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In all of these pay scales it is only the absolute top of the scale that reaches 100k, and LA never reaches it. Very few teachers reach this. By contrast progr

by jshen 15y ago

In all of these pay scales it is only the absolute top of the scale that reaches 100k, and LA never reaches it. Very few teachers reach this. By contrast programmers reach 100k rather quickly, yet they aren't as large in the original link. Let's remember what patio11 was replying to," I was surprised to see the relatively large box of elementary school teachers. Surely those jobs don't pay that well."

bzbarsky 15y ago
In fairness the comment about teachers in suburban districts was that two teacher salaries would be near 200k, not over 200k. As far as the original comment about teachers, that's just basic statistics. There are lots of teachers. If you assume that people who earn >$400k or so marry people from other occupations more or less uniformly, you'd expect close to 1% of teachers to show up on this chart, which would be a big box. In practice, only 0.9% of teachers show up, but the real takeaway is that teachers are relatively well-educated and so not unlikely to actually be marrying people who end up with high salaries. There are plenty of occupations on that chart in which a lot less than 1% of the people in the occupation end up in the top 1% of households. So as far as comparing box sizes, you have to balance better pay for programmers against the fact that there are a lot fewer of them than there are teachers...
- jshen 15y ago
  "In fairness the comment about teachers in suburban districts was that two teacher salaries would be near 200k" Precisely, and it's false. Two teachers, the vast majority of them, will not be near 200k. Look at my link, and it's obvious that if you randomly select 2 teachers, the vast majority of them will not be near $200k. "If you assume that people who earn >$400k or so marry people from other occupations more or less uniformly, you'd expect close to 1% of teachers to show up on this chart" Right, but you're making my point for me. My point is that teachers are not showing up because of their own salary.
  - bzbarsky 15y ago
    > if you randomly select 2 teachers Then you won't get 2 teachers "in their peak earning years". That part is important too. There are two separate points here: 1) Teachers are not ending up in the top 1% because they make enough on their own. Very true. 2) Teachers in rich suburban school districts will end up near $100k in terms of salary in their peak earning years (which for teachers generally means near retirement). Still true. No problem for both of those to be true, since $200k is nowhere near the 1% cutoff for household AGI.
    - jshen 15y ago
      We're splitting hairs over wording and possible implicit meanings, and I'm pretty sure we agree on the real issue, so yeah. One last thing, not only do they have to be in their peak earning years, they also need to max out the points from additional education. I don't know how many teachers do that.
      - bzbarsky 15y ago
        Yeah, I'm not entirely sure about the additional education thing either. Most teachers I know are spending a fair bit of time on that, but I'm not sure how that translates into the +15, +30, etc system of points...

by jshen 15y ago

bzbarsky 15y ago

In fairness the comment about teachers in suburban districts was that two teacher salaries would be near 200k, not over 200k. As far as the original comment about teachers, that's just basic statistics. There are lots of teachers. If you assume that people who earn >$400k or so marry people from other occupations more or less uniformly, you'd expect close to 1% of teachers to show up on this chart, which would be a big box. In practice, only 0.9% of teachers show up, but the real takeaway is that teachers are relatively well-educated and so not unlikely to actually be marrying people who end up with high salaries. There are plenty of occupations on that chart in which a lot less than 1% of the people in the occupation end up in the top 1% of households. So as far as comparing box sizes, you have to balance better pay for programmers against the fact that there are a lot fewer of them than there are teachers...

jshen 15y ago
"In fairness the comment about teachers in suburban districts was that two teacher salaries would be near 200k" Precisely, and it's false. Two teachers, the vast majority of them, will not be near 200k. Look at my link, and it's obvious that if you randomly select 2 teachers, the vast majority of them will not be near $200k. "If you assume that people who earn >$400k or so marry people from other occupations more or less uniformly, you'd expect close to 1% of teachers to show up on this chart" Right, but you're making my point for me. My point is that teachers are not showing up because of their own salary.
- bzbarsky 15y ago
  > if you randomly select 2 teachers Then you won't get 2 teachers "in their peak earning years". That part is important too. There are two separate points here: 1) Teachers are not ending up in the top 1% because they make enough on their own. Very true. 2) Teachers in rich suburban school districts will end up near $100k in terms of salary in their peak earning years (which for teachers generally means near retirement). Still true. No problem for both of those to be true, since $200k is nowhere near the 1% cutoff for household AGI.
  - jshen 15y ago
    We're splitting hairs over wording and possible implicit meanings, and I'm pretty sure we agree on the real issue, so yeah. One last thing, not only do they have to be in their peak earning years, they also need to max out the points from additional education. I don't know how many teachers do that.
    - bzbarsky 15y ago
      Yeah, I'm not entirely sure about the additional education thing either. Most teachers I know are spending a fair bit of time on that, but I'm not sure how that translates into the +15, +30, etc system of points...