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My SO is a teacher. We have a similar amount of experience, my partner has more degrees. I make exactly twice as much money. It's not like I'm working harder o

My SO is a teacher. We have a similar amount of experience, my partner has more degrees. I make exactly twice as much money. It's not like I'm working harder or what I'm doing is more important. You just can't convince Americans to spend money on public schools.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
The marginal product of your work is higher. The amount of money you make is proportional to how much value would not be produced if you were to quit. To copy an older explanation I wrote: Consider a very important profession, say superhero. Having one superhero to stop the Joker is worth $1M. Having two superheros is worth $1.1M - Batman is sufficient to stop the very dangerous Joker, but two superheros can stop both the Joker and the far less dangerous Harleyquinn. The marginal productivity of an extra superhero is $100k even if the mean productivity is $550k. As a result, superheros get paid $100k because if any superhero quits, society loses only $100k rather than $550k. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6846579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6846579
- mathattack 13y ago
  I was going to tear your response apart, but I think your logic is actually very correct. This is especially true if the employer is a monopoly. But let's say there are multiple employers competing for the superheroes, each with their own bad guys to hunt down... Then you can get paid more.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    This has nothing to do with a monopsony. In a perfectly competitive market, wage == marginal product. A monopsonistic situation can drive wages below the marginal product. A monopolistic situation (e.g., multiple school districts, 1 union) can drive it above the marginal product. What I described is simply the ideal situation.
    - mathattack 13y ago
      Yes - but the reality in most large cities (where the problems are) is 1 union and 1 employer. Once you get to the suburbs, there is a lot more mobility amongst the teachers. If they don't like a school system, another is 5 miles away.
      - krakensden 13y ago
        It highly depends on the metro area.
- krakensden 13y ago
  Public school teacher compensation is totally unrelated to their productivity. Measurement is haphazard and terrible, outcomes are universally ignored, and generally pay depends on the the tax assessment of the surrounding real estate. There are professions where that's a good model, but it seems remarkably unrelated to the dynamics of the teaching market.
rayiner 13y ago
> You just can't convince Americans to spend money on public schools. Americans spend more on public schools than pretty much anyone else, by almost any measure you choose: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/oecd-education-report_n_3496875.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/oecd-education-repo.... Chicago spends about the same per student as the wealthy suburb where I grew up. Teachers' salaries are also higher in Chicago than where I grew up, despite having comparable if not lower cost of living.
- mathattack 13y ago
  It's not just money, it's accountability, it's income of the students, it's how progress is measured... Tossing money at a broken school is about as productive as tossing money at an overdue software project. Conceivably it could help, but the data suggests that you should fix the root cause of the problem first.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    I'll go one further than that: we blame schools for not fixing what are fundamentally deep-seated social, rather than educational, problems. Tossing more money at schools, broken or functional, isn't productive. Half of all children in Chicago live in single-parent homes, and the poverty rate for families headed by a single mother are around 40%: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-11-03/news/ct-edit-xproject5a-family-1103-20131103_1_fathers-mothers-many-kids http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-11-03/news/ct-edit-x.... That percentage is almost certainly much higher within the Chicago public school system, which skews poorer than the city as a whole. You can't have functional schools with students who have to worry more about gang violence in their neighborhood than their grades. More money, better curricula, better teachers, none of that matters when the social structure outside the school is crumbling. I imagine much of the dysfunction endemic to urban school systems is related to the Sisyphean nature of the task we give them. We focus almost single-mindedly on schools and education to solve all the ills of urban society. If only our schools were functional and our teachers competent, we say, these kids would be able to rise out of their condition and better themselves. But teachers who teach in these systems realize the absurdity of that charge. Stuck between a student population that needs help in ways that are not within their power to give, and a society that fails to realize the actual needs of these young people, teachers shift to a mode focused on self-preservation. Hence the dysfunction present in urban school systems.
mathattack 13y ago
I suspect your salary will triple theirs within 5 years. My sense is there are a few reasons for this: 1) It is very hard to measure the benefits of good teaching, and it tends to be on a much longer timeframe. (Do we value nice teachers, or the ones that force us to learn? And is there a good test for it? I still get lessons from my great high school teachers, but it took a long time to appreciate some of them.) 2) There is little competition for skills of high school teachers. In large cities, there is one employer, take it or leave it. Teachers get one salary - based on how long they've been there. By the time they're most beaten down and least effective, they're paid the most. Meanwhile, the academic literature suggests that after 5 years, there is little correlation between time in classroom and improved skills. What can be done? Improve the imperfect measurements, and open up the system for competition. Make it easier for schools to compete for better teachers by paying them more. (In the end, parents know which teachers are better) Make it easier for parents to leave bad schools. Make it easier to close schools whose parents leave.
auctiontheory 13y ago
You just can't convince Americans to spend money on public schools. Public schools get plenty of money. It just doesn't go to the classroom teachers. As a psychologist friend pointed out to me yesterday, jobs that are traditionally held by women tend to be underpaid compared to "equivalent" jobs that are traditionally male. Compare teacher salaries to police and fireman salaries in the same district.
- krakensden 13y ago
  Most of the higher-paid administrators, etc., are women though. That said, most of the (invariably obscenely overcompensated) superintendents I've heard of have been male.

yummyfajitas 13y ago

The marginal product of your work is higher. The amount of money you make is proportional to how much value would not be produced if you were to quit. To copy an older explanation I wrote: Consider a very important profession, say superhero. Having one superhero to stop the Joker is worth $1M. Having two superheros is worth $1.1M - Batman is sufficient to stop the very dangerous Joker, but two superheros can stop both the Joker and the far less dangerous Harleyquinn. The marginal productivity of an extra superhero is $100k even if the mean productivity is $550k. As a result, superheros get paid $100k because if any superhero quits, society loses only $100k rather than $550k. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6846579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6846579

mathattack 13y ago
I was going to tear your response apart, but I think your logic is actually very correct. This is especially true if the employer is a monopoly. But let's say there are multiple employers competing for the superheroes, each with their own bad guys to hunt down... Then you can get paid more.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  This has nothing to do with a monopsony. In a perfectly competitive market, wage == marginal product. A monopsonistic situation can drive wages below the marginal product. A monopolistic situation (e.g., multiple school districts, 1 union) can drive it above the marginal product. What I described is simply the ideal situation.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    Yes - but the reality in most large cities (where the problems are) is 1 union and 1 employer. Once you get to the suburbs, there is a lot more mobility amongst the teachers. If they don't like a school system, another is 5 miles away.
    - krakensden 13y ago
      It highly depends on the metro area.
krakensden 13y ago
Public school teacher compensation is totally unrelated to their productivity. Measurement is haphazard and terrible, outcomes are universally ignored, and generally pay depends on the the tax assessment of the surrounding real estate. There are professions where that's a good model, but it seems remarkably unrelated to the dynamics of the teaching market.

rayiner 13y ago

> You just can't convince Americans to spend money on public schools. Americans spend more on public schools than pretty much anyone else, by almost any measure you choose: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/oecd-education-report_n_3496875.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/oecd-education-repo.... Chicago spends about the same per student as the wealthy suburb where I grew up. Teachers' salaries are also higher in Chicago than where I grew up, despite having comparable if not lower cost of living.

mathattack 13y ago
It's not just money, it's accountability, it's income of the students, it's how progress is measured... Tossing money at a broken school is about as productive as tossing money at an overdue software project. Conceivably it could help, but the data suggests that you should fix the root cause of the problem first.
- rayiner 13y ago
  I'll go one further than that: we blame schools for not fixing what are fundamentally deep-seated social, rather than educational, problems. Tossing more money at schools, broken or functional, isn't productive. Half of all children in Chicago live in single-parent homes, and the poverty rate for families headed by a single mother are around 40%: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-11-03/news/ct-edit-xproject5a-family-1103-20131103_1_fathers-mothers-many-kids http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-11-03/news/ct-edit-x.... That percentage is almost certainly much higher within the Chicago public school system, which skews poorer than the city as a whole. You can't have functional schools with students who have to worry more about gang violence in their neighborhood than their grades. More money, better curricula, better teachers, none of that matters when the social structure outside the school is crumbling. I imagine much of the dysfunction endemic to urban school systems is related to the Sisyphean nature of the task we give them. We focus almost single-mindedly on schools and education to solve all the ills of urban society. If only our schools were functional and our teachers competent, we say, these kids would be able to rise out of their condition and better themselves. But teachers who teach in these systems realize the absurdity of that charge. Stuck between a student population that needs help in ways that are not within their power to give, and a society that fails to realize the actual needs of these young people, teachers shift to a mode focused on self-preservation. Hence the dysfunction present in urban school systems.

mathattack 13y ago

I suspect your salary will triple theirs within 5 years. My sense is there are a few reasons for this: 1) It is very hard to measure the benefits of good teaching, and it tends to be on a much longer timeframe. (Do we value nice teachers, or the ones that force us to learn? And is there a good test for it? I still get lessons from my great high school teachers, but it took a long time to appreciate some of them.) 2) There is little competition for skills of high school teachers. In large cities, there is one employer, take it or leave it. Teachers get one salary - based on how long they've been there. By the time they're most beaten down and least effective, they're paid the most. Meanwhile, the academic literature suggests that after 5 years, there is little correlation between time in classroom and improved skills. What can be done? Improve the imperfect measurements, and open up the system for competition. Make it easier for schools to compete for better teachers by paying them more. (In the end, parents know which teachers are better) Make it easier for parents to leave bad schools. Make it easier to close schools whose parents leave.

auctiontheory 13y ago

You just can't convince Americans to spend money on public schools. Public schools get plenty of money. It just doesn't go to the classroom teachers. As a psychologist friend pointed out to me yesterday, jobs that are traditionally held by women tend to be underpaid compared to "equivalent" jobs that are traditionally male. Compare teacher salaries to police and fireman salaries in the same district.

krakensden 13y ago
Most of the higher-paid administrators, etc., are women though. That said, most of the (invariably obscenely overcompensated) superintendents I've heard of have been male.