposite of what one would expect if teachers were underpaid. https://www.heritage.org/education/report/critical-issues-assessing-teacher-compensation https://www.heritage.org/education/report/critical-issues-as... > Our recent report, “Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers,” [1] concluded that, on average, public-school teachers receive total compensation that is roughly 50 percent higher than what they would receive in private-sector employment. While salaries are at appropriate levels, fringe benefits push teacher compensation far ahead of what private-sector workers enjoy. Consequently, recruiting more effective teachers for public schools will be much more difficult than simply raising salaries.
- mattkrause 5y ago
  The analysis is harder than that. I would imagine education degrees are not particularly versatile: they’re meant to train you to become a teacher, more or less. Given that, it is not particularly surprising that teaching is one of the better-paying options once you commit to that pathway. However, there are plenty of other, career tracks: potential teachers might become accountants or engineers instead. Zooming in a bit…the big “fringe benefit” is obviously summer vacation. Valuing that correctly is tricky, and the assumption used in that report is that it’s linear in the amount of time off: one week off is worth $X, so the summer vacation must be worth $15X. I would bet that’s not really true and it has declining marginal value like everything else.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    > I would imagine education degrees are not particularly versatile: they’re meant to train you to become a teacher, more or less. This would imply that education degrees make their recipients better educators. There is no strong evidence of that. https://www.brookings.edu/research/who-profits-from-the-masters-degree-pay-bump-for-teachers/?amp https://www.brookings.edu/research/who-profits-from-the-mast... > The fact that teachers with master’s degrees are no more effective in the classroom, on average, than their colleagues without advanced degrees is one of the most consistent findings in education research. In a study published in 2011, Paul Peterson and I confirmed this finding by comparing the student achievement of the same teachers before and after they earned master’s degrees, and found no impact.[1] > This finding may be non-controversial among researchers, but it has largely been ignored by policymakers. [1] It's easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness Neither holding a college major in education nor acquiring a master's degree is correlated with elementary and middle school teaching effectiveness, regardless of the university at which the degree was earned. Teachers generally do become more effective with a few years of teaching experience, but we also find evidence that teachers may become less effective with experience, particularly later in their careers. These and other findings with respect to the correlates of teacher effectiveness are obtained from estimations using value-added models that control for student characteristics as well as school and (where appropriate teacher) fixed effects in order to measure teacher effectiveness in reading and math for Florida students in fourth through eighth grades for eight school years, 2001–2002 through 2008–2009. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775710001755 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...
zdragnar 5y ago
Teachers (or their unions) often lead the charge for the very policies that hinder performance. Some of these are done in the name of equity (local metro school districts are a prime example). Ultimately, teachers alone can't solve the problem. As seen in both poor white rural schools and poor non-white urban schools alike, if the parents don't care about schooling or enforcing any discipline at home, there will be significant problems at school.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> Ban anyone without a minimum teaching experience of x years from participating on boards Why do you think you need to be a teacher to direct how our schools are run? Seems technocratic and anti-democratic. The same way we have civilian control of the military, we should have civilian control of our schools. Did you know in the UK there is actually a structure called governors to ensure that schools are being directed by the community, not by education insiders?
- hef19898 5y ago
  In the military, there are civilians at the top. Right below them, it's career military. Having these standards set by involving parents at a local level is ripe for disaster. As is having local sheriffs, without proper training, elected but I digress. Curriculums should be as standardized as possible. That makes everything comparable. It would be enough to have have the top brass of education elected. You can even make the curriculum part of election campaigns.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    I can understand your point of view and to be honest I somewhat agree with it... But at the same time it sounds technocratic and anti-democratic, right? The teachers' job is to teach as the people want. It's not their job to set policy. It's to get on and teach as directed. Do you have a way you square that in your mind, as I'm struggling myself?
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Well, you have elected government that sets curriculums. And the way school systems are set up. Either at state level (Germany) or federal level (France). Then it is up to teachers to teach that curriculum, find someone ambitious enough to become a school principal to run a particular school. All while coping with the stuff the ministry comes up with. Sure, some teachers go on to set policies ay the ministry. Those are actively teaching anymore. Of course there is so much more nuance to it, but in a nutshell that's it. You have an elected government setting policies. You have public servants acting on those. Democratic and surely somewhat technocratic. But it works.
otterley 5y ago
> The solution is this: Ban anyone without a minimum teaching experience of x years from participating on boards, bring all teacher salaries up to comfortable middle-class in every district and give them back their authority in the classroom. "There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong." -- H. L. Mencken
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  Its refreshing that there is somewhere left on the internet where someone can point out that a problem might have nuance and not get immediately down voted to oblivion. HN is great.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "HN is great." In nuances ...
throwcanada324 5y ago
Not in Canada. Teachers are well paid in Canada, and in many Canadian mid sized cities a teacher with 10 years experience will make more than a software developer with similar years experience. Additionally they have a strong pension, and incredible job stability. e.g. A teacher in Saskatoon would make about $92K with 10 years experience with a defined benefit pension, and 2 months off in the summer. It is tougher for teachers in high COL cities like Toronto and Vancouver as they make roughly the same as they do in the rest of the country. (But similarly a Vancouver software developer doesn't get a USA west coast salary) Source: My wife teaches, and I write software!
- kickout 5y ago
  Is that a location thing? Like, do places like Saskatoon have problems attracting people (weather)?
  - swinnipeg 5y ago
    Nope. Teachers salaries would be similar to that across Canada. Software dev salaries would be very close, with some exceptions. Winnipeg/Calgary/Edmonton are all very similar to Saskatoon. There would be some higher paying opportunities in Van/Tor/Mtl. But an $200K individual contributor software dev is a truly a Unicorn in Canada. Lots of reasons, but the biggest is that simply don't have the ultra profitable FAANGs that drive up salaries.
    - plow-tycoon 5y ago
      Hey look at that, another Winnipeger. Winnipeg, as well as the other small prairie cities I'd imagine, also have the disadvantage of just not that much competition and not that much in terms of newer rentals. When I moved to Vancouver 6 years ago, I doubled my salary from ~42k to ~80k. Most of the well paying jobs from that time were for Java devs at the big 3 or 4 insurance companies. If I wanted to work there, there weren't really many nice apartments nearby. Some were built way out in burbs, and now there's a few downtown and in Osbourne, but it's slow going.
    - 5y ago
giantg2 5y ago
Eh, I know a teacher in my state that is paid more than I am as a software dev, and that's not too unusual (I know other states might be different as we are in the top 10 for teacher salary). We also spend $14k per student per year at my district. The education is ok. I feel that the main issue is that the wrong things are being taught. How about things like personal finance, basic mechanical and electrical skills (like for DIY repairs), and logic or philosophy of argument classes? It would also be good to teach the basics of civics since a substantial portion of the population can't pass the citizenship test.
- Mehdi2277 5y ago
  Most states in the US require a civics class in high school (normally called us government). Several states require personal financial literacy class. DIY is not one I know anywhere requiring. But something being required and something being preserved is very different. It's very normal to lose a lot of that knowledge after a couple years so if your goal is they pass a civics test/know basic finance it'll probably continue to fail even with all states requiring it.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Yeah, but most of the civics classes are a joke compared to the citizenship test. The used to have shop or home economics as required classes. I do agree that it is up to the student to maintain proficiency. I just feel like many of the tests and classes are ridiculously easy, like to the point of being geared to passing people rather than teaching. But I do also acknowledge that I forget about stuff I don't use, like complex fractions and fraction multiplication.
    - Mehdi2277 5y ago
      Have you taken the citizenship test? I am an immigrant and my dad had to take it. I was a bit under age requirement but did look over it. One example it doesn't even ask for the 3 branches of government, just name a single one. A lot of the questions are nice like that and will let you give a partial answer. You can see questions here, https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/questions-and-answers/100q.pdf https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/questions... The test is longer than many classroom tests but also only needs a 60% to pass. The topics covered are already ones that US government classes cover so new requirements won't help here. You could add a state standardized test for this although still doubtful it would be remembered even a year or two later. I'd also guess it's a toss up on whether current government classes are easier/harder than that.
tails4e 5y ago
It seems education in most first world countries is heading the same way, teacher authority being undermined by weak administration. It should be the case that education standards are protected by strong administration, bothnto hold teachers accountable, and to let them do the job without pandering to helicopter parents.
brailsafe 5y ago
I don't even know what comfortable middle class in Vancouver is.
- __turbobrew__ 5y ago
  Comfortable Vancouver middle class is pre-2005. Middle class is now owning a condo in new westminster.
tptacek 5y ago
Are they grossly underpaid? I don't think that's necessarily true. I think it's true in rural areas, but Chicago Public School teachers are paid above-average, and suburban Chicago teachers make as much as Chicago-area software developers do. And that's without taking into account defined-benefit pension plans and huge amounts of vacation time. I think the meme about teachers being underpaid is mostly unuseful in conversations like these.
- gpapilion 5y ago
  There are several subtleties when comparing teacher’s pay. First it’s 10 months not twelve so you need to adjust for that. Second the pay also usually includes retirement benefits that can pay you 100% off your salary after 30 years. This is hard to compare to private industry since 401ks have replaced pensions. This is probably worth 2-5m when mature, and is accounted for in their pay. I think this is the biggest issue, since private employers pay higher expecting you to invest in your retirement. Benefits are also usually good with small if any employee contribution. Probably worth a few hundred dollars a month. It’s almost impossible to lose your job teaching. It has a factor of security that does not exist in private industry. Pay raises are automatic. Primarily it’s based on years of service and level of education. I’ve run the numbers previously and it starts seeming fairer, but due to the retirement impact it makes buying a home in the Bay Area almost impossible.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    The 10 month thing gets brought up in these discussions, but I'm looking at annual comp numbers, so the fact that it's 10 months makes the deal more attractive, not less.
  - zargon 5y ago
    Buying a home in the Bay Area is almost impossible. Full stop.
- zthrowaway 5y ago
  It has basically become a political talking point. My aunt is in rural Ohio making 80k per year as a HS history teacher. She is tenured but money wasn’t ever a struggle for her.
gpapilion 5y ago
The board in sf is mostly former teachers.
lettergram 5y ago
School choice would go a long way and breakup the teachers unions (through school choice). School choice effectively allows increased wages for good teachers and yes there's competition so you'll have lower end schools as well. However, it'll be a rising ship, which raises all boats IMO. You can also audit the schools and shutdown poorly run ones, etc.
- laurencerowe 5y ago
  > School choice effectively allows increased wages for good teachers and yes there's competition so you'll have lower end schools as well. How does school choice allow for increased teacher wages? Presumably they get the same per-student funding. When the school gets more applicants than places, how does it decide who to let in? > You can also audit the schools and shutdown poorly run ones, etc. Shutting down schools is highly disruptive for students currently attending that school. Seems preferable to intervene and improve failing schools before it gets to the point of shutting them down. I'm not convinced school choice improves results for students overall. The easiest way for a school to improve its results are by attracting parents who are highly invested in their child's education. Those whose parents don't have the knowledge to work the system or the time to transport their children across town for school every day are less likely to apply.
  - ByteJockey 5y ago
    > How does school choice allow for increased teacher wages? Presumably they get the same per-student funding. The raw number of dollars per pupil isn't the only variable here, if it were the US would already have the best schools pretty much everywhere (the US spends WAY more than the average in this category). There's also what percentage is spent on administrators instead of teachers (frees up money for teacher salaries), various QoL improvements that could be made such as less paperwork, more latitude in how they teach, hiring a few full-time graders to take some of the load off teachers (generally a big time-sink and a source of a lot of overtime for teachers). > When the school gets more applicants than places, how does it decide who to let in? Presumably either entrance exam or lottery depending on the philosophy of the school. > Seems preferable to intervene and improve failing schools before it gets to the point of shutting them down. Do we know how to do this in practice? I haven't heard of any tactics that reliably improve a school that has started going downhill, but if you have some examples, I'd definitely be willing to consider them.
prestigious 5y ago
Canadian teachers are not underpaid though
deleted 5y ago
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AuryGlenz 5y ago
Teacher salaries are public in my state (every state?) so I just looked up my local school. For the record, this is a rural location in Minnesota - each grade has a little over 100 students. My wife’s sister is 33 years old and has worked there for a few years. Her yearly salary is $47,000, and has been rapidly increasing each year - nearly 10% a year. It looks like teachers that I would guess are in their 40s and 50s are capped out at about $74,000 a year. That’s roughly what my 32 year old accountant wife gets, and they get nearly 3 months vacation a year and much better benefits and retirement stuff than she does. Considering I know more people that have gone in to the teaching profession than anything else, that seems more than fair. Also, a lot of those older teachers that I looked up would have been fired from any other job if their performance was the same. I’d only be ok with a massive increase in teacher pay if teacher’s unions were abolished. The only firings that have happened to tenured teachers here in the past 20 years have been for sexual misconduct.
- judge2020 5y ago
  My understanding is that salaries depend on location of the workplace and the surrounding housing market (aka. rich district = above-average-pay teachers).
dantheman 5y ago
How about attach the money spent on a school to the child, and let the teachers/administrators compete just like everything else. You can create specialized roles, pay more, focus on X, whatever you want. The school system is a failing monopoly that should be broken up.
- adolph 5y ago
  This has been used successfully in long-term care. The concept is called "Money Follows the Person." Money Follows the Person (MFP) Rebalancing Demonstration is part of a comprehensive, coordinated strategy to assist U.S. states, in collaboration with stakeholders, to make widespread changes to their long-term care support systems. This initiative will assist states in their efforts to reduce their reliance on institutional care, while developing community-based long-term care opportunities, enabling the elderly and people with disabilities to fully participate in their communities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_Follows_the_Person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_Follows_the_Person
rajacombinator 5y ago
That’s a solution without a buyer in a market that’s about control and indoctrination, or childcare at best. But not education.
Pxtl 5y ago
Just get rid of school boards altogether. Here in Canada we only have 5 ballot questions across our 3 elections: Federal representative Provincial representative Municipal representative Mayor School board trustee. The PM? Head of the party with the most seats. Same with provincial premiere. Judges, crown attorneys, controllers, senators, the governor general, etc? Those are all appointed by our elected representatives. A central ethos of Canadian governance is that our representatives are there to make decisions and bouncing questions to the public is a tool of last resort. With that on mind, why the hell do we have elected school boards? We have a provincial ministry that runs education. We have municipalities that manage land-use. Voters are basically flying blind in trustee elections. There are no debates, no media coverage, no political parties, just a list of names. If they don't happen by your doorstep, you don't get to know who these people are... And even if they do, you've only got their word to go on. Ax this anachronistic institution and let the education policy professionals within the state/provincial government and school boards do their jobs.
- askvictor 5y ago
  In Australia the only elections regarding school are for the parent representatives on school council, which is local to an individual school, and sets some amount of strategic direction, but overall, doesn't do a lot. Curriculum & testing decisions are made by politicians and bureaucrats at the state or federal level. We also don't elect judges, DAs, etc. We just elect politicians; they are ultimately responsible for making sure their respective public servants are doing the will of the people. You could argue the US system is more democratic, and yet most such systems in the US seem to be broken (from an outside perspective), while here they are not (there are certainly problems mind you). Any perspective how these things work in countries that have a well-regarded, high performing education system, like Finland (apart from having well-trained, highly regarded, and highly trained teachers with a large degree of autonomy)?
adolph 5y ago
> The problem is the administration: The board that sets the standards and the parents and politicians who sit on those boards. Most typically administration != board. An elected or appointed board will be made up of politicians, who can also class members of parents, teachers, community members, all of the aforementioned, etc. Expecting a board to be entirely made up of people who have served in the organization's service delivery doesn't make sense. Would you expect a police board to be entirely made up of cops? There is an inherent conflict of interest.
deleted 5y ago
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alexashka 5y ago
The problem is the existence of mandatory education, propped up by government. Let me fix that for you - get rid of government schools, let anyone teach.
yboris 5y ago
I love the solution you propose. There are certainly other ways in which the whole school system can improve in this and other directions. The most-direct (and sensible!) reform I've come across is: distribute education funding equally, without tying school income to local taxes paid. You end up with richer schools receiving a lot of funding, while the poorer neighborhoods (already disadvantaged as it is) receiving unacceptably low funding - exacerbating the inequities currently engrained in the current system.
paulddraper 5y ago
> The solution is this: Ban anyone... The solution is to get rid of the monopolistic education system which is prone to imbalances and subpar results. Charter schools/private school/school choice. Recruit the best teacher, pay the best salaries, achieve the best educational outcomes. No wonder the educational system looks like it does given the incentives at play.
- stonogo 5y ago
  You're describing the Baltimore school system. I don't think you're arguing for the outcome you think you're arguing for.
  - paulddraper 5y ago
    On the contrary, https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-op-0813-credo-study-20190812-dkbqsnounze2fojqygfdyiav3e-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-op-0813-...
smsm42 5y ago
Given that I'm reading pretty much the same articles about teaching experience for decades now, how sure we are it isn't dominated by an idiot majority yet? I mean, looking around and reading the news, I can't really name a lot of things that tell me it couldn't be the case...
dr_dshiv 5y ago
Average salary for teachers is $63k, across all states. In NY or CA, it is about $85k [1]. This does not include benefits (e.g., health care or a ~$50k/y pension for retirement at age 60 [2]) And there are 2.5 months in the summer for r&r or for working additional jobs [3]. You need two wage earners to be solidly middle class, but this is not a "grossly underpaid" profession. For comparison, a university engineering professor salary in Netherlands starts at 65k euros ($77k). Bottomline: teaching is not going to make you rich but you aren't grossly underpaid. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_211.60.asp?current.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_211.60.a... [2] https://www.teacherpensions.org/states https://www.teacherpensions.org/states [3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/07/11/teachers-summer-break-jobs-work-living-wage/1524677001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/07/11/tea...
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  This. I keep hearing about undepaid teachers, but in my immediate social circle this is simply not true from avg. hh US perspective. Naturally, statement like that usually then gets attacked as 'but not enough'. Based on results alone, CPS teachers are actually paid too much.
dandanua 5y ago
Not so long time ago it was illegal to teach slaves. I guess the current social system is heading towards that stance again. History repeats itself.
bbarnett 5y ago
IMO, this sort of thing is just as dangerous as any other type of radicalism. Take anything too far, and you cause immense damage to society. The formative years age just that. Disrupt that significantly, and the individual is forever lacking. Society needs people in all roles, we'd die of plagues, and disease from vermin, without garbage pickup. Incredibly vital, that job is. Yet who will create new vaccines, new tech to clean up the planet, get mining and resource production into space, and more? Only those with certain genetic gifts, but the "feel goods" want to believe everyone is identical. Equality is not this. Equality comes from things like providing access ramps for those who cannot climb stairs, providing tools for those to make the best of what they have. You don't "pull down" people to make equality, you lift up people. And this means that you see who needs help, and give it. And you can't do that of you pretend everyone is the same. As a side note, plumbers, electricians, those working in construction, arborists, on and on, there are many very comfortable, well paying jobs open to those without advanced science, math, language skills. In my public school, both at grade and high school levels, we had shop class, and in high school, auto, electrical wiring, art, A/V, environmental science (farming), and more. There was something for everyone to excel in, and I took most of these, on top of advanced sciences/math, for fun, for the sheer sake of knowledge. Don't remove potential, instead, seek how to enable every child's capabilities. Lift up, don't pull down.
katbyte 5y ago
FYI Vancouver is still keeping advance placement classes which is the typical way for smart students to excel. The program being cut was only at two schools in the super rich part of town and kinda seemed like a “free private school program in public school”
toomanybeersies 5y ago
Why do school boards need to be elected at all? Like electing judges and sheriffs, this seems to be a peculiarly American thing. Most other countries appoint professionals to manage their education systems, and for good reason.
dexterdog 5y ago
> The solution is this: Ban anyone without a minimum teaching experience of x years from participating on boards, bring all teacher salaries up to comfortable middle-class in every district and give them back their authority in the classroom. Otherwise this downward slide into illiteracy will continue until North America is dominated by an idiot majority. The problem with this solution is that there is barely enough interest in most places to fill a board when almost everybody is eligible. I've been married to a school board-er. It's a thankless job, far more thankless than being a teacher, which is a job with an actual salary and very good job safety.

hoka-one-one 5y ago

It doesn't have to be continuous. You can introduce a virus to kill off some of the illiterate and maintain some balance.

DSingularity 5y ago

You say “until we are dominated by idiot majority” as if it hasn’t happened. Just look at the platforms of the peoples vote to represent Americans. Rarely are they platform that would actually matter to the people and most of the time it is identity politics, nationalism, gun rights, and religion. We can’t even have a nuanced conversation about anything in politics that doesn’t devolve into an ideological/tribal argument. I think the US is already dominated by idiots in every state.

Judgmentality 5y ago
I fear I am feeding a political tangent here, but I think most of the problems you mentioned could be fixed in the US by recognizing (admittedly this would be a timely process) an official third electoral party. It's a lot easier for nuance to prevail when the system isn't designed to be binary.
- meowkit 5y ago
  Recognizing a third party does little with the spoiler effect. Not sure if you are referring to this in your final sentence, but the voting system has to change first to some sort of runoff model so people can express their primary choice without fear of the spoiler.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    The spoiler effect is basically a non-issue with ranked choice voting. Some states are already adopting ranked choice.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    The spoiler effect is a problem for tribal voters and for politicians but I don't think it matters for the actual outcomes of laws passed. If a minor party steals votes from a major one, that major party has an incentive to win them back by offering those voters what they want.
- eldavido 5y ago
  Nice comment but I think this is a bit wide of the mark. Schools are a state and local issue in the US where party is less significant. Look at the difference between a "republican" in, say, California's central valley vs. the same in Alabama. In most other places, that'd be two different parties. Though I agree we'd be better off with something more like Germany or the UK, with coalitions.
- kjkjadksj 5y ago
  The issue is not that we need n+1 political parties. Its that people don’t have time or much motivation to read actual policy.
Lammy 5y ago
> We can’t even have a nuanced conversation about anything in politics that doesn’t devolve into an ideological/tribal argument. I think the US is already dominated by idiots in every state. Gotta appreciate the irony of this statement. The Idiot Tribe are victims of The System, not driving it. They are not my enemy.
- esyir 5y ago
  Agreed. If we're using education and related achievements as a barometer for "not idiots", the American ruling class are hardly uneducated dimwits. Those at the highest rungs of power in politics, academia and the mass media are almost without exception highly educated graduates of top institutes. If they fail, that's clearly on them, and not the "idiot tribe".
  - dexterdog 5y ago
    > highly educated graduates of top institutes Sorry, have you seen the educational record of the guy at the top right now?
    - esyir 5y ago
      Have you seen the university pool of your congress? Hell, even Bush was a Yale and harvard grad.
- DSingularity 5y ago
  They are all victims. Nonetheless, the unfortunate reality is that the state persists precisely because this idiocy broadly holds.

YinLuck- 5y ago

Teachers are overpaid, not underpaid. What are you smoking?

barry-cotter 5y ago

https://www.heritage.org/education/report/assessing-the-compensation-public-school-teachers https://www.heritage.org/education/report/assessing-the-comp... > Workers who switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs receive a wage increase of roughly 9 percent. Teachers who change to non-teaching jobs, on the other hand, see their wages decrease by roughly 3 percent. This is the opposite of what one would expect if teachers were underpaid. https://www.heritage.org/education/report/critical-issues-assessing-teacher-compensation https://www.heritage.org/education/report/critical-issues-as... > Our recent report, “Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers,” [1] concluded that, on average, public-school teachers receive total compensation that is roughly 50 percent higher than what they would receive in private-sector employment. While salaries are at appropriate levels, fringe benefits push teacher compensation far ahead of what private-sector workers enjoy. Consequently, recruiting more effective teachers for public schools will be much more difficult than simply raising salaries.

mattkrause 5y ago
The analysis is harder than that. I would imagine education degrees are not particularly versatile: they’re meant to train you to become a teacher, more or less. Given that, it is not particularly surprising that teaching is one of the better-paying options once you commit to that pathway. However, there are plenty of other, career tracks: potential teachers might become accountants or engineers instead. Zooming in a bit…the big “fringe benefit” is obviously summer vacation. Valuing that correctly is tricky, and the assumption used in that report is that it’s linear in the amount of time off: one week off is worth $X, so the summer vacation must be worth $15X. I would bet that’s not really true and it has declining marginal value like everything else.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > I would imagine education degrees are not particularly versatile: they’re meant to train you to become a teacher, more or less. This would imply that education degrees make their recipients better educators. There is no strong evidence of that. https://www.brookings.edu/research/who-profits-from-the-masters-degree-pay-bump-for-teachers/?amp https://www.brookings.edu/research/who-profits-from-the-mast... > The fact that teachers with master’s degrees are no more effective in the classroom, on average, than their colleagues without advanced degrees is one of the most consistent findings in education research. In a study published in 2011, Paul Peterson and I confirmed this finding by comparing the student achievement of the same teachers before and after they earned master’s degrees, and found no impact.[1] > This finding may be non-controversial among researchers, but it has largely been ignored by policymakers. [1] It's easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness Neither holding a college major in education nor acquiring a master's degree is correlated with elementary and middle school teaching effectiveness, regardless of the university at which the degree was earned. Teachers generally do become more effective with a few years of teaching experience, but we also find evidence that teachers may become less effective with experience, particularly later in their careers. These and other findings with respect to the correlates of teacher effectiveness are obtained from estimations using value-added models that control for student characteristics as well as school and (where appropriate teacher) fixed effects in order to measure teacher effectiveness in reading and math for Florida students in fourth through eighth grades for eight school years, 2001–2002 through 2008–2009. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775710001755 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...

zdragnar 5y ago

Teachers (or their unions) often lead the charge for the very policies that hinder performance. Some of these are done in the name of equity (local metro school districts are a prime example). Ultimately, teachers alone can't solve the problem. As seen in both poor white rural schools and poor non-white urban schools alike, if the parents don't care about schooling or enforcing any discipline at home, there will be significant problems at school.

chrisseaton 5y ago

> Ban anyone without a minimum teaching experience of x years from participating on boards Why do you think you need to be a teacher to direct how our schools are run? Seems technocratic and anti-democratic. The same way we have civilian control of the military, we should have civilian control of our schools. Did you know in the UK there is actually a structure called governors to ensure that schools are being directed by the community, not by education insiders?

hef19898 5y ago
In the military, there are civilians at the top. Right below them, it's career military. Having these standards set by involving parents at a local level is ripe for disaster. As is having local sheriffs, without proper training, elected but I digress. Curriculums should be as standardized as possible. That makes everything comparable. It would be enough to have have the top brass of education elected. You can even make the curriculum part of election campaigns.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  I can understand your point of view and to be honest I somewhat agree with it... But at the same time it sounds technocratic and anti-democratic, right? The teachers' job is to teach as the people want. It's not their job to set policy. It's to get on and teach as directed. Do you have a way you square that in your mind, as I'm struggling myself?
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Well, you have elected government that sets curriculums. And the way school systems are set up. Either at state level (Germany) or federal level (France). Then it is up to teachers to teach that curriculum, find someone ambitious enough to become a school principal to run a particular school. All while coping with the stuff the ministry comes up with. Sure, some teachers go on to set policies ay the ministry. Those are actively teaching anymore. Of course there is so much more nuance to it, but in a nutshell that's it. You have an elected government setting policies. You have public servants acting on those. Democratic and surely somewhat technocratic. But it works.

otterley 5y ago

> The solution is this: Ban anyone without a minimum teaching experience of x years from participating on boards, bring all teacher salaries up to comfortable middle-class in every district and give them back their authority in the classroom. "There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong." -- H. L. Mencken

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idiotsecant 5y ago
Its refreshing that there is somewhere left on the internet where someone can point out that a problem might have nuance and not get immediately down voted to oblivion. HN is great.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "HN is great." In nuances ...

throwcanada324 5y ago

Not in Canada. Teachers are well paid in Canada, and in many Canadian mid sized cities a teacher with 10 years experience will make more than a software developer with similar years experience. Additionally they have a strong pension, and incredible job stability. e.g. A teacher in Saskatoon would make about $92K with 10 years experience with a defined benefit pension, and 2 months off in the summer. It is tougher for teachers in high COL cities like Toronto and Vancouver as they make roughly the same as they do in the rest of the country. (But similarly a Vancouver software developer doesn't get a USA west coast salary) Source: My wife teaches, and I write software!

kickout 5y ago
Is that a location thing? Like, do places like Saskatoon have problems attracting people (weather)?
- swinnipeg 5y ago
  Nope. Teachers salaries would be similar to that across Canada. Software dev salaries would be very close, with some exceptions. Winnipeg/Calgary/Edmonton are all very similar to Saskatoon. There would be some higher paying opportunities in Van/Tor/Mtl. But an $200K individual contributor software dev is a truly a Unicorn in Canada. Lots of reasons, but the biggest is that simply don't have the ultra profitable FAANGs that drive up salaries.
  - plow-tycoon 5y ago
    Hey look at that, another Winnipeger. Winnipeg, as well as the other small prairie cities I'd imagine, also have the disadvantage of just not that much competition and not that much in terms of newer rentals. When I moved to Vancouver 6 years ago, I doubled my salary from ~42k to ~80k. Most of the well paying jobs from that time were for Java devs at the big 3 or 4 insurance companies. If I wanted to work there, there weren't really many nice apartments nearby. Some were built way out in burbs, and now there's a few downtown and in Osbourne, but it's slow going.
  - 5y ago

giantg2 5y ago

Eh, I know a teacher in my state that is paid more than I am as a software dev, and that's not too unusual (I know other states might be different as we are in the top 10 for teacher salary). We also spend $14k per student per year at my district. The education is ok. I feel that the main issue is that the wrong things are being taught. How about things like personal finance, basic mechanical and electrical skills (like for DIY repairs), and logic or philosophy of argument classes? It would also be good to teach the basics of civics since a substantial portion of the population can't pass the citizenship test.

Mehdi2277 5y ago
Most states in the US require a civics class in high school (normally called us government). Several states require personal financial literacy class. DIY is not one I know anywhere requiring. But something being required and something being preserved is very different. It's very normal to lose a lot of that knowledge after a couple years so if your goal is they pass a civics test/know basic finance it'll probably continue to fail even with all states requiring it.
- giantg2 5y ago
  Yeah, but most of the civics classes are a joke compared to the citizenship test. The used to have shop or home economics as required classes. I do agree that it is up to the student to maintain proficiency. I just feel like many of the tests and classes are ridiculously easy, like to the point of being geared to passing people rather than teaching. But I do also acknowledge that I forget about stuff I don't use, like complex fractions and fraction multiplication.
  - Mehdi2277 5y ago
    Have you taken the citizenship test? I am an immigrant and my dad had to take it. I was a bit under age requirement but did look over it. One example it doesn't even ask for the 3 branches of government, just name a single one. A lot of the questions are nice like that and will let you give a partial answer. You can see questions here, https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/questions-and-answers/100q.pdf https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/questions... The test is longer than many classroom tests but also only needs a 60% to pass. The topics covered are already ones that US government classes cover so new requirements won't help here. You could add a state standardized test for this although still doubtful it would be remembered even a year or two later. I'd also guess it's a toss up on whether current government classes are easier/harder than that.

tails4e 5y ago

It seems education in most first world countries is heading the same way, teacher authority being undermined by weak administration. It should be the case that education standards are protected by strong administration, bothnto hold teachers accountable, and to let them do the job without pandering to helicopter parents.

brailsafe 5y ago

I don't even know what comfortable middle class in Vancouver is.

__turbobrew__ 5y ago
Comfortable Vancouver middle class is pre-2005. Middle class is now owning a condo in new westminster.

tptacek 5y ago

Are they grossly underpaid? I don't think that's necessarily true. I think it's true in rural areas, but Chicago Public School teachers are paid above-average, and suburban Chicago teachers make as much as Chicago-area software developers do. And that's without taking into account defined-benefit pension plans and huge amounts of vacation time. I think the meme about teachers being underpaid is mostly unuseful in conversations like these.

gpapilion 5y ago
There are several subtleties when comparing teacher’s pay. First it’s 10 months not twelve so you need to adjust for that. Second the pay also usually includes retirement benefits that can pay you 100% off your salary after 30 years. This is hard to compare to private industry since 401ks have replaced pensions. This is probably worth 2-5m when mature, and is accounted for in their pay. I think this is the biggest issue, since private employers pay higher expecting you to invest in your retirement. Benefits are also usually good with small if any employee contribution. Probably worth a few hundred dollars a month. It’s almost impossible to lose your job teaching. It has a factor of security that does not exist in private industry. Pay raises are automatic. Primarily it’s based on years of service and level of education. I’ve run the numbers previously and it starts seeming fairer, but due to the retirement impact it makes buying a home in the Bay Area almost impossible.
- tptacek 5y ago
  The 10 month thing gets brought up in these discussions, but I'm looking at annual comp numbers, so the fact that it's 10 months makes the deal more attractive, not less.
- zargon 5y ago
  Buying a home in the Bay Area is almost impossible. Full stop.
zthrowaway 5y ago
It has basically become a political talking point. My aunt is in rural Ohio making 80k per year as a HS history teacher. She is tenured but money wasn’t ever a struggle for her.

gpapilion 5y ago

The board in sf is mostly former teachers.

lettergram 5y ago

School choice would go a long way and breakup the teachers unions (through school choice). School choice effectively allows increased wages for good teachers and yes there's competition so you'll have lower end schools as well. However, it'll be a rising ship, which raises all boats IMO. You can also audit the schools and shutdown poorly run ones, etc.

laurencerowe 5y ago
> School choice effectively allows increased wages for good teachers and yes there's competition so you'll have lower end schools as well. How does school choice allow for increased teacher wages? Presumably they get the same per-student funding. When the school gets more applicants than places, how does it decide who to let in? > You can also audit the schools and shutdown poorly run ones, etc. Shutting down schools is highly disruptive for students currently attending that school. Seems preferable to intervene and improve failing schools before it gets to the point of shutting them down. I'm not convinced school choice improves results for students overall. The easiest way for a school to improve its results are by attracting parents who are highly invested in their child's education. Those whose parents don't have the knowledge to work the system or the time to transport their children across town for school every day are less likely to apply.
- ByteJockey 5y ago
  > How does school choice allow for increased teacher wages? Presumably they get the same per-student funding. The raw number of dollars per pupil isn't the only variable here, if it were the US would already have the best schools pretty much everywhere (the US spends WAY more than the average in this category). There's also what percentage is spent on administrators instead of teachers (frees up money for teacher salaries), various QoL improvements that could be made such as less paperwork, more latitude in how they teach, hiring a few full-time graders to take some of the load off teachers (generally a big time-sink and a source of a lot of overtime for teachers). > When the school gets more applicants than places, how does it decide who to let in? Presumably either entrance exam or lottery depending on the philosophy of the school. > Seems preferable to intervene and improve failing schools before it gets to the point of shutting them down. Do we know how to do this in practice? I haven't heard of any tactics that reliably improve a school that has started going downhill, but if you have some examples, I'd definitely be willing to consider them.

prestigious 5y ago

Canadian teachers are not underpaid though

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AuryGlenz 5y ago

Teacher salaries are public in my state (every state?) so I just looked up my local school. For the record, this is a rural location in Minnesota - each grade has a little over 100 students. My wife’s sister is 33 years old and has worked there for a few years. Her yearly salary is $47,000, and has been rapidly increasing each year - nearly 10% a year. It looks like teachers that I would guess are in their 40s and 50s are capped out at about $74,000 a year. That’s roughly what my 32 year old accountant wife gets, and they get nearly 3 months vacation a year and much better benefits and retirement stuff than she does. Considering I know more people that have gone in to the teaching profession than anything else, that seems more than fair. Also, a lot of those older teachers that I looked up would have been fired from any other job if their performance was the same. I’d only be ok with a massive increase in teacher pay if teacher’s unions were abolished. The only firings that have happened to tenured teachers here in the past 20 years have been for sexual misconduct.

judge2020 5y ago
My understanding is that salaries depend on location of the workplace and the surrounding housing market (aka. rich district = above-average-pay teachers).

dantheman 5y ago

How about attach the money spent on a school to the child, and let the teachers/administrators compete just like everything else. You can create specialized roles, pay more, focus on X, whatever you want. The school system is a failing monopoly that should be broken up.

adolph 5y ago
This has been used successfully in long-term care. The concept is called "Money Follows the Person." Money Follows the Person (MFP) Rebalancing Demonstration is part of a comprehensive, coordinated strategy to assist U.S. states, in collaboration with stakeholders, to make widespread changes to their long-term care support systems. This initiative will assist states in their efforts to reduce their reliance on institutional care, while developing community-based long-term care opportunities, enabling the elderly and people with disabilities to fully participate in their communities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_Follows_the_Person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_Follows_the_Person

rajacombinator 5y ago

That’s a solution without a buyer in a market that’s about control and indoctrination, or childcare at best. But not education.

Pxtl 5y ago

Just get rid of school boards altogether. Here in Canada we only have 5 ballot questions across our 3 elections: Federal representative Provincial representative Municipal representative Mayor School board trustee. The PM? Head of the party with the most seats. Same with provincial premiere. Judges, crown attorneys, controllers, senators, the governor general, etc? Those are all appointed by our elected representatives. A central ethos of Canadian governance is that our representatives are there to make decisions and bouncing questions to the public is a tool of last resort. With that on mind, why the hell do we have elected school boards? We have a provincial ministry that runs education. We have municipalities that manage land-use. Voters are basically flying blind in trustee elections. There are no debates, no media coverage, no political parties, just a list of names. If they don't happen by your doorstep, you don't get to know who these people are... And even if they do, you've only got their word to go on. Ax this anachronistic institution and let the education policy professionals within the state/provincial government and school boards do their jobs.

askvictor 5y ago
In Australia the only elections regarding school are for the parent representatives on school council, which is local to an individual school, and sets some amount of strategic direction, but overall, doesn't do a lot. Curriculum & testing decisions are made by politicians and bureaucrats at the state or federal level. We also don't elect judges, DAs, etc. We just elect politicians; they are ultimately responsible for making sure their respective public servants are doing the will of the people. You could argue the US system is more democratic, and yet most such systems in the US seem to be broken (from an outside perspective), while here they are not (there are certainly problems mind you). Any perspective how these things work in countries that have a well-regarded, high performing education system, like Finland (apart from having well-trained, highly regarded, and highly trained teachers with a large degree of autonomy)?

adolph 5y ago

> The problem is the administration: The board that sets the standards and the parents and politicians who sit on those boards. Most typically administration != board. An elected or appointed board will be made up of politicians, who can also class members of parents, teachers, community members, all of the aforementioned, etc. Expecting a board to be entirely made up of people who have served in the organization's service delivery doesn't make sense. Would you expect a police board to be entirely made up of cops? There is an inherent conflict of interest.

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alexashka 5y ago

The problem is the existence of mandatory education, propped up by government. Let me fix that for you - get rid of government schools, let anyone teach.

yboris 5y ago

I love the solution you propose. There are certainly other ways in which the whole school system can improve in this and other directions. The most-direct (and sensible!) reform I've come across is: distribute education funding equally, without tying school income to local taxes paid. You end up with richer schools receiving a lot of funding, while the poorer neighborhoods (already disadvantaged as it is) receiving unacceptably low funding - exacerbating the inequities currently engrained in the current system.

paulddraper 5y ago

> The solution is this: Ban anyone... The solution is to get rid of the monopolistic education system which is prone to imbalances and subpar results. Charter schools/private school/school choice. Recruit the best teacher, pay the best salaries, achieve the best educational outcomes. No wonder the educational system looks like it does given the incentives at play.

stonogo 5y ago
You're describing the Baltimore school system. I don't think you're arguing for the outcome you think you're arguing for.
- paulddraper 5y ago
  On the contrary, https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-op-0813-credo-study-20190812-dkbqsnounze2fojqygfdyiav3e-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-op-0813-...

smsm42 5y ago

Given that I'm reading pretty much the same articles about teaching experience for decades now, how sure we are it isn't dominated by an idiot majority yet? I mean, looking around and reading the news, I can't really name a lot of things that tell me it couldn't be the case...

dr_dshiv 5y ago

Average salary for teachers is $63k, across all states. In NY or CA, it is about $85k [1]. This does not include benefits (e.g., health care or a ~$50k/y pension for retirement at age 60 [2]) And there are 2.5 months in the summer for r&r or for working additional jobs [3]. You need two wage earners to be solidly middle class, but this is not a "grossly underpaid" profession. For comparison, a university engineering professor salary in Netherlands starts at 65k euros ($77k). Bottomline: teaching is not going to make you rich but you aren't grossly underpaid. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_211.60.asp?current.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_211.60.a... [2] https://www.teacherpensions.org/states https://www.teacherpensions.org/states [3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/07/11/teachers-summer-break-jobs-work-living-wage/1524677001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/07/11/tea...

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
This. I keep hearing about undepaid teachers, but in my immediate social circle this is simply not true from avg. hh US perspective. Naturally, statement like that usually then gets attacked as 'but not enough'. Based on results alone, CPS teachers are actually paid too much.

dandanua 5y ago

Not so long time ago it was illegal to teach slaves. I guess the current social system is heading towards that stance again. History repeats itself.

bbarnett 5y ago

IMO, this sort of thing is just as dangerous as any other type of radicalism. Take anything too far, and you cause immense damage to society. The formative years age just that. Disrupt that significantly, and the individual is forever lacking. Society needs people in all roles, we'd die of plagues, and disease from vermin, without garbage pickup. Incredibly vital, that job is. Yet who will create new vaccines, new tech to clean up the planet, get mining and resource production into space, and more? Only those with certain genetic gifts, but the "feel goods" want to believe everyone is identical. Equality is not this. Equality comes from things like providing access ramps for those who cannot climb stairs, providing tools for those to make the best of what they have. You don't "pull down" people to make equality, you lift up people. And this means that you see who needs help, and give it. And you can't do that of you pretend everyone is the same. As a side note, plumbers, electricians, those working in construction, arborists, on and on, there are many very comfortable, well paying jobs open to those without advanced science, math, language skills. In my public school, both at grade and high school levels, we had shop class, and in high school, auto, electrical wiring, art, A/V, environmental science (farming), and more. There was something for everyone to excel in, and I took most of these, on top of advanced sciences/math, for fun, for the sheer sake of knowledge. Don't remove potential, instead, seek how to enable every child's capabilities. Lift up, don't pull down.

katbyte 5y ago

FYI Vancouver is still keeping advance placement classes which is the typical way for smart students to excel. The program being cut was only at two schools in the super rich part of town and kinda seemed like a “free private school program in public school”

toomanybeersies 5y ago

Why do school boards need to be elected at all? Like electing judges and sheriffs, this seems to be a peculiarly American thing. Most other countries appoint professionals to manage their education systems, and for good reason.

dexterdog 5y ago

> The solution is this: Ban anyone without a minimum teaching experience of x years from participating on boards, bring all teacher salaries up to comfortable middle-class in every district and give them back their authority in the classroom. Otherwise this downward slide into illiteracy will continue until North America is dominated by an idiot majority. The problem with this solution is that there is barely enough interest in most places to fill a board when almost everybody is eligible. I've been married to a school board-er. It's a thankless job, far more thankless than being a teacher, which is a job with an actual salary and very good job safety.