9 ms·

Still Doing the Math, But for 100K A Year

43 points by ojbyrne 18y ago

jacobscott 18y ago
FTA: you get $100k/yr as a teacher after working at the same job for ~30 years. A sweet pension is also possible -- although who knows whether this is still the case or will last.
- patio11 18y ago
  This isn't terribly uncommon, particularly for senior teachers in well-to-do suburban school districts. The "teachers are one step away from starvation" meme is, well, suffice it to say it was never universal and that we have excellent PR in a lot of ways. As to whether this will last or not: well, that pension has been available for thirty of the last thirty years. One of the two political parties in the United States would rather scrape out its belly with a rusty fork before seriously taking a whack at teachers unions, and the other is the Democrats[1]. I'm not predicting rapid change with respect to the employment market for teachers in the US. Do you want to be the political candidate cutting education funding and then facing, quite literally, a NEA warchest and a small army of very popular people in your district who you just made enemies of for life? Who will mention, in a totally non-partisan and objectively true manner, that you are cutting funding for the school Little Davey attends? To Little Davey's dotting parents? [1]: Edited to add -- in deference to readers from outside the US, I should add the common knowledge that makes the joke work (at the expense of killing the funny): there are two major political parties in the United States, Republicans and Democrats. Organized labor and, in particular, the national teachers unions are inseparable from the Democratic Party.
larryfreeman 18y ago
In my view, a good teacher is still underpaid at 100K per year. In the ideal world, the best teachers would be celebrities and their lectures/lessons would be high demand items. Wait... Maybe it's coming... with YouTube, HubPages, and Google's 10^100 contest. Who knows.
- dantheman 18y ago
  I completely disagree. The best teachers should be compensated, but there is no reason to spend 100k on high elementary school & high school teachers... Hell you could have a grad student teaching the course -- the material isn't hard. The trick is getting the kids to work and be motivated, and that's primarily caused by setting high standards and having parents emphasize the importance of education.
  - endtime 18y ago
    The trick is getting the kids to work and be motivated, and that's primarily caused by setting high standards and having parents emphasize the importance of education. I think a good (grade school) teacher is not necessarily one who is an expert in the material (though, of course, base competence is necessary) but one who is an expert in motivating and engaging students.
  - pchristensen 18y ago
    Bill Gates disagrees. "It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school." Bill Gates http://2mm.typepad.com/usa/2009/01/it-is-amazing-how-big-a-difference-a-great-teacher-makes-versus-an-ineffective-one.html http://2mm.typepad.com/usa/2009/01/it-is-amazing-how-big-a-d...
    - arockwell 18y ago
      While I believe its true, I still don't think good teachers are worth 100k/year. That's way too high. That's higher than any other basic profession except doctor/lawyer, and there are certainly some doctors and lawyers that don't make that much, e.g., public defenders.
      - pchristensen 18y ago
        But you're comparing exceptional teachers to average doctors/lawyers. The people that could be great teachers have a lot of good alternatives, so if you want good teachers to teach, you need to reduce their opportunity cost by paying more.
jpcx01 18y ago
I wouldnt be surprised if there's a few kids at that very same school making 100k a year. I was hacking for 30/hr in my spare time in high school (10 years ago), and these days, all a kid needs is a bit of motivation to learn all the web development stack and start consulting.
- cellis 18y ago
  Downmodded because 100k is quite a stretch. 30$/hr in your spare time != 100k. And most college graduates aren't even making that much.
sak84 18y ago
100K for 30 years, is not as much as you would think. The problem with teaching right now, is that there is not a concrete way to have really great teachers shine. In enterprise, employees that would perform really well would be accordingly compensated (theoretically) with a higher salary/bonus. This doesn't happen with teachers though. You could be a terrible teachers, with terrible results, but have tenure and still reach that 100,000k mark without a hitch. I believe unions are important to ensure some job security and fair practice, but not at the expense of our children's education. There should be competitive practices in public education, that allow teachers to earn way more than 100,000k, but also does not guarantee that a teacher will rise on a pay scale when they just babysit in a classroom. I speak from experience as I was formerly a teacher in NYC, where I encountered many teachers that were not competent to teach, but yet continued to exist in their role. There are schools that are trying experimental means to increase the quality of teaching - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?ex=1362632400&en=c61f5ddd3e93fa42&ei=5124 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?ex... - but ultimately we need to think of a new system of rewarding the best teachers and getting rid of the worst.
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  It would of course be protested as outrageous, and would also be hard to implement, but I bet if you allowed someone to pay for their education partly by selling a stake in their future income (capped at a certain point, or possibly with a buyback clause of some kind). This would actually lead great teachers to seek out great students, too -- instead of retiring on their teaching pension, they'd retire on .1% of the incomes of each of a few hundred students; if those students are making six figures...
  - Retric 18y ago
    Your education costs a lot more than you might think. Lets say the average teacher has 30 students per year for 30 years, and the average student has 15 years of school. Your .1% would end up as ~6% of 100k/year. (In high school you have more teachers but they have more students, so the math still works out the same.)
tokenadult 18y ago
In a system in which learners could shop for the most suitable schools, the best teachers would make much more than $100K, while other current teachers would change careers, all to the good of learners. http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html
- rcoder 18y ago
  As someone who spent most of my primary school years in "gifted student" magnet programs (like, I suspect, many other HN readers), this appeals to me personally. However, I have it on good authority from actual teachers that separating students according to interest and aptitude disadvantages the average and below-average students greatly, while providing only minimal benefit to the best students.
  - tokenadult 18y ago
    I have it on good authority from actual teachers that separating students according to interest and aptitude disadvantages the average and below-average students greatly This is commonly said by teachers, but there is not a research base to back up this statement. There is a considerable research base (especially from cross-national comparisons) to suggest that grouping students by readiness at a given time benefits all learners. http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Research/Bibliography/ http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Research/Bibliography/
- litewulf 18y ago
  I worry that the criteria for successful teachers will instead be teachers that are easy or social instead of effective teachers. I have definitely taken languages classes where I hated the teachers (the class was hard!) but I learned a great deal and actually have pretty good recall years later. If I had been able to bail out and go join my friends in the class taught by the easy teacher I would have, but I certainly would not have learned anything. In fact, now that I think about it, I think such a system would probably encourage a trend toward treating schooling as a sort of nationalized childcare program, as the money and rewards would go to teachers (and schools) where students are allowed to float through. You can argue all you want about how much you enjoy learning, but I imagine that the vast majority of the people in my high school could have cared less. (There are similar arguments for why private schools do better than public schools: private schools are primarily composed of the kids/families that actually care about what said student is learning.)
dkarl 18y ago
What a farce. It's disgusting that they pay new teachers so little, and very few of the older teachers are worth $100k. This is nothing but two things. First, senior teachers control the unions and take care of themselves at the expense of younger teachers -- it's disgusting. A salary spread of $50k to $100k is too much for the same job, and I never noticed older teachers being much more effective than teachers with five years of experience. Second, the unions have convinced teachers that any measurement of quality will be inaccurate, arbitrary, and a front for administrators' political and personal animosity. Hey, welcome to the real world! Most professionals work in jobs where performance is subjective and difficult to measure. It isn't as bad as you imagine, except when it is, and then you get a different job. It wouldn't ruin education any more than it has ruined law, medicine, engineering, or any other profession where objective measurements of performance are problematic.
- rcoder 18y ago
  There's one critical area where assessment of teachers varies from those in medicine, law, etc.: many states require consistent salary and retention policies across all their schools. Given the limited resources available to do any sort of meaningful performance measurement, that pretty much means that any "pay for performance" model will necessarily require a single set of standardized tests that can be delivered to every student in the state. ...and we all know how well those sorts of tests measure real learning and intelligence, right?
  - dkarl 18y ago
    How consistent do they have to be? Law abounds in absolute-sounding formulations that are never interpreted absolutely in practice. By policy (though probably not by law) my company has a consistent salary scale across the company. There are hundreds of people of my position and rank, managed by dozens of managers, many of whom have never met each other. (Yes, my company is really that epically huge.) Is a Software Engineer B in my group exactly the same as a Software Engineer B in every other group in the company? Of course not; a pay grade is just a vague description interpreted by many different managers from diverse backgrounds. Yet people are content to say that we have a consistent pay scale. The union would fight against it because they oppose giving any discretion to management, but teachers might defect from the union if it meant a chance at making teaching a rewarding and respected profession.

43 points by ojbyrne 18y ago

FTA: you get $100k/yr as a teacher after working at the same job for ~30 years. A sweet pension is also possible -- although who knows whether this is still the case or will last.

patio11 18y ago
This isn't terribly uncommon, particularly for senior teachers in well-to-do suburban school districts. The "teachers are one step away from starvation" meme is, well, suffice it to say it was never universal and that we have excellent PR in a lot of ways. As to whether this will last or not: well, that pension has been available for thirty of the last thirty years. One of the two political parties in the United States would rather scrape out its belly with a rusty fork before seriously taking a whack at teachers unions, and the other is the Democrats[1]. I'm not predicting rapid change with respect to the employment market for teachers in the US. Do you want to be the political candidate cutting education funding and then facing, quite literally, a NEA warchest and a small army of very popular people in your district who you just made enemies of for life? Who will mention, in a totally non-partisan and objectively true manner, that you are cutting funding for the school Little Davey attends? To Little Davey's dotting parents? [1]: Edited to add -- in deference to readers from outside the US, I should add the common knowledge that makes the joke work (at the expense of killing the funny): there are two major political parties in the United States, Republicans and Democrats. Organized labor and, in particular, the national teachers unions are inseparable from the Democratic Party.

larryfreeman 18y ago

In my view, a good teacher is still underpaid at 100K per year. In the ideal world, the best teachers would be celebrities and their lectures/lessons would be high demand items. Wait... Maybe it's coming... with YouTube, HubPages, and Google's 10^100 contest. Who knows.

dantheman 18y ago
I completely disagree. The best teachers should be compensated, but there is no reason to spend 100k on high elementary school & high school teachers... Hell you could have a grad student teaching the course -- the material isn't hard. The trick is getting the kids to work and be motivated, and that's primarily caused by setting high standards and having parents emphasize the importance of education.
- endtime 18y ago
  The trick is getting the kids to work and be motivated, and that's primarily caused by setting high standards and having parents emphasize the importance of education. I think a good (grade school) teacher is not necessarily one who is an expert in the material (though, of course, base competence is necessary) but one who is an expert in motivating and engaging students.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  Bill Gates disagrees. "It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school." Bill Gates http://2mm.typepad.com/usa/2009/01/it-is-amazing-how-big-a-difference-a-great-teacher-makes-versus-an-ineffective-one.html http://2mm.typepad.com/usa/2009/01/it-is-amazing-how-big-a-d...
  - arockwell 18y ago
    While I believe its true, I still don't think good teachers are worth 100k/year. That's way too high. That's higher than any other basic profession except doctor/lawyer, and there are certainly some doctors and lawyers that don't make that much, e.g., public defenders.
    - pchristensen 18y ago
      But you're comparing exceptional teachers to average doctors/lawyers. The people that could be great teachers have a lot of good alternatives, so if you want good teachers to teach, you need to reduce their opportunity cost by paying more.

jpcx01 18y ago

I wouldnt be surprised if there's a few kids at that very same school making 100k a year. I was hacking for 30/hr in my spare time in high school (10 years ago), and these days, all a kid needs is a bit of motivation to learn all the web development stack and start consulting.

cellis 18y ago
Downmodded because 100k is quite a stretch. 30$/hr in your spare time != 100k. And most college graduates aren't even making that much.

sak84 18y ago

100K for 30 years, is not as much as you would think. The problem with teaching right now, is that there is not a concrete way to have really great teachers shine. In enterprise, employees that would perform really well would be accordingly compensated (theoretically) with a higher salary/bonus. This doesn't happen with teachers though. You could be a terrible teachers, with terrible results, but have tenure and still reach that 100,000k mark without a hitch. I believe unions are important to ensure some job security and fair practice, but not at the expense of our children's education. There should be competitive practices in public education, that allow teachers to earn way more than 100,000k, but also does not guarantee that a teacher will rise on a pay scale when they just babysit in a classroom. I speak from experience as I was formerly a teacher in NYC, where I encountered many teachers that were not competent to teach, but yet continued to exist in their role. There are schools that are trying experimental means to increase the quality of teaching - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?ex=1362632400&en=c61f5ddd3e93fa42&ei=5124 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?ex... - but ultimately we need to think of a new system of rewarding the best teachers and getting rid of the worst.

byrneseyeview 18y ago
It would of course be protested as outrageous, and would also be hard to implement, but I bet if you allowed someone to pay for their education partly by selling a stake in their future income (capped at a certain point, or possibly with a buyback clause of some kind). This would actually lead great teachers to seek out great students, too -- instead of retiring on their teaching pension, they'd retire on .1% of the incomes of each of a few hundred students; if those students are making six figures...
- Retric 18y ago
  Your education costs a lot more than you might think. Lets say the average teacher has 30 students per year for 30 years, and the average student has 15 years of school. Your .1% would end up as ~6% of 100k/year. (In high school you have more teachers but they have more students, so the math still works out the same.)

tokenadult 18y ago

In a system in which learners could shop for the most suitable schools, the best teachers would make much more than $100K, while other current teachers would change careers, all to the good of learners. http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html

rcoder 18y ago
As someone who spent most of my primary school years in "gifted student" magnet programs (like, I suspect, many other HN readers), this appeals to me personally. However, I have it on good authority from actual teachers that separating students according to interest and aptitude disadvantages the average and below-average students greatly, while providing only minimal benefit to the best students.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  I have it on good authority from actual teachers that separating students according to interest and aptitude disadvantages the average and below-average students greatly This is commonly said by teachers, but there is not a research base to back up this statement. There is a considerable research base (especially from cross-national comparisons) to suggest that grouping students by readiness at a given time benefits all learners. http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Research/Bibliography/ http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Research/Bibliography/
litewulf 18y ago
I worry that the criteria for successful teachers will instead be teachers that are easy or social instead of effective teachers. I have definitely taken languages classes where I hated the teachers (the class was hard!) but I learned a great deal and actually have pretty good recall years later. If I had been able to bail out and go join my friends in the class taught by the easy teacher I would have, but I certainly would not have learned anything. In fact, now that I think about it, I think such a system would probably encourage a trend toward treating schooling as a sort of nationalized childcare program, as the money and rewards would go to teachers (and schools) where students are allowed to float through. You can argue all you want about how much you enjoy learning, but I imagine that the vast majority of the people in my high school could have cared less. (There are similar arguments for why private schools do better than public schools: private schools are primarily composed of the kids/families that actually care about what said student is learning.)

dkarl 18y ago

What a farce. It's disgusting that they pay new teachers so little, and very few of the older teachers are worth $100k. This is nothing but two things. First, senior teachers control the unions and take care of themselves at the expense of younger teachers -- it's disgusting. A salary spread of $50k to $100k is too much for the same job, and I never noticed older teachers being much more effective than teachers with five years of experience. Second, the unions have convinced teachers that any measurement of quality will be inaccurate, arbitrary, and a front for administrators' political and personal animosity. Hey, welcome to the real world! Most professionals work in jobs where performance is subjective and difficult to measure. It isn't as bad as you imagine, except when it is, and then you get a different job. It wouldn't ruin education any more than it has ruined law, medicine, engineering, or any other profession where objective measurements of performance are problematic.

rcoder 18y ago
There's one critical area where assessment of teachers varies from those in medicine, law, etc.: many states require consistent salary and retention policies across all their schools. Given the limited resources available to do any sort of meaningful performance measurement, that pretty much means that any "pay for performance" model will necessarily require a single set of standardized tests that can be delivered to every student in the state. ...and we all know how well those sorts of tests measure real learning and intelligence, right?
- dkarl 18y ago
  How consistent do they have to be? Law abounds in absolute-sounding formulations that are never interpreted absolutely in practice. By policy (though probably not by law) my company has a consistent salary scale across the company. There are hundreds of people of my position and rank, managed by dozens of managers, many of whom have never met each other. (Yes, my company is really that epically huge.) Is a Software Engineer B in my group exactly the same as a Software Engineer B in every other group in the company? Of course not; a pay grade is just a vague description interpreted by many different managers from diverse backgrounds. Yet people are content to say that we have a consistent pay scale. The union would fight against it because they oppose giving any discretion to management, but teachers might defect from the union if it meant a chance at making teaching a rewarding and respected profession.