6 ms·

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 sh

by 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.)
  - lliiffee 18y ago
    I'm not sure why the number of years of school matters. Are you assuming that the student gives up 0.1% total or 0.1% for each year of teaching? In the latter case, it works out about perfectly: 30 students * 30 = 900 students 900 students * 100000 dollars / student * 0.001 = 90000 dollars The student would be giving up a still reasonable 1.5% or so of income (and only in the years between when the teacher retires and dies).
    - byrneseyeview 18y ago
      and only in the years between when the teacher retires and dies Actually, it would probably be transferable. It's worth more if teachers can sell it -- if a student starts working, that stake represents a fraction of the next forty years worth of earnings, but the teacher might expect to spend it over the next ten (and since it is equity, rather than fixed income, it might not be an appropriate thing to own for retirement). So making it something the teacher can sell to invest the proceeds in bonds would be fine -- although they could just sell and invest in the future income of a public school teacher, which apparently has the stability of a T-Bill and the growth rate of Google.
    - Retric 18y ago
      IMO, if we want to motivate teachers we should give them a bonus based on the change in students performance relative to their past performance. Teaching the Honors classes would not give them an edge because the students where already doing well and the teacher need to keep pushing them. Anyway, your assuming all students make 100k, the average is around 50k/year and the teacher is already looking at a 60k/year pension. But, what about elementary school teachers they can wait 15 years before you are making any money. Retire after 30 years and only 1/2 or less of your students are working. In the end I think we need to recognize that pensions are really a tax on the teachers past performance as a group. As a group they get money because they did a good job as a group, but there is little direct connection.
  - byrneseyeview 18y ago
    The numbers were not meant to be significant. What I meant was that people would have some combination of a flat fee (like they do now) and a fraction of future income (which they don't now). It would be a good signaling device -- a teacher confident in his ability to educate students well might accept less cash for more future income -- which would signal to parents and students that the teacher was, e.g. likely to add 5% to the average student's future income, at which point the Equity Equation applies (http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html).
- ricree 18y ago
  The bureaucracy needed to enforce it would be stifling. Think about the number of teachers one is going to have from elementary school to college graduation. Even if the portion was really small, you'd be talking about having well over a dozen people who are owed money for each person. Enforcing this, and tracking it (I'm sure the IRS will want their share, after all) will require a lot of government involvement. I do think the idea has some merit in principle, but I can't think of a way that it could be implemented without causing a ton more harm than good.
  - byrneseyeview 18y ago
    If you own shares of five mutual funds (a modest number for a middle-aged person with some retirement savings), you may have stock in 300 separate companies, each of which may have partly-owned subsidiaries. Somehow, all this can be handled with transaction costs of about 1-2% per year.
  - aaronblohowiak 18y ago
    Who says changing teachers every year is in the best interests of the students or teachers?
- ibsulon 18y ago
  So, no great teacher would choose to work in poor school districts. We already have to give incentives to experienced teachers to work there. Good teachers would concentrate in wealthy districts, because the best teachers would have an amplification effect, and those kids are going to end up in college and most will end up in good jobs because of their family connections.
  - gojomo 18y ago
    And when the wealthy districts are saturated, but there is still a strong positive return to education in poorer districts, where then does the next great-but-mercenary teacher go? Your scenario only plays out if there is always a higher marginal return to teaching among the already-advantaged. Sorry, but lots of advantaged people are dumb and lazy, and even among those who aren't, there is a point of diminishing economic returns to their education. Yes, the talented wealthy will be well-served under a 'human capital' system. But then teaching resources will find upside potential wherever it exists, including those areas with disastrously bad public schools today.
  - byrneseyeview 18y ago
    That doesn't seem to apply here at all. If education can really make a difference, teachers would be able to raise money from VCs in order to educate inner city kids for no upfront fee and a large cut of their future pay. If they didn't behave that way, you might have to suspect that since spending billions of dollars on improving those schools and improving those students hasn't had any significant effect on their ability to learn, the problem is not with how hard we're trying, but with what we think we can accomplish.
    - frig 18y ago
      This is hilariously bad logic, and I assume it's tongue in cheek. Your first point, the VC scenario: are you actually serious? Here's what I mean by "serious": you actually think that the transaction you're sketching: - group of good teachers goes to VC, asks for money - VC invests in group of good teachers - good teachers teach inner city students for no upfront cost - good teachers -- and therefore investors -- profit by collecting a portion of their students' future earnings ...is something that'd actually happen. I can understand if you were just trying to make the rhetorical point: "if education worked the way some speculate, it'd be profitable to invest in a scheme wherein you taught students for free and took a cut of their future earnings; you don't see that, do you? Ergo: education must not work amirite?" So I really want to know: are you "serious" about your vc-funded educational scheme, or were you just going for the rhetorical point? Your second point is equally hilarious, and I have to also ask if you're also "serious" about it. You say: "...since spending billions of dollars on improving these schools and improving these students hasn't had any significant effect on their ability to learn, the problem is not how hard we're trying, but with what we think we can accomplish." What you appear to be attempting to insinuate is the following: - there's a class of people who are ineducable - we know this is true b/c we've spent billions trying to educate them, with precious little to show for it If that's not what you're trying to insinuate, you're free to clarify. Assuming that's right, you've got a big jump in your logic. We've clearly spent billions. It clearly hasn't worked. We can conclude: (1) the way we've spent the money thus far doesn't do jack. We can't really conclude: (2) there's no possible way that that money could've been spent that would've worked. For your apparent conclusion -- some people can't be educated -- you need (2), but you only have (1). You tried to sneak your way to (2) by characterizing "spending money in various programs that we hoped might to improve those schools and that we hoped might improve those students" as "spending money on improving those schools and improving those students". Nice work, when it works. So yeah: are you serious about your second point?

by sak84 18y ago

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.)
- lliiffee 18y ago
  I'm not sure why the number of years of school matters. Are you assuming that the student gives up 0.1% total or 0.1% for each year of teaching? In the latter case, it works out about perfectly: 30 students * 30 = 900 students 900 students * 100000 dollars / student * 0.001 = 90000 dollars The student would be giving up a still reasonable 1.5% or so of income (and only in the years between when the teacher retires and dies).
  - byrneseyeview 18y ago
    and only in the years between when the teacher retires and dies Actually, it would probably be transferable. It's worth more if teachers can sell it -- if a student starts working, that stake represents a fraction of the next forty years worth of earnings, but the teacher might expect to spend it over the next ten (and since it is equity, rather than fixed income, it might not be an appropriate thing to own for retirement). So making it something the teacher can sell to invest the proceeds in bonds would be fine -- although they could just sell and invest in the future income of a public school teacher, which apparently has the stability of a T-Bill and the growth rate of Google.
  - Retric 18y ago
    IMO, if we want to motivate teachers we should give them a bonus based on the change in students performance relative to their past performance. Teaching the Honors classes would not give them an edge because the students where already doing well and the teacher need to keep pushing them. Anyway, your assuming all students make 100k, the average is around 50k/year and the teacher is already looking at a 60k/year pension. But, what about elementary school teachers they can wait 15 years before you are making any money. Retire after 30 years and only 1/2 or less of your students are working. In the end I think we need to recognize that pensions are really a tax on the teachers past performance as a group. As a group they get money because they did a good job as a group, but there is little direct connection.
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  The numbers were not meant to be significant. What I meant was that people would have some combination of a flat fee (like they do now) and a fraction of future income (which they don't now). It would be a good signaling device -- a teacher confident in his ability to educate students well might accept less cash for more future income -- which would signal to parents and students that the teacher was, e.g. likely to add 5% to the average student's future income, at which point the Equity Equation applies (http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html).
ricree 18y ago
The bureaucracy needed to enforce it would be stifling. Think about the number of teachers one is going to have from elementary school to college graduation. Even if the portion was really small, you'd be talking about having well over a dozen people who are owed money for each person. Enforcing this, and tracking it (I'm sure the IRS will want their share, after all) will require a lot of government involvement. I do think the idea has some merit in principle, but I can't think of a way that it could be implemented without causing a ton more harm than good.
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  If you own shares of five mutual funds (a modest number for a middle-aged person with some retirement savings), you may have stock in 300 separate companies, each of which may have partly-owned subsidiaries. Somehow, all this can be handled with transaction costs of about 1-2% per year.
- aaronblohowiak 18y ago
  Who says changing teachers every year is in the best interests of the students or teachers?
ibsulon 18y ago
So, no great teacher would choose to work in poor school districts. We already have to give incentives to experienced teachers to work there. Good teachers would concentrate in wealthy districts, because the best teachers would have an amplification effect, and those kids are going to end up in college and most will end up in good jobs because of their family connections.
- gojomo 18y ago
  And when the wealthy districts are saturated, but there is still a strong positive return to education in poorer districts, where then does the next great-but-mercenary teacher go? Your scenario only plays out if there is always a higher marginal return to teaching among the already-advantaged. Sorry, but lots of advantaged people are dumb and lazy, and even among those who aren't, there is a point of diminishing economic returns to their education. Yes, the talented wealthy will be well-served under a 'human capital' system. But then teaching resources will find upside potential wherever it exists, including those areas with disastrously bad public schools today.
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  That doesn't seem to apply here at all. If education can really make a difference, teachers would be able to raise money from VCs in order to educate inner city kids for no upfront fee and a large cut of their future pay. If they didn't behave that way, you might have to suspect that since spending billions of dollars on improving those schools and improving those students hasn't had any significant effect on their ability to learn, the problem is not with how hard we're trying, but with what we think we can accomplish.
  - frig 18y ago
    This is hilariously bad logic, and I assume it's tongue in cheek. Your first point, the VC scenario: are you actually serious? Here's what I mean by "serious": you actually think that the transaction you're sketching: - group of good teachers goes to VC, asks for money - VC invests in group of good teachers - good teachers teach inner city students for no upfront cost - good teachers -- and therefore investors -- profit by collecting a portion of their students' future earnings ...is something that'd actually happen. I can understand if you were just trying to make the rhetorical point: "if education worked the way some speculate, it'd be profitable to invest in a scheme wherein you taught students for free and took a cut of their future earnings; you don't see that, do you? Ergo: education must not work amirite?" So I really want to know: are you "serious" about your vc-funded educational scheme, or were you just going for the rhetorical point? Your second point is equally hilarious, and I have to also ask if you're also "serious" about it. You say: "...since spending billions of dollars on improving these schools and improving these students hasn't had any significant effect on their ability to learn, the problem is not how hard we're trying, but with what we think we can accomplish." What you appear to be attempting to insinuate is the following: - there's a class of people who are ineducable - we know this is true b/c we've spent billions trying to educate them, with precious little to show for it If that's not what you're trying to insinuate, you're free to clarify. Assuming that's right, you've got a big jump in your logic. We've clearly spent billions. It clearly hasn't worked. We can conclude: (1) the way we've spent the money thus far doesn't do jack. We can't really conclude: (2) there's no possible way that that money could've been spent that would've worked. For your apparent conclusion -- some people can't be educated -- you need (2), but you only have (1). You tried to sneak your way to (2) by characterizing "spending money in various programs that we hoped might to improve those schools and that we hoped might improve those students" as "spending money on improving those schools and improving those students". Nice work, when it works. So yeah: are you serious about your second point?