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I'm perfectly happy with a teacher making 60k provided that they're teaching my kid well. I'm not happy with giving them a raise if they're not, and "their live

I'm perfectly happy with a teacher making 60k provided that they're teaching my kid well. I'm not happy with giving them a raise if they're not, and "their lives could be easier so we should do it anyway" is not a compelling argument. In the rest of the professional world we have to earn our salaries.

beej71 4y ago
What if underperforming teachers were fired and replaced with high-performing teachers? This is really what needs to happen, but... It's way harder to find high-performing teachers when you lowball salaries. It's actually way harder to find _any_ teachers when you do that. So if you're not willing to raise pay, you'll take what you get and you'll like it. > In the rest of the professional world we have to earn our salaries. As someone who worked decades in the professional world before giving up a huge chunk of salary to pursue my passion for teaching, this is not entirely true. There are tons of slacker leeches in the professional world. I've seen it worse than in teaching.
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  Absolutely if underperforming teachers were all fired, the bar was raised along with pay I'd be happy. Now, that's hard and I get that, just deciding how to measure teacher performance is difficult, but if it can be done it should be done.
  - beej71 4y ago
    There seem to be a lot of people here who know an underperforming teacher when they see one. :)
    - friend_and_foe 4y ago
      As someone who spent their formative years primarily interacting with teachers I think I can say that I do. Most teachers underperform, so even if you have a hard time, just assuming that one is not a good one will have you right more often than not. The few teachers I had that left a lasting impression on me I value greatly, I wish more teachers were like that. And that's a teachers job, isn't it? Without a lasting impression most of what was learned is lost, so then it's not really teaching, just busywork. I will say that there are probably a good number of teachers with the drive just beaten out of them by the bureaucracy. When you go into your profession to educate and you spend more time dealing with authorities, paperwork and silly requirements, that has a tendency to drag your performance down. The flip side of that though is ofc that that bureaucracy was largely created by teachers, probably the ones who would get fired without it protecting them.

beej71 4y ago

What if underperforming teachers were fired and replaced with high-performing teachers? This is really what needs to happen, but... It's way harder to find high-performing teachers when you lowball salaries. It's actually way harder to find _any_ teachers when you do that. So if you're not willing to raise pay, you'll take what you get and you'll like it. > In the rest of the professional world we have to earn our salaries. As someone who worked decades in the professional world before giving up a huge chunk of salary to pursue my passion for teaching, this is not entirely true. There are tons of slacker leeches in the professional world. I've seen it worse than in teaching.

friend_and_foe 4y ago
Absolutely if underperforming teachers were all fired, the bar was raised along with pay I'd be happy. Now, that's hard and I get that, just deciding how to measure teacher performance is difficult, but if it can be done it should be done.
- beej71 4y ago
  There seem to be a lot of people here who know an underperforming teacher when they see one. :)
  - friend_and_foe 4y ago
    As someone who spent their formative years primarily interacting with teachers I think I can say that I do. Most teachers underperform, so even if you have a hard time, just assuming that one is not a good one will have you right more often than not. The few teachers I had that left a lasting impression on me I value greatly, I wish more teachers were like that. And that's a teachers job, isn't it? Without a lasting impression most of what was learned is lost, so then it's not really teaching, just busywork. I will say that there are probably a good number of teachers with the drive just beaten out of them by the bureaucracy. When you go into your profession to educate and you spend more time dealing with authorities, paperwork and silly requirements, that has a tendency to drag your performance down. The flip side of that though is ofc that that bureaucracy was largely created by teachers, probably the ones who would get fired without it protecting them.