5 ms·

It really does feel like all of this hand-wringing around the state micro-managing syllabi (esp in Math), is sort of skirting around the core issue of having be

It really does feel like all of this hand-wringing around the state micro-managing syllabi (esp in Math), is sort of skirting around the core issue of having better math teachers. This involves paying teachers paying more and treating them with respect? Nah, lets have endless conversations about how whether we should not learn math at all!

nostromo 4y ago
We pay our teachers well in the US compared to our better-performing peers. And who doesn't respect teachers? More money isn't the solution.
- hollandheese 4y ago
  >We pay our teachers well in the US compared to our better-performing peers. And who doesn't respect teachers? Have you been to the US? Because most people here don't respect teachers. And we pay teachers almost nothing.
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    > And we pay teachers almost nothing. That is largely not true, though certainly true in some cases. Teacher salaries are set by the local school district and range from "reasonable" to "not great". Overall, teachers make about $51,000/year while bachelor's degree holders as a whole make about $59,600/year. Against that, you have to recognize that the teacher pay is for nine months, while the bachelor's degree number is for twelve months. If the typical bachelor's degree holder worked only nine months, one would expect their salary to be about $44,700, considerably less than the typical teacher. Sources: https://mint.intuit.com/salary/teacher https://mint.intuit.com/salary/teacher https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cba https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cba
    - threatofrain 4y ago
      Many teachers have a masters, although places like Florida are looking to change that.
- jelkand 4y ago
  Teachers get a very superficial respect. They get lip service, but are not treated in accordance with the nominal respect they get.
  - JackFr 4y ago
    Do you believe that the current cohort of teachers would better serve our students if they received more respect? Or do you believe that if the profession were more respected, it would attract a better, more qualified class of teacher, who could then better educate the students?
    - jelkand 4y ago
      I speak for myself, not the original comment, but more the latter than the former. I think of it this way: "What needs to change to make teaching children and young adults appealing compared to going into industry?" And, to be clear, I think teachers are generally qualified. Math just represents a very acute failure mode of our education system.
  - pj_mukh 4y ago
    Honestly, they don't even get lip service anymore. Parents micro-managing and mistreating teachers made teaching the leading edge profession of the Great resignation.
chongli 4y ago
This involves paying teachers paying more and treating them with respect? Nah, lets have endless conversations about how whether we should not learn math at all! That issue is highly political though. Even when setting aside the issue of selling to voters a pay raise for teachers. Good math teachers are specialists with a math education. To attract them to teaching you’re going to have to pay them more than other teachers. How do you sell that, politically, to teachers’ unions? There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance going on with non-specialist teachers teaching math. They’re teaching bad habits and passing on their own math anxiety to students but if you confront them about it they get very defensive and start talking about school funding and textbooks and materials and computers. The truth is: that’s all bunk. Third world countries are better at teaching math. They don’t get distracted with computers and they don’t waste time and money redesigning the curriculum and printing new textbooks all the time. They teach math in the old, straightforward style and emphasize practice.
- pj_mukh 4y ago
  No point comparing ourselves to the third world. The American middle-class has different expectations (of pay, of lifestyle, of cultural occupational conditions) than the third world, we just have to accept that. And FWIW, having had gone to a "third world" school, those teachers are great at teaching people to do well on tests, not to think critically. Paying english teachers less also means you get bad english teachers that are bad at teaching critical reading (which..yikes!), so I don't really see the point of that pay discrimination. I would absolutely advocate for removing administrative bloat, but we should be recruiting teachers like tech workers.
  - chongli 4y ago
    Paying english teachers less also means you get bad english teachers that are bad at teaching critical reading (which..yikes!), so I don't really see the point of that pay discrimination. I haven't seen any evidence that any particular teaching method delivers tangible improvements in critical thinking skills over the school term. Do you know of any? It's important to measure skills at the beginning and end of a term (and a followup years later) in order to show improvements at the individual level. Otherwise you risk selecting for students' prior ability.
JackFr 4y ago
> This involves paying teachers paying more and treating them with respect? It seems like paying the same people more money to do the same job won't change outcomes in any meaningful way. Why would anyone expect it to? Paying teachers more in a competitive market, on the other hand, might has a dramatic impact as we might likely end up with very different teachers.
cs702 4y ago
There are ~23,500 high-schools in the country.[a] If the US had allocated, say, 10% of the $8T cost of the "war on terror"[b] for math education, each public high-school would have had an additional $34M in its budget -- more than enough to hire multiple amazing math teachers at each high school, drawing only from the top 1% of college graduates, as in Finland. [a] https://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=84 https://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=84 [b] https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar

nostromo 4y ago

We pay our teachers well in the US compared to our better-performing peers. And who doesn't respect teachers? More money isn't the solution.

hollandheese 4y ago
>We pay our teachers well in the US compared to our better-performing peers. And who doesn't respect teachers? Have you been to the US? Because most people here don't respect teachers. And we pay teachers almost nothing.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  > And we pay teachers almost nothing. That is largely not true, though certainly true in some cases. Teacher salaries are set by the local school district and range from "reasonable" to "not great". Overall, teachers make about $51,000/year while bachelor's degree holders as a whole make about $59,600/year. Against that, you have to recognize that the teacher pay is for nine months, while the bachelor's degree number is for twelve months. If the typical bachelor's degree holder worked only nine months, one would expect their salary to be about $44,700, considerably less than the typical teacher. Sources: https://mint.intuit.com/salary/teacher https://mint.intuit.com/salary/teacher https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cba https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cba
  - threatofrain 4y ago
    Many teachers have a masters, although places like Florida are looking to change that.
jelkand 4y ago
Teachers get a very superficial respect. They get lip service, but are not treated in accordance with the nominal respect they get.
- JackFr 4y ago
  Do you believe that the current cohort of teachers would better serve our students if they received more respect? Or do you believe that if the profession were more respected, it would attract a better, more qualified class of teacher, who could then better educate the students?
  - jelkand 4y ago
    I speak for myself, not the original comment, but more the latter than the former. I think of it this way: "What needs to change to make teaching children and young adults appealing compared to going into industry?" And, to be clear, I think teachers are generally qualified. Math just represents a very acute failure mode of our education system.
- pj_mukh 4y ago
  Honestly, they don't even get lip service anymore. Parents micro-managing and mistreating teachers made teaching the leading edge profession of the Great resignation.

chongli 4y ago

This involves paying teachers paying more and treating them with respect? Nah, lets have endless conversations about how whether we should not learn math at all! That issue is highly political though. Even when setting aside the issue of selling to voters a pay raise for teachers. Good math teachers are specialists with a math education. To attract them to teaching you’re going to have to pay them more than other teachers. How do you sell that, politically, to teachers’ unions? There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance going on with non-specialist teachers teaching math. They’re teaching bad habits and passing on their own math anxiety to students but if you confront them about it they get very defensive and start talking about school funding and textbooks and materials and computers. The truth is: that’s all bunk. Third world countries are better at teaching math. They don’t get distracted with computers and they don’t waste time and money redesigning the curriculum and printing new textbooks all the time. They teach math in the old, straightforward style and emphasize practice.

pj_mukh 4y ago
No point comparing ourselves to the third world. The American middle-class has different expectations (of pay, of lifestyle, of cultural occupational conditions) than the third world, we just have to accept that. And FWIW, having had gone to a "third world" school, those teachers are great at teaching people to do well on tests, not to think critically. Paying english teachers less also means you get bad english teachers that are bad at teaching critical reading (which..yikes!), so I don't really see the point of that pay discrimination. I would absolutely advocate for removing administrative bloat, but we should be recruiting teachers like tech workers.
- chongli 4y ago
  Paying english teachers less also means you get bad english teachers that are bad at teaching critical reading (which..yikes!), so I don't really see the point of that pay discrimination. I haven't seen any evidence that any particular teaching method delivers tangible improvements in critical thinking skills over the school term. Do you know of any? It's important to measure skills at the beginning and end of a term (and a followup years later) in order to show improvements at the individual level. Otherwise you risk selecting for students' prior ability.

JackFr 4y ago

> This involves paying teachers paying more and treating them with respect? It seems like paying the same people more money to do the same job won't change outcomes in any meaningful way. Why would anyone expect it to? Paying teachers more in a competitive market, on the other hand, might has a dramatic impact as we might likely end up with very different teachers.

cs702 4y ago

There are ~23,500 high-schools in the country.[a] If the US had allocated, say, 10% of the $8T cost of the "war on terror"[b] for math education, each public high-school would have had an additional $34M in its budget -- more than enough to hire multiple amazing math teachers at each high school, drawing only from the top 1% of college graduates, as in Finland. [a] https://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=84 https://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=84 [b] https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar