6 ms·

> Indeed, it may even have adverse effects: you draw people who want the money, instead of people drawn to the profession intrinsically. This sentiment is a bi

> Indeed, it may even have adverse effects: you draw people who want the money, instead of people drawn to the profession intrinsically. This sentiment is a big part of suppressing teacher wages, and needs to stop. No, raising teacher pay will not result in getting worse teachers. We shouldn't be relying on charity and self-sacrifice on the part of teachers. [EDIT] The general problem here is that we default to "pay more to get better workers" unless the job produces clear social good, then it's suddenly like "well if you don't want to badly under-earn compared to what you could make doing almost anything else, then you must not have your heart in the right place so will be bad at this anyway". It's some weird kind of sour-grapes thinking that we use to avoid paying people doing actually clearly important and socially beneficial jobs what they're worth, while the real money goes to people doing jobs that... aren't so clearly beneficial.

mlyle 4y ago
> We shouldn't be relying on charity and self-sacrifice on the part of teachers. I agree, but we have a whole lot of data that indicates that raising comp often has perverse effects. A] There's a whole lot wrong with education resulting in bad outcomes. B] And the way we compensate teachers is terrible and unjust. I am not convinced that addressing B will have a huge effect on A.
- corrral 4y ago
  > I agree, but we have a whole lot of data that indicates that raising comp often has perverse effects. Better tell waves hands at the entire private sector. They don't seem to have gotten that message. Seems like an opportunity to start a company paying 30% under your competition, so you can out-compete them by getting better workers.
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
  I know this'll sound daft... Can you share some of this data? I know there's related studies, like the famous "pick up your kids from daycare on time" study -- and of course plenty of examples about incentive structures gone wrong. However, I think those are different in subtle but important ways. The point being made here, AFAICT, is that paying more would increase the available pool of candidates. All the people who are currently interested in teaching would surely stick around -- and a lot more people would be interested, too. Given the current issues with hiring and retention, it's difficult to see how that would be a bad thing.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    edit: many edits below for clarity since original comment 11mins ago. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10589297/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10589297/ https://news.gallup.com/poll/150383/majority-american-workers-not-engaged-jobs.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/150383/majority-american-worker... http://www.timothy-judge.com/Judge,%20Piccolo,%20Podsakoff,%20et%20al.%20(JVB%202010).pdf http://www.timothy-judge.com/Judge,%20Piccolo,%20Podsakoff,%... etc. Extrinsic incentives are correlated only very slightly with performance, job satisfaction and self-reported measures of motivation. The correlations that exist are confounded because causation is likely reversed (people with higher satisfaction, performance, and motivation are paid more). When we study, in isolation, extrinsic incentives on tasks that are intrinsically rewarding, they appear demotivating. Anecdotally, I see the effect in the classroom itself: rewarding students for things that they otherwise would do for the challenge and their own reward sucks the fun out of it really fast. The absolute last thing in the world you want to do is pivot someone from evaluating a task based on its intrinsic rewards to thinking about it in terms of extrinsic factors. I'm actually taking over a competitive math program next year that has had a pretty big "candy bribe" component of it that I need to figure out how to unwind. It's one thing to unexpectedly give out stickers, candy, etc, and let students know you're celebrating awesome performance... it's another still to condition students to think that doing math is only worthwhile because Jolly Ranchers will be dispensed. > The point being made here, AFAICT, is that paying more would increase the available pool of candidates. I think in the very long run that's true: there are people who would like to teach that are steered away from it during college because they figure out they just can't make the numbers work. But given that a teaching credential is a pretty substantial structural bar, I don't think it changes things much in the medium run.
mlyle 4y ago
> The general problem here is that we default to "pay more to get better workers" The data on whether this works in general is very, very muddy. > unless the job produces clear social good, Really, any job that lots of people are drawn to by the love of it gets crap compensation by default. It affects the supply curve too much. I love teaching and do it for 1/10th or less of what I could make for equivalent effort elsewhere. And yah, this has terrible outcomes and is unfair.
- corrral 4y ago
  > The data on whether this works in general is very, very muddy. My spouse, with about a decade of teaching experience at the time, once had a former student drop out of high school and start working at as a gas station clerk at a major chain. The student was making almost as much as my spouse, and if she stuck with it she'd be out-earning my spouse in a year or two. Total comp, benefits included, not talking just wages (school worker benefits are not and have not for some time been that good, really, and at least in my area are now pretty poor compared to offerings in the private sector). Clerking at a gas station. As a high-school dropout. I'm pretty confident teacher pay is so bad that this "raising pay will draw worse candidates" (where the fuck is that hand-wringing when CEO pay comes up at board meetings? Any pro sports teams worrying they might pay too much to attract good players?) thing is not a real effect worth worrying about, if we're talking pay increases for teachers that are anywhere in a remotely plausible range. > Really, any job that lots of people are drawn to by the love of it gets crap compensation by default. It affects the supply curve too much. Sure, and as is typical you get some good people who are semi-retired from a better-earning career or have a much higher-earning spouse, who don't really need the salary at all. You don't get the trust-fund kids as much, as in other careers that are similarly pro-social or artistic, since teacher social status is somewhere under the floor, but otherwise it's similar. But that's not enough, and I don't think paying teachers 50-75% of what any decent teacher could make doing something else with a teaching degree—not even assuming some entirely different life-path—is a great way to get a good candidate pool. Enough bodies, based solely on some idealistic drive (check in again in 5 years, let alone 10, on how well that's doing sustaining them, and for the ones who do need the money, which is most of them, on how their financial situation is adding to the stress that's driving them out of teaching) sure, but not enough good candidates. And it's not enough to keep the good ones around.

mlyle 4y ago

> We shouldn't be relying on charity and self-sacrifice on the part of teachers. I agree, but we have a whole lot of data that indicates that raising comp often has perverse effects. A] There's a whole lot wrong with education resulting in bad outcomes. B] And the way we compensate teachers is terrible and unjust. I am not convinced that addressing B will have a huge effect on A.

corrral 4y ago
> I agree, but we have a whole lot of data that indicates that raising comp often has perverse effects. Better tell waves hands at the entire private sector. They don't seem to have gotten that message. Seems like an opportunity to start a company paying 30% under your competition, so you can out-compete them by getting better workers.
q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
I know this'll sound daft... Can you share some of this data? I know there's related studies, like the famous "pick up your kids from daycare on time" study -- and of course plenty of examples about incentive structures gone wrong. However, I think those are different in subtle but important ways. The point being made here, AFAICT, is that paying more would increase the available pool of candidates. All the people who are currently interested in teaching would surely stick around -- and a lot more people would be interested, too. Given the current issues with hiring and retention, it's difficult to see how that would be a bad thing.
- mlyle 4y ago
  edit: many edits below for clarity since original comment 11mins ago. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10589297/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10589297/ https://news.gallup.com/poll/150383/majority-american-workers-not-engaged-jobs.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/150383/majority-american-worker... http://www.timothy-judge.com/Judge,%20Piccolo,%20Podsakoff,%20et%20al.%20(JVB%202010).pdf http://www.timothy-judge.com/Judge,%20Piccolo,%20Podsakoff,%... etc. Extrinsic incentives are correlated only very slightly with performance, job satisfaction and self-reported measures of motivation. The correlations that exist are confounded because causation is likely reversed (people with higher satisfaction, performance, and motivation are paid more). When we study, in isolation, extrinsic incentives on tasks that are intrinsically rewarding, they appear demotivating. Anecdotally, I see the effect in the classroom itself: rewarding students for things that they otherwise would do for the challenge and their own reward sucks the fun out of it really fast. The absolute last thing in the world you want to do is pivot someone from evaluating a task based on its intrinsic rewards to thinking about it in terms of extrinsic factors. I'm actually taking over a competitive math program next year that has had a pretty big "candy bribe" component of it that I need to figure out how to unwind. It's one thing to unexpectedly give out stickers, candy, etc, and let students know you're celebrating awesome performance... it's another still to condition students to think that doing math is only worthwhile because Jolly Ranchers will be dispensed. > The point being made here, AFAICT, is that paying more would increase the available pool of candidates. I think in the very long run that's true: there are people who would like to teach that are steered away from it during college because they figure out they just can't make the numbers work. But given that a teaching credential is a pretty substantial structural bar, I don't think it changes things much in the medium run.

mlyle 4y ago

> The general problem here is that we default to "pay more to get better workers" The data on whether this works in general is very, very muddy. > unless the job produces clear social good, Really, any job that lots of people are drawn to by the love of it gets crap compensation by default. It affects the supply curve too much. I love teaching and do it for 1/10th or less of what I could make for equivalent effort elsewhere. And yah, this has terrible outcomes and is unfair.

corrral 4y ago
> The data on whether this works in general is very, very muddy. My spouse, with about a decade of teaching experience at the time, once had a former student drop out of high school and start working at as a gas station clerk at a major chain. The student was making almost as much as my spouse, and if she stuck with it she'd be out-earning my spouse in a year or two. Total comp, benefits included, not talking just wages (school worker benefits are not and have not for some time been that good, really, and at least in my area are now pretty poor compared to offerings in the private sector). Clerking at a gas station. As a high-school dropout. I'm pretty confident teacher pay is so bad that this "raising pay will draw worse candidates" (where the fuck is that hand-wringing when CEO pay comes up at board meetings? Any pro sports teams worrying they might pay too much to attract good players?) thing is not a real effect worth worrying about, if we're talking pay increases for teachers that are anywhere in a remotely plausible range. > Really, any job that lots of people are drawn to by the love of it gets crap compensation by default. It affects the supply curve too much. Sure, and as is typical you get some good people who are semi-retired from a better-earning career or have a much higher-earning spouse, who don't really need the salary at all. You don't get the trust-fund kids as much, as in other careers that are similarly pro-social or artistic, since teacher social status is somewhere under the floor, but otherwise it's similar. But that's not enough, and I don't think paying teachers 50-75% of what any decent teacher could make doing something else with a teaching degree—not even assuming some entirely different life-path—is a great way to get a good candidate pool. Enough bodies, based solely on some idealistic drive (check in again in 5 years, let alone 10, on how well that's doing sustaining them, and for the ones who do need the money, which is most of them, on how their financial situation is adding to the stress that's driving them out of teaching) sure, but not enough good candidates. And it's not enough to keep the good ones around.