10 ms·

Next Test - Value of $125,000-a-Year Teachers

65 points by peter123 17y ago

Empact 17y ago
Interestingly, it may be that one could pay twice as much per teacher and still end up with a lower cost per pupil overall, as administrator overhead plays a large part in the regular cost formulation. $125 / 30 students ~ $4k, a fraction of both the DC metro public and charter school cost per pupil (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/04/03/dc-vouchers-better-results-at-a-quarter-the-cost/ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/04/03/dc-vouchers-better...).
- smanek 17y ago
  So, a base cost of $125K/30 kids. Add in benefits for the teacher and you're at $150K. Liability insurance is another $50K. Rent per year for 1500 sq ft to house the 30 kids (the classroom is smaller, but you also need to amortize the cost the space needed for admins, gyms, halls, locker rooms, cafeterias, etc) is at least $30K. Supplies (books, sports equipment, etc) conservatively cost about $10K for the 30 students. And, realistically, you'll always have some administrative overhead (tech guys, librarians, lawyers, principal, secretaries, etc) which I can't imagine being less than $50K (amortized over a sufficiently large school). That brings our total cost to, at least, $290K - which is about 10K per student. Still not too bad (although I'm still probably missing/underestimating some expenses ...), but at least marginally more realistic than your made up $4K/student number. I like the idea of school vouchers and private schools too. But you have to be realistic.
  - sethg 17y ago
    IIRC the nationwide average for public schools is about $9K/student, and that includes areas where the cost of living is a lot lower than it is in NYC. So if they can actually get six-figure-salary teachers and still keep costs down to $10K/student, that would be fantastic for the profession.
granular 17y ago
Yes, great teachers should be paid well. But there's another side to this coin. Teaching is a brutal job. Parents complaining about grades and/or teachers. Student behaviour worse than its ever been (with administrators that do very little about it -- partly because of outside pressures). Every bit of interaction with parents, and observed problem behaviours with students, must be documented. Dates, times, what was discussed, what actions are to be taken. Far too regular class interruptions for all sorts of things (ex. sporting events, pep rallys, dances, early dismissals, awards ceremonies, field trips, plays). Teaching gets much more difficult when a non-trivial percentage of students are out every day, and/or class time is cut short (or gone) for other activities. Rubrics required for everything (a teacher can't just say, "this is C work" -- everything must be documented, and this makes the amount of grading work go through the roof). Unending meetings, data collection requirements (you'd be amazed at how badly administrators want to put a number on your kids). State curriculum requirements. Standardized testing. Paperwork up the wazoo. And I don't even need to mention that you better not need to go to the bathroom during class, because you can't leave students unattended. And between classes, well, you've got 4 minutes between bells. Better make it quick. And hope another teacher's not using the same bathroom you're heading for. Higher pay for teachers would be nice, but that ain't the problem.
- nazgulnarsil 17y ago
  state regulation of government funded day care is pretty brutal. public school.
- meterplech 17y ago
  well, if they are gonna get paid 125k some quantitative accountability seems in order.
  - krakensden 17y ago
    Except the teachers the poster is describing aren't the ones from the article- they're the relatively poorly paid ones in the regular school system.
  - weaksauce 17y ago
lyime 17y ago
I was rather surprised when a family friend of mine told me that she takes in around a a $100k yearly. She is a middle school teacher(~10 years in the bay area). So teachers in many places actually get paid a good salary.
- gaius 17y ago
  Teaching has very strong unions. Actually that's the main problem. Teachers here in the UK are effectively unsackable, yet at the same time their jobs are hell because the unions insisted on all sorts of trendy Marxist nonsense being taught at teacher training colleges.
  - gjm11 17y ago
    You got some evidence for your claim that "the unions insisted on all sorts of trendy Marxist nonsense being taught at teacher training colleges"?
- yardie 17y ago
  Teachers in many areas do not get paid well. What is good for NYC/SF/DC does not represent the rest of the country. I believe teachers make 35k on average. I had a friend teach a high school in the Appalachians and they started him at 24k. And they really had to scrimp, save, and beg the feds to pay him considering the avg income for his area was less than half of that. If you are a teacher with degrees and certificates, then 100k in a major metro, plus 10 years would be about correct. Additionally you didn't specify what she teaches. Science and math teachers are harder to come by and their salary reflects that. My middle school science teacher was plucked from a high school, which had plucked her from a local college. She was one of the highest paid teachers in the school because she had experience and a load of degrees. She was working towards her doctorate when I left. She didn't come right at and tell me what she made, but the Benz in parking lot and the neighborhood she lived in gave me a clue. Also, this was a magnet school so the teachers tend to be of higher qualifications than a typical high school. Plus people seem to confuse the union with government a lot. In government you get paid in bands. Bands are based on the type of job, your accreditation, and your seniority. You can do the bare minimum and stay at the bottom of your band, until you are pushed up to the next band based on some formula, or you can do more and constantly stay in the top of your band and get pushed through quickly. The union probably doesn't have a lot of say in how much teachers get paid. They do have a big influence on how the workplace is run (ie. how late they must stay, when breaks can be done, etc).
cookieliaokai 17y ago
(∩_∩)(∩_∩)♥♥__Sugarbabymeet.com__♥♥ This is the best place for looking for sexy ladies(younge&rich) dating relationship or marriage. Now,Join us totally free!(∩_∩)(∩_∩) Yes, great teachers should be paid well. But there's another side to this coin. Teaching is a brutal job. Parents complaining about grades and/or teachers. Student behaviour worse than its ever been (with administrators that do very little about it -- partly because of outside pressures). Every bit of interaction with parents, and observed problem behaviours with students, must be documented. Dates, times, what was discussed, what actions are to be taken. Far too regular class interruptions for all sorts of things (ex. sporting events, pep rallys, dances, early dismissals, awards ceremonies, field trips, plays). Teaching gets much more difficult when a non-trivial percentage of students are out every day, and/or class time is cut short (or gone) for other activities. Rubrics required for everything (a teacher can't just say, "this is C work" -- everything must be documented, and this makes the amount of grading work go through the roof). Unending meetings, data collection requirements (you'd be amazed at how badly administrators want to put a number on your kids). State curriculum requirements. Standardized testing. Paperwork up the wazoo. And I don't even need to mention that you better not need to go to the bathroom during class, because you can't leave students unattended. And between classes, well, you've got 4 minutes between bells. Better make it quick. And hope another teacher's not using the same bathroom you're heading for. Higher pay for teachers would be nice, but that ain't the problem.
- csytan 17y ago
  HN meets its first spam bot..
  - dfranke 17y ago
    Not even close.
koepked 17y ago
gaius already made this point, but I wanted to make it again as a comment rather than a reply to head in a different direction: Unions are the problem. When crappy educators rise through the ranks to become department heads based on literally nothing more than seniority and a union contract, the education system has failed. As far as salary increases, what good would that do? Because of the unions, crappy teachers would recieve the same increase. Not only that, there would me MORE crappy teachers; $125k is definitely enough to attract people who don't want really want to teach. Good teachers teach for the same reason good programers program: it's what they love to do, it's what they were made to do, there is no other life. Money isn't everything. I'm not saying the rewards shouldn't match the benefit given by a good teacher, but again, the union prevents this.
- koepked 17y ago
  In my opinion, the solution to all this is free school choice through a voucher program: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338 http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338 Also, for anyone who's really interested, I believe you can watch this report if you search 'Stupid in America' on youtube.
- Dilpil 17y ago
  Indeed: if this is repeatable, it is repeatable in private and charter schools.
- crux_ 17y ago
  The problem? A little less ideology and a little more clear thinking, please. You could certainly convince me that unions are a problem, but setting them up as the source of all badness is just your way of scoring points for your political/ideological team, rather than doing anything to contribute to the discussion. So, onto your 2nd paragraph. How many "good" programmers are there, out of all programmers? One out of ten? (And that's being incredibly generous from my experience.) How well would these superstar volunteer for-the-love-of-it teachers do with 10x increased class sizes? (And let's not forget all those who are thoroughly passionate about programming (/teaching) yet suck at it.)
  - 17y ago
noonespecial 17y ago
I fully expect this to work. The kids will love school in a way that no one thought possible. They'll learn more in a year than most pick up in 4. What then? Why do I suddenly picture Don Quixote raising his lance, or Wile E. strapping on rocket skates?
- hpvic03 17y ago
  I agree. Some people argue that if we raise teacher salaries, we'll have people become teachers for the money instead of for the love of teaching. However, many teachers that teach solely for the love of teaching just suck at it. I know because I have had many of these teachers. I would much rather have a teacher who is good at teaching, whether they love it or just like it, than a teacher who loves teaching but is bad at it. There are x number of brilliant and dynamic students that graduate from universities across the US every year. Before the bust, did > 50% of these students want to become investment bankers because of their love for working in Excel all day? No, they wanted to do investment banking because of the high salaries and solid career footing it provided. It's basic economics; the higher the salary and job prestige, the more qualified the applicants will be due to increased competition for the job. The main problems that cause education to under-perform in the US (I think) are bad parenting, a non-education oriented culture, and poor teacher quality. Of these three, poor teacher quality is the only one that is most easily affected. So how can one say that it's not logical that increasing teacher salaries can be a solution to helping improve education in the US?
  - misuba 17y ago
    "Some people argue that if we raise teacher salaries, we'll have people become teachers for the money instead of for the love of teaching." There are way easier ways to make $125K if that's all you want.
nopal 17y ago
One of the problems with public education is that it has to serve everyone. Many private schools succeed because the don't have to deal with the same types of children as do public schools. I'm sure this school will have good results, but I think the most important question is whether or not the results can be repeated. Are there enough good teachers to serve all of the children in the U.S.? Are they just not teaching right now because of teacher pay? The majority of these teachers were already in the educational system. This expeirimental school simply pooled the best of the best together. I hope this model is successful, and I hope even more that they are able to figure out how to increase the quality of education when dealing with a much larger scale.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  "Many private schools succeed because the don't have to deal with the same types of children as do public schools." Or with the same types of parents. A private school can always tell parents to take their tuition dollars and go somewhere else, if the trouble they are causing exceeds the value of the tuition they are paying. Agreed with the question of scaling. It is easy to poach all of the best teachers and put them into one school, and you should get good results. But is this a solution to raising the level of education nation wide, or even in one city?
  - anamax 17y ago
    > It is easy to poach all of the best teachers and put them into one school, and you should get good results. But is this a solution to raising the level of education nation wide, or even in one city? It's so much better to let the trouble-kids make sure that no one gets an education.... We can't save them all. However, we can lose them all, and that's what we're doing by keeping good kids in bad situations. If you really think that the presence of good kids helps the bad ones, shouldn't you be paying the good ones for that help? After all, being with the bad kids costs the good kids.
    - jimbokun 17y ago
      Who gets the privilege of sorting out the good and the bad kids? Just go by GPA? Interesting to note, that the school in the article is favoring poorly performing students in its lottery.
misuba 17y ago
The article focuses on the hiring process they went through to find great teachers who were already teaching. The real challenge, though, is to find the best teachers who would be teaching if it weren't for the absurdly low compensation for such taxing work. How would you do that?
- kragen 17y ago
  Well, you could start by founding a school that pays teachers $125 000 a year and then getting a press hit in the New York Times.
  - misuba 17y ago
    And then you go see these new teachers in their classrooms... which they don't have yet. What then?
    - kragen 17y ago
      Well, ideally the timeline goes something like this: 2008: announce the project; get the attention of a few of those who would be teaching 2009: launch, get a press hit in the NY Times; get the attention of hundreds of thousands more 2010: report good results and plans for expansion 2011: report good results and plans for expansion. At this point some of those who would be teaching who were entering university in 2008 are almost ready to graduate, and others are ready for a career change. 2012: report good results and start hiring a bunch of the fabulous scientists, engineers, etc., whose attention you've been attracting over the past four years.

65 points by peter123 17y ago

Interestingly, it may be that one could pay twice as much per teacher and still end up with a lower cost per pupil overall, as administrator overhead plays a large part in the regular cost formulation. $125 / 30 students ~ $4k, a fraction of both the DC metro public and charter school cost per pupil (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/04/03/dc-vouchers-better-results-at-a-quarter-the-cost/ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/04/03/dc-vouchers-better...).

smanek 17y ago
So, a base cost of $125K/30 kids. Add in benefits for the teacher and you're at $150K. Liability insurance is another $50K. Rent per year for 1500 sq ft to house the 30 kids (the classroom is smaller, but you also need to amortize the cost the space needed for admins, gyms, halls, locker rooms, cafeterias, etc) is at least $30K. Supplies (books, sports equipment, etc) conservatively cost about $10K for the 30 students. And, realistically, you'll always have some administrative overhead (tech guys, librarians, lawyers, principal, secretaries, etc) which I can't imagine being less than $50K (amortized over a sufficiently large school). That brings our total cost to, at least, $290K - which is about 10K per student. Still not too bad (although I'm still probably missing/underestimating some expenses ...), but at least marginally more realistic than your made up $4K/student number. I like the idea of school vouchers and private schools too. But you have to be realistic.
- sethg 17y ago
  IIRC the nationwide average for public schools is about $9K/student, and that includes areas where the cost of living is a lot lower than it is in NYC. So if they can actually get six-figure-salary teachers and still keep costs down to $10K/student, that would be fantastic for the profession.

granular 17y ago

Yes, great teachers should be paid well. But there's another side to this coin. Teaching is a brutal job. Parents complaining about grades and/or teachers. Student behaviour worse than its ever been (with administrators that do very little about it -- partly because of outside pressures). Every bit of interaction with parents, and observed problem behaviours with students, must be documented. Dates, times, what was discussed, what actions are to be taken. Far too regular class interruptions for all sorts of things (ex. sporting events, pep rallys, dances, early dismissals, awards ceremonies, field trips, plays). Teaching gets much more difficult when a non-trivial percentage of students are out every day, and/or class time is cut short (or gone) for other activities. Rubrics required for everything (a teacher can't just say, "this is C work" -- everything must be documented, and this makes the amount of grading work go through the roof). Unending meetings, data collection requirements (you'd be amazed at how badly administrators want to put a number on your kids). State curriculum requirements. Standardized testing. Paperwork up the wazoo. And I don't even need to mention that you better not need to go to the bathroom during class, because you can't leave students unattended. And between classes, well, you've got 4 minutes between bells. Better make it quick. And hope another teacher's not using the same bathroom you're heading for. Higher pay for teachers would be nice, but that ain't the problem.

nazgulnarsil 17y ago
state regulation of government funded day care is pretty brutal. public school.
meterplech 17y ago
well, if they are gonna get paid 125k some quantitative accountability seems in order.
- krakensden 17y ago
  Except the teachers the poster is describing aren't the ones from the article- they're the relatively poorly paid ones in the regular school system.
- weaksauce 17y ago

lyime 17y ago

I was rather surprised when a family friend of mine told me that she takes in around a a $100k yearly. She is a middle school teacher(~10 years in the bay area). So teachers in many places actually get paid a good salary.

gaius 17y ago
Teaching has very strong unions. Actually that's the main problem. Teachers here in the UK are effectively unsackable, yet at the same time their jobs are hell because the unions insisted on all sorts of trendy Marxist nonsense being taught at teacher training colleges.
- gjm11 17y ago
  You got some evidence for your claim that "the unions insisted on all sorts of trendy Marxist nonsense being taught at teacher training colleges"?
yardie 17y ago
Teachers in many areas do not get paid well. What is good for NYC/SF/DC does not represent the rest of the country. I believe teachers make 35k on average. I had a friend teach a high school in the Appalachians and they started him at 24k. And they really had to scrimp, save, and beg the feds to pay him considering the avg income for his area was less than half of that. If you are a teacher with degrees and certificates, then 100k in a major metro, plus 10 years would be about correct. Additionally you didn't specify what she teaches. Science and math teachers are harder to come by and their salary reflects that. My middle school science teacher was plucked from a high school, which had plucked her from a local college. She was one of the highest paid teachers in the school because she had experience and a load of degrees. She was working towards her doctorate when I left. She didn't come right at and tell me what she made, but the Benz in parking lot and the neighborhood she lived in gave me a clue. Also, this was a magnet school so the teachers tend to be of higher qualifications than a typical high school. Plus people seem to confuse the union with government a lot. In government you get paid in bands. Bands are based on the type of job, your accreditation, and your seniority. You can do the bare minimum and stay at the bottom of your band, until you are pushed up to the next band based on some formula, or you can do more and constantly stay in the top of your band and get pushed through quickly. The union probably doesn't have a lot of say in how much teachers get paid. They do have a big influence on how the workplace is run (ie. how late they must stay, when breaks can be done, etc).

cookieliaokai 17y ago

(∩_∩)(∩_∩)♥♥__Sugarbabymeet.com__♥♥ This is the best place for looking for sexy ladies(younge&rich) dating relationship or marriage. Now,Join us totally free!(∩_∩)(∩_∩) Yes, great teachers should be paid well. But there's another side to this coin. Teaching is a brutal job. Parents complaining about grades and/or teachers. Student behaviour worse than its ever been (with administrators that do very little about it -- partly because of outside pressures). Every bit of interaction with parents, and observed problem behaviours with students, must be documented. Dates, times, what was discussed, what actions are to be taken. Far too regular class interruptions for all sorts of things (ex. sporting events, pep rallys, dances, early dismissals, awards ceremonies, field trips, plays). Teaching gets much more difficult when a non-trivial percentage of students are out every day, and/or class time is cut short (or gone) for other activities. Rubrics required for everything (a teacher can't just say, "this is C work" -- everything must be documented, and this makes the amount of grading work go through the roof). Unending meetings, data collection requirements (you'd be amazed at how badly administrators want to put a number on your kids). State curriculum requirements. Standardized testing. Paperwork up the wazoo. And I don't even need to mention that you better not need to go to the bathroom during class, because you can't leave students unattended. And between classes, well, you've got 4 minutes between bells. Better make it quick. And hope another teacher's not using the same bathroom you're heading for. Higher pay for teachers would be nice, but that ain't the problem.

csytan 17y ago
HN meets its first spam bot..
- dfranke 17y ago
  Not even close.

koepked 17y ago

gaius already made this point, but I wanted to make it again as a comment rather than a reply to head in a different direction: Unions are the problem. When crappy educators rise through the ranks to become department heads based on literally nothing more than seniority and a union contract, the education system has failed. As far as salary increases, what good would that do? Because of the unions, crappy teachers would recieve the same increase. Not only that, there would me MORE crappy teachers; $125k is definitely enough to attract people who don't want really want to teach. Good teachers teach for the same reason good programers program: it's what they love to do, it's what they were made to do, there is no other life. Money isn't everything. I'm not saying the rewards shouldn't match the benefit given by a good teacher, but again, the union prevents this.

koepked 17y ago
In my opinion, the solution to all this is free school choice through a voucher program: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338 http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338 Also, for anyone who's really interested, I believe you can watch this report if you search 'Stupid in America' on youtube.
Dilpil 17y ago
Indeed: if this is repeatable, it is repeatable in private and charter schools.
crux_ 17y ago
The problem? A little less ideology and a little more clear thinking, please. You could certainly convince me that unions are a problem, but setting them up as the source of all badness is just your way of scoring points for your political/ideological team, rather than doing anything to contribute to the discussion. So, onto your 2nd paragraph. How many "good" programmers are there, out of all programmers? One out of ten? (And that's being incredibly generous from my experience.) How well would these superstar volunteer for-the-love-of-it teachers do with 10x increased class sizes? (And let's not forget all those who are thoroughly passionate about programming (/teaching) yet suck at it.)
- 17y ago

noonespecial 17y ago

I fully expect this to work. The kids will love school in a way that no one thought possible. They'll learn more in a year than most pick up in 4. What then? Why do I suddenly picture Don Quixote raising his lance, or Wile E. strapping on rocket skates?

hpvic03 17y ago
I agree. Some people argue that if we raise teacher salaries, we'll have people become teachers for the money instead of for the love of teaching. However, many teachers that teach solely for the love of teaching just suck at it. I know because I have had many of these teachers. I would much rather have a teacher who is good at teaching, whether they love it or just like it, than a teacher who loves teaching but is bad at it. There are x number of brilliant and dynamic students that graduate from universities across the US every year. Before the bust, did > 50% of these students want to become investment bankers because of their love for working in Excel all day? No, they wanted to do investment banking because of the high salaries and solid career footing it provided. It's basic economics; the higher the salary and job prestige, the more qualified the applicants will be due to increased competition for the job. The main problems that cause education to under-perform in the US (I think) are bad parenting, a non-education oriented culture, and poor teacher quality. Of these three, poor teacher quality is the only one that is most easily affected. So how can one say that it's not logical that increasing teacher salaries can be a solution to helping improve education in the US?
- misuba 17y ago
  "Some people argue that if we raise teacher salaries, we'll have people become teachers for the money instead of for the love of teaching." There are way easier ways to make $125K if that's all you want.

nopal 17y ago

One of the problems with public education is that it has to serve everyone. Many private schools succeed because the don't have to deal with the same types of children as do public schools. I'm sure this school will have good results, but I think the most important question is whether or not the results can be repeated. Are there enough good teachers to serve all of the children in the U.S.? Are they just not teaching right now because of teacher pay? The majority of these teachers were already in the educational system. This expeirimental school simply pooled the best of the best together. I hope this model is successful, and I hope even more that they are able to figure out how to increase the quality of education when dealing with a much larger scale.

jimbokun 17y ago
"Many private schools succeed because the don't have to deal with the same types of children as do public schools." Or with the same types of parents. A private school can always tell parents to take their tuition dollars and go somewhere else, if the trouble they are causing exceeds the value of the tuition they are paying. Agreed with the question of scaling. It is easy to poach all of the best teachers and put them into one school, and you should get good results. But is this a solution to raising the level of education nation wide, or even in one city?
- anamax 17y ago
  > It is easy to poach all of the best teachers and put them into one school, and you should get good results. But is this a solution to raising the level of education nation wide, or even in one city? It's so much better to let the trouble-kids make sure that no one gets an education.... We can't save them all. However, we can lose them all, and that's what we're doing by keeping good kids in bad situations. If you really think that the presence of good kids helps the bad ones, shouldn't you be paying the good ones for that help? After all, being with the bad kids costs the good kids.
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    Who gets the privilege of sorting out the good and the bad kids? Just go by GPA? Interesting to note, that the school in the article is favoring poorly performing students in its lottery.

misuba 17y ago

The article focuses on the hiring process they went through to find great teachers who were already teaching. The real challenge, though, is to find the best teachers who would be teaching if it weren't for the absurdly low compensation for such taxing work. How would you do that?

kragen 17y ago
Well, you could start by founding a school that pays teachers $125 000 a year and then getting a press hit in the New York Times.
- misuba 17y ago
  And then you go see these new teachers in their classrooms... which they don't have yet. What then?
  - kragen 17y ago
    Well, ideally the timeline goes something like this: 2008: announce the project; get the attention of a few of those who would be teaching 2009: launch, get a press hit in the NY Times; get the attention of hundreds of thousands more 2010: report good results and plans for expansion 2011: report good results and plans for expansion. At this point some of those who would be teaching who were entering university in 2008 are almost ready to graduate, and others are ready for a career change. 2012: report good results and start hiring a bunch of the fabulous scientists, engineers, etc., whose attention you've been attracting over the past four years.