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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

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.
      - dantheman 18y ago
        Then you have to ask yourself should these great teachers be teaching average students, or should they only be teaching the best? Or should they be incentivised into going into science or engineering? These are tough questions, I honestly think the best scenario would be for top engineers and scientists (practicing) to mentor students, and help them see the big picture/inspire them while their teachers train them in the skills necessary.
        Retric 18y ago
        You just described a top Collage like MIT.
      - gaius 18y ago
        But teachers pay is only a function of seniority. The system doesn't care whether a teacher is good or bad, the pay's the same if they've been in the job as long. Most people simply do not want to work in an environment like that.
    - rcoder 18y ago
      This argument still makes no sense to me. Teachers are in an obvious and direct way responsible for producing the next generation of doctors, lawyers, and computer programmers. How can we then in good conscience refuse to pay them as much as people working in those fields? Think of it this way: in private firms, employees who demonstrate mastery of both their own specialization and "people skills" are promoted to management, so that they can guide and support the next generation of workers. They are paid more for this than their employees, in part due to the fact that not everyone can do what they do. Similarly, teachers have to balance knowledge of the actual material being taught, and all the "soft" skills of classroom management: facilitating discussions, maintaining discipline, keeping emotions and energy on an even keel. Any manager who could effectively herd 30+ techies would be lauded as worth their weight in gold; why then isn't a teacher who does the same thing with as many children (a harder task, to be sure) appreciated as the deft administrator they must be?
- ggruschow 18y ago
  Paying as little as you can get away with isn't always the best policy.
  - endtime 18y ago
    Why? It would seem to me that you should always pay as little as you can get away with, and that that statement can always be made true by revising the qualification "as you can get away with". In other words, if paying as little as you can get away with causes some negative effect, then you aren't really getting away with it, so to speak.
- gruseom 18y ago
  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. I would have thought it obvious that "hardness of the material" has little to do with what makes a great elementary school or even high school teacher.
pchristensen 18y ago
Teachers are respected like that in Finland.
byrneseyeview 18y ago
A system of seniority-based pay, negotiated between two monopolistic cartels, does not sound like the best way to ensure that someone is paid $100K for being a "good teacher".
- albertsun 18y ago
  The problem is, it's a heck of a hard task to determine who is a good teacher. How would you do it? Give bonuses and raises to teachers who's students perform well on standardized tests? That just encourages teaching to the book. Student evaluations? Then the teachers are obliged to suck up to the students for good ratings. Leave it up to administrators? That creates huge potential for bias and currying for favor. At least when that happens in a for-profit company, the free market will shake out the worst cases eventually. Seniority is not a great way to determine pay, but it's not an absolutely terrible way either, as generally, more experienced teachers ARE better teachers.
  - Retric 18y ago
    I like the idea of comparing a students score on a standardized test before and after the teacher. And, adding in a long term effect so students from 2+ years down the line also impact your evaluation. IMO, it's going to be hard to teach to this test and next years test without covering the subject in some detail. Also by inspiring students to really enjoy the subject you will improve their long term performance. Basically take 30 students at 50% up to 55%, that's great, and if they keep getting 55 percentile for the next 5 years you probably did a great job. PS: Students at the edges students will tend to regress to the mean, so you can still measure performance on a class that scored 95% last year.
    - litewulf 18y ago
      Its easy to train students to perform better on tests by teaching them things orthogonal to the actual material. Further, you can "teach to the test" by giving students only classes of problems that will appear on the test and drilling them in that and little else. I imagine that you could end up with lots of functional-illiteracy type issues where students would only be able to do a task in the tightly controlled circumstances that they have been trained on but have difficulty generalizing.
wallflower 18y ago
> In the ideal world, the best teachers would be celebrities and their lectures/lessons would be high demand items. On a boat ride in Brugges, I heard a boat operator/philosopher expound on why it was so that teachers were paid so little, rockstars like Ozzy Osbourne were rich, and famous composers like Mozart died broke. He said it was a question of network effects and impact. Mozart died broke because of poor money management and the inability to reach a worldwide audience. An elementary school teacher is only paid a small amount relative to most celebrities because their impact is small. They cannot reach more 10-30 students at a time. A baseball player is paid millions because he (through cable TV) can impact/entertain many more anonymous people indirectly. This brings to mind the interesting question of micro-payments and distance learning - could an effective model for rock star professors be implemented, in an effective implementation of feedback-based distance learning?
- anamax 18y ago
  > This brings to mind the interesting question of micro-payments and distance learning - could an effective model for rock star professors be implemented, in an effective implementation of feedback-based distance learning? There's another interesting question - what happens to the "not quite rockstar" professors/teachers? As Sousa pointed out, recorded music reduces the number of people who can make a living playing music. (It may increase the amount of money spent by listeners.) Note that only some things scale through distribution. Lectures may. Office hours don't. Thesis advising doesn't.
  - gravitycop 18y ago
    Sousa pointed out, recorded music reduces the number of people who can make a living playing music. He should have read his Henry Ford. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hnfrd10.txt http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hnfrd10.txt In a little dark shop on a side street an old man had laboured for years making axe handles. Out of seasoned hickory he fashioned them, with the help of a draw shave, a chisel, and a supply of sandpaper. Carefully was each handle weighed and balanced. No two of them were alike. The curve must exactly fit the hand and must conform to the grain of the wood. From dawn until dark the old man laboured. His average product was eight handles a week, for which he received a dollar and a half each. And often some of these were unsaleable--because the balance was not true. To-day you can buy a better axe handle, made by machinery, for a few cents. And you need not worry about the balance. They are all alike--and every one is perfect. Modern methods applied in a big way have not only brought the cost of axe handles down to a fraction of their former cost--but they have immensely improved the product. Like the machine-made, to the artisan-made, axe handle, recorded music is vastly superior to live music - especially given today's digital recording and distribution systems. Leveraging mass distribution, a musician today can afford the luxury of honing a fine product. A live performance is rarely a fine product. It is usually middling in quality, and often below middling. It is usually expensive. For those that wish to see as well as hear their music, today, with DVD and Blu Ray, the live performances that are good can be distributed in a high-quality captured form to wide audiences, at low cost.
potatolicious 18y ago
At universities and colleges it is like that. While bad professors struggle with pathetic attendance numbers, "celebrity" profs have to book rooms far larger than their enrollment numbers just to account for all the others who drop in and listen. It's a little bit of a chicken and egg situation. At the college level students are willing to go out of the way to attend a lecture that they know will be good. How many high school students have the freedom and motivation to do the same?
kingkongrevenge 18y ago
> In my view, a good teacher is still underpaid at 100K per year. Teach for America throws inexperienced recent liberal arts grads into teaching and pays them peanuts. They generally outperform experienced teachers. Teachers are generally over-paid, I think. The problem is really that nobody with ability would choose to work in such a bureaucratic shit-show. It's not the money. I bet lots of SUPER qualified people would go for a four year stint in teaching. Retired people, young mothers looking for reduced hours for a couple years, or recently cashed out entrepreneurs, or whatever. The bureaucracy currently precludes this.
- Retric 18y ago
  How many of those inexperienced teachers stick with it? I know plenty of people who taught for a year or two and then left. The system seems to punish new teachers and the job sucks even at 100k/year let alone what they start at. The types of skills that make a great teacher are in high demand. Many great teachers would also make a great consultants and where I work 200k/year is not that rare for senior people. Hell, at 28 I am 2 promotions from that pay grade. PS: We need to compare teachers to other collage educated professions not just random call center / factory workers with lots of supervision.

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.
    - dantheman 18y ago
      Then you have to ask yourself should these great teachers be teaching average students, or should they only be teaching the best? Or should they be incentivised into going into science or engineering? These are tough questions, I honestly think the best scenario would be for top engineers and scientists (practicing) to mentor students, and help them see the big picture/inspire them while their teachers train them in the skills necessary.
      - Retric 18y ago
        You just described a top Collage like MIT.
    - gaius 18y ago
      But teachers pay is only a function of seniority. The system doesn't care whether a teacher is good or bad, the pay's the same if they've been in the job as long. Most people simply do not want to work in an environment like that.
  - rcoder 18y ago
    This argument still makes no sense to me. Teachers are in an obvious and direct way responsible for producing the next generation of doctors, lawyers, and computer programmers. How can we then in good conscience refuse to pay them as much as people working in those fields? Think of it this way: in private firms, employees who demonstrate mastery of both their own specialization and "people skills" are promoted to management, so that they can guide and support the next generation of workers. They are paid more for this than their employees, in part due to the fact that not everyone can do what they do. Similarly, teachers have to balance knowledge of the actual material being taught, and all the "soft" skills of classroom management: facilitating discussions, maintaining discipline, keeping emotions and energy on an even keel. Any manager who could effectively herd 30+ techies would be lauded as worth their weight in gold; why then isn't a teacher who does the same thing with as many children (a harder task, to be sure) appreciated as the deft administrator they must be?
ggruschow 18y ago
Paying as little as you can get away with isn't always the best policy.
- endtime 18y ago
  Why? It would seem to me that you should always pay as little as you can get away with, and that that statement can always be made true by revising the qualification "as you can get away with". In other words, if paying as little as you can get away with causes some negative effect, then you aren't really getting away with it, so to speak.
gruseom 18y ago
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. I would have thought it obvious that "hardness of the material" has little to do with what makes a great elementary school or even high school teacher.

pchristensen 18y ago

Teachers are respected like that in Finland.

byrneseyeview 18y ago

A system of seniority-based pay, negotiated between two monopolistic cartels, does not sound like the best way to ensure that someone is paid $100K for being a "good teacher".

albertsun 18y ago
The problem is, it's a heck of a hard task to determine who is a good teacher. How would you do it? Give bonuses and raises to teachers who's students perform well on standardized tests? That just encourages teaching to the book. Student evaluations? Then the teachers are obliged to suck up to the students for good ratings. Leave it up to administrators? That creates huge potential for bias and currying for favor. At least when that happens in a for-profit company, the free market will shake out the worst cases eventually. Seniority is not a great way to determine pay, but it's not an absolutely terrible way either, as generally, more experienced teachers ARE better teachers.
- Retric 18y ago
  I like the idea of comparing a students score on a standardized test before and after the teacher. And, adding in a long term effect so students from 2+ years down the line also impact your evaluation. IMO, it's going to be hard to teach to this test and next years test without covering the subject in some detail. Also by inspiring students to really enjoy the subject you will improve their long term performance. Basically take 30 students at 50% up to 55%, that's great, and if they keep getting 55 percentile for the next 5 years you probably did a great job. PS: Students at the edges students will tend to regress to the mean, so you can still measure performance on a class that scored 95% last year.
  - litewulf 18y ago
    Its easy to train students to perform better on tests by teaching them things orthogonal to the actual material. Further, you can "teach to the test" by giving students only classes of problems that will appear on the test and drilling them in that and little else. I imagine that you could end up with lots of functional-illiteracy type issues where students would only be able to do a task in the tightly controlled circumstances that they have been trained on but have difficulty generalizing.

wallflower 18y ago

> In the ideal world, the best teachers would be celebrities and their lectures/lessons would be high demand items. On a boat ride in Brugges, I heard a boat operator/philosopher expound on why it was so that teachers were paid so little, rockstars like Ozzy Osbourne were rich, and famous composers like Mozart died broke. He said it was a question of network effects and impact. Mozart died broke because of poor money management and the inability to reach a worldwide audience. An elementary school teacher is only paid a small amount relative to most celebrities because their impact is small. They cannot reach more 10-30 students at a time. A baseball player is paid millions because he (through cable TV) can impact/entertain many more anonymous people indirectly. This brings to mind the interesting question of micro-payments and distance learning - could an effective model for rock star professors be implemented, in an effective implementation of feedback-based distance learning?

anamax 18y ago
> This brings to mind the interesting question of micro-payments and distance learning - could an effective model for rock star professors be implemented, in an effective implementation of feedback-based distance learning? There's another interesting question - what happens to the "not quite rockstar" professors/teachers? As Sousa pointed out, recorded music reduces the number of people who can make a living playing music. (It may increase the amount of money spent by listeners.) Note that only some things scale through distribution. Lectures may. Office hours don't. Thesis advising doesn't.
- gravitycop 18y ago
  Sousa pointed out, recorded music reduces the number of people who can make a living playing music. He should have read his Henry Ford. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hnfrd10.txt http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hnfrd10.txt In a little dark shop on a side street an old man had laboured for years making axe handles. Out of seasoned hickory he fashioned them, with the help of a draw shave, a chisel, and a supply of sandpaper. Carefully was each handle weighed and balanced. No two of them were alike. The curve must exactly fit the hand and must conform to the grain of the wood. From dawn until dark the old man laboured. His average product was eight handles a week, for which he received a dollar and a half each. And often some of these were unsaleable--because the balance was not true. To-day you can buy a better axe handle, made by machinery, for a few cents. And you need not worry about the balance. They are all alike--and every one is perfect. Modern methods applied in a big way have not only brought the cost of axe handles down to a fraction of their former cost--but they have immensely improved the product. Like the machine-made, to the artisan-made, axe handle, recorded music is vastly superior to live music - especially given today's digital recording and distribution systems. Leveraging mass distribution, a musician today can afford the luxury of honing a fine product. A live performance is rarely a fine product. It is usually middling in quality, and often below middling. It is usually expensive. For those that wish to see as well as hear their music, today, with DVD and Blu Ray, the live performances that are good can be distributed in a high-quality captured form to wide audiences, at low cost.

potatolicious 18y ago

At universities and colleges it is like that. While bad professors struggle with pathetic attendance numbers, "celebrity" profs have to book rooms far larger than their enrollment numbers just to account for all the others who drop in and listen. It's a little bit of a chicken and egg situation. At the college level students are willing to go out of the way to attend a lecture that they know will be good. How many high school students have the freedom and motivation to do the same?

kingkongrevenge 18y ago

> In my view, a good teacher is still underpaid at 100K per year. Teach for America throws inexperienced recent liberal arts grads into teaching and pays them peanuts. They generally outperform experienced teachers. Teachers are generally over-paid, I think. The problem is really that nobody with ability would choose to work in such a bureaucratic shit-show. It's not the money. I bet lots of SUPER qualified people would go for a four year stint in teaching. Retired people, young mothers looking for reduced hours for a couple years, or recently cashed out entrepreneurs, or whatever. The bureaucracy currently precludes this.

Retric 18y ago
How many of those inexperienced teachers stick with it? I know plenty of people who taught for a year or two and then left. The system seems to punish new teachers and the job sucks even at 100k/year let alone what they start at. The types of skills that make a great teacher are in high demand. Many great teachers would also make a great consultants and where I work 200k/year is not that rare for senior people. Hell, at 28 I am 2 promotions from that pay grade. PS: We need to compare teachers to other collage educated professions not just random call center / factory workers with lots of supervision.