6 ms·

My first “real” job after college (2013) I started at $60k. It was more than my mom, an elementary school teacher, ever made. It felt embarrassing. Teachers are

My first “real” job after college (2013) I started at $60k. It was more than my mom, an elementary school teacher, ever made. It felt embarrassing. Teachers are at least as valuable as software developers (probably more), given their impact on society. Why do they make so little?

mwint 4y ago
Supply and demand, like always. The market cares not one bit about what someone “should” be paid, it cares about the price where no one is left willing to do the same job for less. If you want teachers to be paid more, increase the requirements to be a teacher. I’m a proponent of requiring at least n years experience in real world work, plus education in a hard science or trade.
- nfRfqX5n 4y ago
  What other requirements? Teachers require at least a 4 year degree. Specialists like speech therapists require a masters degree. Try paying off a masters degree with a teachers salary.
- monocasa 4y ago
  I mean, we already have massive teacher shortages. Class sizes keep going up, and many school systems are switching to four day schedules because of staffing issues. Not everything can be looked at from a macro econ 101 supply and demand take; the real world is much more complicated than that.
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    Sometimes it is more complicated, but in this case the analysis does apply. The problem isn't on the demand side, but on the supply. And one way to increase supply is to charge a higher price, or otherwise compensate (more time off, better work environment, prestige, etc ...) and a big part of the reason we have a teacher shortage is that there aren't enough compensatory incentives.
    - monocasa 4y ago
      Sure, my point was more about the parent's analysis of "if you want teachers to be paid more, make less teachers". ie. I'm saying that we don't have to put our hopes in the basket of hoping that economic pressures force higher wages if we make teachers less prevalent; we can simply pay them more.
  - giardini 4y ago
    Supply and demand aren't part of macroeconomics but of microeconomics
    - monocasa 4y ago
      It's part of both.
  - AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
    [dead]
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  > Supply and demand, like always. Not everything follows the rules of capitalism, especially when public school teachers are paid by the government. There are giant teacher shortages across many locales in the US, so according to you we should see skyrocketing teacher pay, but that hasn't happened (pay has gone up in some locales but nowhere near the amount needed to fix teacher shortages).
  - kimbernator 4y ago
    The government doesn't have traditional shareholders like a corporation. Obviously they have their citizens as shareholders of a sort, but at the moment it feels like the loudest groups are prioritizing budget over outcomes.
- kimbernator 4y ago
  Ideological divides aside, this is an obvious downside of modern capitalism; Value is defined as what brings in money, which I would wager 99% of people would generally agree is not the best definition for the public interest. It is the easiest to measure, though. Trite as it may be to say, there's an obvious value to attracting a larger amount of people to teaching, it's just hard to quantify and takes longer than most politicians' term limits to see the larger benefits.
  - kneebonian 4y ago
    > this is an obvious downside of modern capitalism; Value is defined as what brings in money, And in communism value is defined as what will get you promoted. And in autocracy value is loyalty to the party line And in Neo-Nazism value is what kills the most Jews And so on and so forth, let's not pretend that people making short sighted decisions for personal gain is limited to a single economic system it may be more visible or exactrebated by one system or another but it isn't like Lusheynkinism was pushed because it helped the students of the USSR better feed their people.
    - kimbernator 4y ago
      The problem I'm trying to highlight is that the capitalism and focus on the short-term of business is leaking a bit too much into the operation of government. Instead of directing resources in a thoughtful way, it seems more like we're trying to check boxes for the lowest price and forget about the purpose of that funding.
      - jacobr1 4y ago
        Except with something like K12 education we don't actually allocate resources in a market/capitalist fashion. So is your argument that we have a "mindset" problem? One could suggest the opposite problem, we don't have enough markets in eduction and could do more with charters and vouchers, or programs like magnet schools.
  - kristopolous 4y ago
- news_to_me 4y ago
  What demand though? Nobody “buys” what public teachers produce - it’s a public service. It’s up to the state (and ultimately, voters) to decide what teachers make. And it’s even harder for teachers to advocate for themselves in states where teacher unions are banned.
  - mwint 4y ago
    There’s absolutely a supply demand cycle here. If wages are too low, teachers will do something else. School quality suffers, parents (may) make noise, politicians raise the wages (or do something else to appease their constituents). The voters are the customers.
    - kristopolous 4y ago
      Can you give any material historical examples to support your hypothesis?
- dividefuel 4y ago
  I think we tend to see the opposite cycle playing out more often: "We can't hire enough teachers" -> "Let's reduce the requirements" -> "These teachers aren't very good or qualified, there's no reason to give them a raise" -> "We can't hire enough teachers!"
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
Because of targeted propaganda and attacks by an organized political group that holds, as an ideology, that public institutions should not exist and everything should be done by the private sector.
- mattmcknight 4y ago
  If this were true, wouldn't private school teachers be paid considerably more? In my area, they are paid considerably less.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    Why would that follow that private school teachers would be paid more?
    - aisengard 4y ago
      Yeah, the horrible pay in private school is proof enough that the "free" market is the absolute wrong way to go if you want better teachers.
    - mattmcknight 4y ago
      The claim was that school teacher salaries were low "Because of targeted propaganda and attacks by an organized political group that holds, as an ideology, that public institutions should not exist and everything should be done by the private sector. reply". Since private schools are not subject to these attacks, their salaries would not be lowered by these attacks, making them relatively higher.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    That could only happen if private schools hired from a closed environment. In reality, there's a large pool of underpaid public school teachers that private schools can hire from while giving a 5-10% raise, which leaves private school teachers with 1.1x of a low salary.
- kristopolous 4y ago
AndrewGaspar 4y ago
I'm sure your mom is great, but teachers have low value over replacement. Teaching is not a particularly high skill or difficult job.
- _bohm 4y ago
  Difficult how? A relative of mine is a teacher in a high-poverty area and it seems like a very taxing job. Regularly having to deal with children who are emotionally or physically abused, or who recently immigrated and don't even speak english, and trying to teach them math. I daresay this is not a set of challenges most software engineers I've met would be well equipped to handle.
  - AndrewGaspar 4y ago
    I haven't seen a lot of evidence actual teachers handle problem children all that well either.
    - _bohm 4y ago
      Right, seems rather difficult!
- kimbernator 4y ago
  I'd strongly disagree with your assertion that teaching is not a difficult job. I won't address the exertion that goes into individual parts of it, but all of the teachers I know regularly work nights and weekends in addition to handling the emotional stress of teaching, which itself is a huge burden, especially for those working in less affluent schools. In any case, the measure for teachers should not be "how hard is the job" but rather "how important is the outcome". It might be easy enough to replace a teacher without raising the salary (another assertion I have issues with - there are rampant teacher shortages nationwide), but could you not be potentially getting a better teacher and having broadly positive effects on society if you're offering more money?
  - AndrewGaspar 4y ago
RajT88 4y ago
Impact is huge, but they don't generate revenue for the organization which pays them. Therefore - their pay is a function of the budget that is available. Public school budgets are set of course by property taxes. If you teach in a rich district, you get paid more. If you teach in a poor district, you get paid less. The way public schools are funded helps keep the rich rich, and the poor poor. Unfortunately, the political clout is held by the rich who want their tax money to go only to their children and not those other children (or "those othered children" if you like). Even though, if we switched to a more equal funding model for public schools, we'd see improvements in the wealth gap and society in general within a generation or two.
- toast0 4y ago
  > Public school budgets are set of course by property taxes. If you teach in a rich district, you get paid more. If you teach in a poor district, you get paid less. The way public schools are funded helps keep the rich rich, and the poor poor. That depends on the state. In California, most school districts have their budgets set by the state funding formula which provides state funding above the local property tax revenues. There are a handful of school districts where local property tax revenue provides more than the state formula, although I haven't been able to find a list of those districts recently. The California funding system was in place since 1972 (with major changes in 2013). Have we seen improvements in the wealth gap and society in general?
  - RajT88 4y ago
    I wasn't aware of this funding system, so I had to look it up. The (quite prolific) literature suggest that the funding system was severely limited in 1978 by Prop 13.
    - toast0 4y ago
      Sure, school funding has been limited; but the point is that excluding the basic aid school districts (which are mostly smaller districts, afaik, the largest is Newport-Mesa Unified), all of the school districts across the state have been subject to the same funding formulas. Your comment was that equalizing funding would make society better; my question is, given that funding has been mostly equalized in California, is society better? In Washington state, funding for basic education is apportioned from state revenues; local districts can raise taxes for enrichment, but there's a cap, and state funds are provided if local taxes don't meet a minimum. I'm not familiar with other states, but there have been several court cases where states were forced to reform systems that relied on local property tax [1]; and I'd imagine many states would have changed their systems after seeing those results, rather than waiting for their own case. [1] https://edeq.stanford.edu/sections/section-4-lawsuits/landmark-us-cases-related-equality-opportunity-k-12-education https://edeq.stanford.edu/sections/section-4-lawsuits/landma...
bfeynman 4y ago
maybe because "impact on society" is a totally delusional way to make pay scales. Pay is almost entirely based on talent scarcity. Thats why low skill jobs are lower pay, and highly skilled professions pay more accordingly. It doesn't matter at all what your impact is, think of people who work(ed) in mines or in the fields.
- kneebonian 4y ago
  I'd argue it's not just talent scarcity it's measurable talent scarcity. There are really great teachers out there that do a fantastic job there are terrible teachers that suck, they are mostly paid the same because it's hard to differentiate between a good teacher and a bad teacher. Whereas with a software developer especially at small orgs their ability is easier to measure and evaluate.
giardini 4y ago
All explained, without embarrassment, by the undergraduate economics concepts of supply and demand.

mwint 4y ago

Supply and demand, like always. The market cares not one bit about what someone “should” be paid, it cares about the price where no one is left willing to do the same job for less. If you want teachers to be paid more, increase the requirements to be a teacher. I’m a proponent of requiring at least n years experience in real world work, plus education in a hard science or trade.

nfRfqX5n 4y ago
What other requirements? Teachers require at least a 4 year degree. Specialists like speech therapists require a masters degree. Try paying off a masters degree with a teachers salary.
monocasa 4y ago
I mean, we already have massive teacher shortages. Class sizes keep going up, and many school systems are switching to four day schedules because of staffing issues. Not everything can be looked at from a macro econ 101 supply and demand take; the real world is much more complicated than that.
- jacobr1 4y ago
  Sometimes it is more complicated, but in this case the analysis does apply. The problem isn't on the demand side, but on the supply. And one way to increase supply is to charge a higher price, or otherwise compensate (more time off, better work environment, prestige, etc ...) and a big part of the reason we have a teacher shortage is that there aren't enough compensatory incentives.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    Sure, my point was more about the parent's analysis of "if you want teachers to be paid more, make less teachers". ie. I'm saying that we don't have to put our hopes in the basket of hoping that economic pressures force higher wages if we make teachers less prevalent; we can simply pay them more.
- giardini 4y ago
  Supply and demand aren't part of macroeconomics but of microeconomics
  - monocasa 4y ago
    It's part of both.
- AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
  [dead]
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> Supply and demand, like always. Not everything follows the rules of capitalism, especially when public school teachers are paid by the government. There are giant teacher shortages across many locales in the US, so according to you we should see skyrocketing teacher pay, but that hasn't happened (pay has gone up in some locales but nowhere near the amount needed to fix teacher shortages).
- kimbernator 4y ago
  The government doesn't have traditional shareholders like a corporation. Obviously they have their citizens as shareholders of a sort, but at the moment it feels like the loudest groups are prioritizing budget over outcomes.
kimbernator 4y ago
Ideological divides aside, this is an obvious downside of modern capitalism; Value is defined as what brings in money, which I would wager 99% of people would generally agree is not the best definition for the public interest. It is the easiest to measure, though. Trite as it may be to say, there's an obvious value to attracting a larger amount of people to teaching, it's just hard to quantify and takes longer than most politicians' term limits to see the larger benefits.
- kneebonian 4y ago
  > this is an obvious downside of modern capitalism; Value is defined as what brings in money, And in communism value is defined as what will get you promoted. And in autocracy value is loyalty to the party line And in Neo-Nazism value is what kills the most Jews And so on and so forth, let's not pretend that people making short sighted decisions for personal gain is limited to a single economic system it may be more visible or exactrebated by one system or another but it isn't like Lusheynkinism was pushed because it helped the students of the USSR better feed their people.
  - kimbernator 4y ago
    The problem I'm trying to highlight is that the capitalism and focus on the short-term of business is leaking a bit too much into the operation of government. Instead of directing resources in a thoughtful way, it seems more like we're trying to check boxes for the lowest price and forget about the purpose of that funding.
    - jacobr1 4y ago
      Except with something like K12 education we don't actually allocate resources in a market/capitalist fashion. So is your argument that we have a "mindset" problem? One could suggest the opposite problem, we don't have enough markets in eduction and could do more with charters and vouchers, or programs like magnet schools.
- kristopolous 4y ago
news_to_me 4y ago
What demand though? Nobody “buys” what public teachers produce - it’s a public service. It’s up to the state (and ultimately, voters) to decide what teachers make. And it’s even harder for teachers to advocate for themselves in states where teacher unions are banned.
- mwint 4y ago
  There’s absolutely a supply demand cycle here. If wages are too low, teachers will do something else. School quality suffers, parents (may) make noise, politicians raise the wages (or do something else to appease their constituents). The voters are the customers.
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    Can you give any material historical examples to support your hypothesis?
dividefuel 4y ago
I think we tend to see the opposite cycle playing out more often: "We can't hire enough teachers" -> "Let's reduce the requirements" -> "These teachers aren't very good or qualified, there's no reason to give them a raise" -> "We can't hire enough teachers!"

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

Because of targeted propaganda and attacks by an organized political group that holds, as an ideology, that public institutions should not exist and everything should be done by the private sector.

mattmcknight 4y ago
If this were true, wouldn't private school teachers be paid considerably more? In my area, they are paid considerably less.
- monocasa 4y ago
  Why would that follow that private school teachers would be paid more?
  - aisengard 4y ago
    Yeah, the horrible pay in private school is proof enough that the "free" market is the absolute wrong way to go if you want better teachers.
  - mattmcknight 4y ago
    The claim was that school teacher salaries were low "Because of targeted propaganda and attacks by an organized political group that holds, as an ideology, that public institutions should not exist and everything should be done by the private sector. reply". Since private schools are not subject to these attacks, their salaries would not be lowered by these attacks, making them relatively higher.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  That could only happen if private schools hired from a closed environment. In reality, there's a large pool of underpaid public school teachers that private schools can hire from while giving a 5-10% raise, which leaves private school teachers with 1.1x of a low salary.
kristopolous 4y ago

AndrewGaspar 4y ago

I'm sure your mom is great, but teachers have low value over replacement. Teaching is not a particularly high skill or difficult job.

_bohm 4y ago
Difficult how? A relative of mine is a teacher in a high-poverty area and it seems like a very taxing job. Regularly having to deal with children who are emotionally or physically abused, or who recently immigrated and don't even speak english, and trying to teach them math. I daresay this is not a set of challenges most software engineers I've met would be well equipped to handle.
- AndrewGaspar 4y ago
  I haven't seen a lot of evidence actual teachers handle problem children all that well either.
  - _bohm 4y ago
    Right, seems rather difficult!
kimbernator 4y ago
I'd strongly disagree with your assertion that teaching is not a difficult job. I won't address the exertion that goes into individual parts of it, but all of the teachers I know regularly work nights and weekends in addition to handling the emotional stress of teaching, which itself is a huge burden, especially for those working in less affluent schools. In any case, the measure for teachers should not be "how hard is the job" but rather "how important is the outcome". It might be easy enough to replace a teacher without raising the salary (another assertion I have issues with - there are rampant teacher shortages nationwide), but could you not be potentially getting a better teacher and having broadly positive effects on society if you're offering more money?
- AndrewGaspar 4y ago

RajT88 4y ago

Impact is huge, but they don't generate revenue for the organization which pays them. Therefore - their pay is a function of the budget that is available. Public school budgets are set of course by property taxes. If you teach in a rich district, you get paid more. If you teach in a poor district, you get paid less. The way public schools are funded helps keep the rich rich, and the poor poor. Unfortunately, the political clout is held by the rich who want their tax money to go only to their children and not those other children (or "those othered children" if you like). Even though, if we switched to a more equal funding model for public schools, we'd see improvements in the wealth gap and society in general within a generation or two.

toast0 4y ago
> Public school budgets are set of course by property taxes. If you teach in a rich district, you get paid more. If you teach in a poor district, you get paid less. The way public schools are funded helps keep the rich rich, and the poor poor. That depends on the state. In California, most school districts have their budgets set by the state funding formula which provides state funding above the local property tax revenues. There are a handful of school districts where local property tax revenue provides more than the state formula, although I haven't been able to find a list of those districts recently. The California funding system was in place since 1972 (with major changes in 2013). Have we seen improvements in the wealth gap and society in general?
- RajT88 4y ago
  I wasn't aware of this funding system, so I had to look it up. The (quite prolific) literature suggest that the funding system was severely limited in 1978 by Prop 13.
  - toast0 4y ago
    Sure, school funding has been limited; but the point is that excluding the basic aid school districts (which are mostly smaller districts, afaik, the largest is Newport-Mesa Unified), all of the school districts across the state have been subject to the same funding formulas. Your comment was that equalizing funding would make society better; my question is, given that funding has been mostly equalized in California, is society better? In Washington state, funding for basic education is apportioned from state revenues; local districts can raise taxes for enrichment, but there's a cap, and state funds are provided if local taxes don't meet a minimum. I'm not familiar with other states, but there have been several court cases where states were forced to reform systems that relied on local property tax [1]; and I'd imagine many states would have changed their systems after seeing those results, rather than waiting for their own case. [1] https://edeq.stanford.edu/sections/section-4-lawsuits/landmark-us-cases-related-equality-opportunity-k-12-education https://edeq.stanford.edu/sections/section-4-lawsuits/landma...

bfeynman 4y ago

maybe because "impact on society" is a totally delusional way to make pay scales. Pay is almost entirely based on talent scarcity. Thats why low skill jobs are lower pay, and highly skilled professions pay more accordingly. It doesn't matter at all what your impact is, think of people who work(ed) in mines or in the fields.

kneebonian 4y ago
I'd argue it's not just talent scarcity it's measurable talent scarcity. There are really great teachers out there that do a fantastic job there are terrible teachers that suck, they are mostly paid the same because it's hard to differentiate between a good teacher and a bad teacher. Whereas with a software developer especially at small orgs their ability is easier to measure and evaluate.

giardini 4y ago

All explained, without embarrassment, by the undergraduate economics concepts of supply and demand.