5 ms·

So the fact that one of the most powerful unions (at least in my state, CA) has orchestrated a pay scheme in which new entrants to the field do not benefit what

So the fact that one of the most powerful unions (at least in my state, CA) has orchestrated a pay scheme in which new entrants to the field do not benefit whatsoever is not in the least bit surprising. Teachers unions don't exist to help students, they don't exist to help those who might want to become teachers, they exist to help entrenched teachers maximize the amount of money they pull out of the state. This is why in California entry level teachers, who are doing the same job as 65 year old teachers, are making less than half.

chii 5y ago
> maximize the amount of money they pull out of the state the root "cause" of the problem is that the money spent on education does not produce profit (to fund the endeavour). It is reliant on a taxation scheme, which means the source of funding is adversarial to the payment of wages. Private schools _do_ align the profit motives, but it also breaks the social good that free public education has. I dunno how one can solve this problem.
- iamkroot 5y ago
  Weirdly (to me, at least) private school teachers make substantially less than public. The ones I know say it's worth it to be free of the onerous beauracracy that plagues public education.
  - sjtindell 5y ago
    I googled a stat thinking you were wrong and you’re very right, $50k public vs $36k private in US.
    - HarryHirsch 5y ago
      Shame on whoever thinks the salary difference goes to the education management companies behind the charter school movement. (Looking at you, Edison Schools failing the young people of Philadelphia!)
      - erosenbe0 5y ago
        Charter schools are not the same as private
    - caddemon 5y ago
      Not only that but a career public school teacher in many places can retire with a nice pension, private school teachers don't. Even if you look at some of the best private high schools in the country the teacher salary just isn't great. The only way it makes sense financially to teach at a private school is if you have kids you want to go there. Many schools will do reduced or even free tuition for teachers' kids. It's relatively common for private school teachers to either be early retirees from a more lucrative field or have a spouse that works. That said, many private school teachers do it because they have more flexibility in designing a curriculum, are much less likely to encounter disruptive students, etc. Private schools also don't actually do 180 days. So it is a more enjoyable job day to day for sure.
  - joecot 5y ago
    Unfortunately one of those onerous bureaucracies involves having an actual education in how to educate, or a teaching certification. Which is how my private catholic high school had a baseball coach as a history teacher who didn't really know how to teach history.
    - caddemon 5y ago
      I had a few former scientists (left the field after PhD) teach me in high school and holy shit it was amazing, leagues above anything my friends were learning in the local public school. There are pros and cons, but the point I was at in high school I found much more value in talking to those science teachers than the ones that had an education in education with science as a secondary concern. Teaching certifications have a place but I also think it is a good thing most private schools don't require them.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    That's not surprising, the private teachers are not unionized. I think a lot of the hate for teachers' unions is driven by decades of propaganda - both from private institutions and both of the major political parties. Slashing teacher salaries by ~20% is the wet dream of many "education reform" advocates. Though I wonder what effect that will have on society and the quality of education, especially for those that can't afford the top tier private schools.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      A big part of the hate for teachers unions is the inability to fire bad teachers. >California has more than 1,000 school districts and 300,000 teachers, yet only 667 dismissal cases were filed with the Office of Administrative Hearings between January 2003 and March 2012, according to the Los Angeles Unified School District”s chief labor and employment counsel, Alex Molina. Only 130 of those actually got to the hearing stage, and 82 resulted in dismissals — fewer than 10 a year. https://www.willitsnews.com/2013/01/26/firing-a-tenured-teacher-in-california-can-be-tough/ https://www.willitsnews.com/2013/01/26/firing-a-tenured-teac...
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    This makes sense to me (and matches the facts I've found) -- when folks talk about private industry being "more efficient" they often mean cheaper, which also often means those near the bottom rung are the worst paid relative to work and experience. It's unnecessarily explosive and results in qualified and motivated teachers leaving the industry prematurely.
  - onphonenow 5y ago
    It's a lot more than that from a QOL standpoint. Private schools - a lot less paperwork and mind bending BS. - flexibility is higher. Hey, we're going to teach outside on stumps during the pandemic -> no problem. This is with most things. That said private schools tended to stay open with modifications (so if you didn't want that public school would be better to be at to check out during pandemic). - Teacher has a lot of authority in their class. - Teachers / teacher aids etc that don't work out, pretty simple process not to bring them back for the following year - so peer group tends to enjoy working with each other. - You don't have to wade through the massive teacher certification processes necessarily. - Admin often has your back on discipline issues. Some downsides too. - You can be let go easily if school feels its not working out (practically, if you have things covered its hard enough to find teachers they will work to keep you). - Pay is lower. - Expectations can be higher at good schools ie, you might need a masters etc. - Quality of programs varies WILDLY!
  - erosenbe0 5y ago
    Private schools (non charter, non voucher) have more engaged parents and by being selective and flexible may have a lower number of children with special needs, behavioral disorders, and/or more flexibility in providing services for them.
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  The standard answer seems to be vouchers. Keep the free eduction, but let schools compete for students.
  - HarryHirsch 5y ago
    We are seeing the outcomes at universities. We are getting football teams and really fancy gyms but not better education. On the contrary, if you fail students who shouldn't really be there you get in trouble with the administration. The naive free market solution does not work.
    - YATA0 5y ago
      >We are getting football teams and really fancy gyms but not better education. This is an often flouted myth. Football pays for itself and then some. There's more money in education, per capita, inflation adjusted, then there ever has been ever. It's not a money problem, and it's not a sports problem.
    - ryan93 5y ago
      The government gives out unlimited money for university loans. not a free market. Its okay if you arent familiar with american higher education.
      - spamizbad 5y ago
        The government doesn’t actually do this. Your eligibility for such loans is means-tested and you’re only obtaining them at a discounted rate. And they cannot be discharged during bankruptcy in most cases. It’s like saying home mortgages are free money because they’re also partially backed by the fed.
        nate_meurer 5y ago
        It's pretty much universally accepted at this point that the flood of government student loan money has both distorted the higher education market, and created a trap for millions of people who have gotten an ineffective education with that "free" money. Your analogy to mortgages is right on, but you've drawn the wrong conclusions. Fed-backed mortgages absolutely functioned as free money. Because the risk of unqualified borrowers was assumed by the government and by opaque, byzantine, and corrupt securitization schemes, banks were incentivized to hand over money to people who weren't able to pay it back. This was, in every sense that matters, "free money". And it led directly to a financial crisis that many millions of people have never fully recovered from.
- notfromhere 5y ago
  Private schools don't align the profit motive. Private schools are able select what students go there, public schools aren't. The biggest factors that contribute to student academic outcomes are household income and parental education levels. Private schools as having a superior educational experience is really about being from wealthier households than it does about better teachers.
tedivm 5y ago
> Teachers unions don't exist to help students, they don't exist to help those who might want to become teachers, they exist to help entrenched teachers maximize the amount of money they pull out of the state. This isn't true at all. I know of teacher unions (that my family members belong to) that have refused deals because they weren't fair to their younger members. My local teacher's union refused a deal that wouldn't have applied to substitute teachers. Just because California has an entrenched entitled boomer problem doesn't mean all unions are bad. You're using one of the worst examples in the country to generalize unions with.
- defterGoose 5y ago
  This feels correct as a California transplant. The incumbents in a lot of verticals have taken entrenching to a new level. Prop 13 being the capstone.
  - tedivm 5y ago
    I lived in California for 10 years (I moved to Chicago last July). The entrenched power is just ridiculous- old politicians never retire, it's all political machines everywhere, and while there are a lot of amazing activists they're fighting huge uphill battles. At the same time costs in lots of areas have risen a huge amount, and Prop 13 incentivizes people being landlords and forces higher prices on newly purchased property to make up for subsidized taxes on those landlords. It's all very frustrating.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      > The entrenched power is just ridiculous- old politicians never retire, it's all political machines everywhere, and while there are a lot of amazing activists they're fighting huge uphill battles. You've probably figured this out by now, but that sentence describes Illinois as well as it does California.
    - erosenbe0 5y ago
      Welcome to Illinois. More school districts per capita than anywhere else. Everyone gets their own highly inefficient fiefdom.

chii 5y ago

> maximize the amount of money they pull out of the state the root "cause" of the problem is that the money spent on education does not produce profit (to fund the endeavour). It is reliant on a taxation scheme, which means the source of funding is adversarial to the payment of wages. Private schools _do_ align the profit motives, but it also breaks the social good that free public education has. I dunno how one can solve this problem.

iamkroot 5y ago
Weirdly (to me, at least) private school teachers make substantially less than public. The ones I know say it's worth it to be free of the onerous beauracracy that plagues public education.
- sjtindell 5y ago
  I googled a stat thinking you were wrong and you’re very right, $50k public vs $36k private in US.
  - HarryHirsch 5y ago
    Shame on whoever thinks the salary difference goes to the education management companies behind the charter school movement. (Looking at you, Edison Schools failing the young people of Philadelphia!)
    - erosenbe0 5y ago
      Charter schools are not the same as private
  - caddemon 5y ago
    Not only that but a career public school teacher in many places can retire with a nice pension, private school teachers don't. Even if you look at some of the best private high schools in the country the teacher salary just isn't great. The only way it makes sense financially to teach at a private school is if you have kids you want to go there. Many schools will do reduced or even free tuition for teachers' kids. It's relatively common for private school teachers to either be early retirees from a more lucrative field or have a spouse that works. That said, many private school teachers do it because they have more flexibility in designing a curriculum, are much less likely to encounter disruptive students, etc. Private schools also don't actually do 180 days. So it is a more enjoyable job day to day for sure.
- joecot 5y ago
  Unfortunately one of those onerous bureaucracies involves having an actual education in how to educate, or a teaching certification. Which is how my private catholic high school had a baseball coach as a history teacher who didn't really know how to teach history.
  - caddemon 5y ago
    I had a few former scientists (left the field after PhD) teach me in high school and holy shit it was amazing, leagues above anything my friends were learning in the local public school. There are pros and cons, but the point I was at in high school I found much more value in talking to those science teachers than the ones that had an education in education with science as a secondary concern. Teaching certifications have a place but I also think it is a good thing most private schools don't require them.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  That's not surprising, the private teachers are not unionized. I think a lot of the hate for teachers' unions is driven by decades of propaganda - both from private institutions and both of the major political parties. Slashing teacher salaries by ~20% is the wet dream of many "education reform" advocates. Though I wonder what effect that will have on society and the quality of education, especially for those that can't afford the top tier private schools.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    A big part of the hate for teachers unions is the inability to fire bad teachers. >California has more than 1,000 school districts and 300,000 teachers, yet only 667 dismissal cases were filed with the Office of Administrative Hearings between January 2003 and March 2012, according to the Los Angeles Unified School District”s chief labor and employment counsel, Alex Molina. Only 130 of those actually got to the hearing stage, and 82 resulted in dismissals — fewer than 10 a year. https://www.willitsnews.com/2013/01/26/firing-a-tenured-teacher-in-california-can-be-tough/ https://www.willitsnews.com/2013/01/26/firing-a-tenured-teac...
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  This makes sense to me (and matches the facts I've found) -- when folks talk about private industry being "more efficient" they often mean cheaper, which also often means those near the bottom rung are the worst paid relative to work and experience. It's unnecessarily explosive and results in qualified and motivated teachers leaving the industry prematurely.
- onphonenow 5y ago
  It's a lot more than that from a QOL standpoint. Private schools - a lot less paperwork and mind bending BS. - flexibility is higher. Hey, we're going to teach outside on stumps during the pandemic -> no problem. This is with most things. That said private schools tended to stay open with modifications (so if you didn't want that public school would be better to be at to check out during pandemic). - Teacher has a lot of authority in their class. - Teachers / teacher aids etc that don't work out, pretty simple process not to bring them back for the following year - so peer group tends to enjoy working with each other. - You don't have to wade through the massive teacher certification processes necessarily. - Admin often has your back on discipline issues. Some downsides too. - You can be let go easily if school feels its not working out (practically, if you have things covered its hard enough to find teachers they will work to keep you). - Pay is lower. - Expectations can be higher at good schools ie, you might need a masters etc. - Quality of programs varies WILDLY!
- erosenbe0 5y ago
  Private schools (non charter, non voucher) have more engaged parents and by being selective and flexible may have a lower number of children with special needs, behavioral disorders, and/or more flexibility in providing services for them.
nate_meurer 5y ago
The standard answer seems to be vouchers. Keep the free eduction, but let schools compete for students.
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  We are seeing the outcomes at universities. We are getting football teams and really fancy gyms but not better education. On the contrary, if you fail students who shouldn't really be there you get in trouble with the administration. The naive free market solution does not work.
  - YATA0 5y ago
    >We are getting football teams and really fancy gyms but not better education. This is an often flouted myth. Football pays for itself and then some. There's more money in education, per capita, inflation adjusted, then there ever has been ever. It's not a money problem, and it's not a sports problem.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    The government gives out unlimited money for university loans. not a free market. Its okay if you arent familiar with american higher education.
    - spamizbad 5y ago
      The government doesn’t actually do this. Your eligibility for such loans is means-tested and you’re only obtaining them at a discounted rate. And they cannot be discharged during bankruptcy in most cases. It’s like saying home mortgages are free money because they’re also partially backed by the fed.
      - nate_meurer 5y ago
        It's pretty much universally accepted at this point that the flood of government student loan money has both distorted the higher education market, and created a trap for millions of people who have gotten an ineffective education with that "free" money. Your analogy to mortgages is right on, but you've drawn the wrong conclusions. Fed-backed mortgages absolutely functioned as free money. Because the risk of unqualified borrowers was assumed by the government and by opaque, byzantine, and corrupt securitization schemes, banks were incentivized to hand over money to people who weren't able to pay it back. This was, in every sense that matters, "free money". And it led directly to a financial crisis that many millions of people have never fully recovered from.
notfromhere 5y ago
Private schools don't align the profit motive. Private schools are able select what students go there, public schools aren't. The biggest factors that contribute to student academic outcomes are household income and parental education levels. Private schools as having a superior educational experience is really about being from wealthier households than it does about better teachers.

tedivm 5y ago

> Teachers unions don't exist to help students, they don't exist to help those who might want to become teachers, they exist to help entrenched teachers maximize the amount of money they pull out of the state. This isn't true at all. I know of teacher unions (that my family members belong to) that have refused deals because they weren't fair to their younger members. My local teacher's union refused a deal that wouldn't have applied to substitute teachers. Just because California has an entrenched entitled boomer problem doesn't mean all unions are bad. You're using one of the worst examples in the country to generalize unions with.

defterGoose 5y ago
This feels correct as a California transplant. The incumbents in a lot of verticals have taken entrenching to a new level. Prop 13 being the capstone.
- tedivm 5y ago
  I lived in California for 10 years (I moved to Chicago last July). The entrenched power is just ridiculous- old politicians never retire, it's all political machines everywhere, and while there are a lot of amazing activists they're fighting huge uphill battles. At the same time costs in lots of areas have risen a huge amount, and Prop 13 incentivizes people being landlords and forces higher prices on newly purchased property to make up for subsidized taxes on those landlords. It's all very frustrating.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    > The entrenched power is just ridiculous- old politicians never retire, it's all political machines everywhere, and while there are a lot of amazing activists they're fighting huge uphill battles. You've probably figured this out by now, but that sentence describes Illinois as well as it does California.
  - erosenbe0 5y ago
    Welcome to Illinois. More school districts per capita than anywhere else. Everyone gets their own highly inefficient fiefdom.