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I agree 100% that raising teacher pay is important to attract people to the job and all the other things but it's not clear how to get there given the USA is on

I agree 100% that raising teacher pay is important to attract people to the job and all the other things but it's not clear how to get there given the USA is one of the top spenders per student in the world. If other countries are doing better on much less money why do they seem to be able to achieve those things? I'm sure the answer is complicated. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

Cowicide 12y ago
>the USA is one of the top spenders per student in the world. People keep saying this, but they leave out the fact that it's not spent equally in all places. In poor neighborhoods, the schools there do NOT get the same amount of funding as they do in wealthier American nieghborhoods. A friend of mine taught in a poor nieghborhood. She and I had to buy books and supplies for the kids because the damn school was so underfunded.
- rayiner 12y ago
  People keep saying that, but they leave out the fact that the worst school districts--but urban ones--also have the highest per student spending.
  - xienze 12y ago
    Correct. Everyone conveniently forgets that there is NOT a 1:1 correlation between spending and results -- the variance is insane. Some districts spend very little and have great results, some districts spend ludicrous amounts of money and have very poor results.
  - acdha 12y ago
    Looking at per-student is hard, though, since it requires adjusting a number of factors. There are the obvious things - cost of infrastructure, needing to pay more in salaries – but also some less obvious differences like the way the U.S. usually has the school system to pay for services which aren't directly related to education. One major example is special-needs: a single kid who needs an aid or therapist drives up the average massively but that spending doesn't benefit their classmates at all, and urban districts tend to have more of them for various reasons. (This is also an interesting factor in the charter school debate: few of the accusations about cherry-picking students note that some cities don't give the charters the same extra funding for support services, creating a massive penalty for admitting each student)
  - pen2l 12y ago
    That does not sound true. E.g., some private high schools (for the rich-rich) charge up to $30k and more, that's less than a lot of really good universities for goodness sake.
    - rhino369 12y ago
      DC spends 30k a student and 83% can't read properly.
      - Cowicide 12y ago
        That's a nice, oversimplified, right-wing talking point, but there also happens to be a huge disparity in per-pupil spending in Washington-area schools: [1] http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2014/10/study_shows_huge_disparity_in.html http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2014/10/stud... Also, The Education Law Center has found that low-income public schools overall spend $3,000 less per student than their wealthier counterparts, amounting to $75,000 less per 25-student classroom, yet low-income districts contain many more students likely to have higher needs due to poverty, English Language Learner status, or disability. [2] http://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ELC_schoolfundingreport.2013.pdf http://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ELC_schoolf... In other words, I'm sure the right-wing can cherry-pick anomalies (like they do with climate change, etc. and look like fools throwing snowballs on the Senate floor [3]) while disingenuously attempting to prop anomalies as "the norm", but the greater reality is that low-income areas tend to get less funding for students overall -- and, it's a problem. [3] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sen-jim-inhofe-throws-snowball-senate-floor-attempt/story?id=29255635 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sen-jim-inhofe-throws-snowbal...
    - danielweber 12y ago
      That's a specific case where their client base literally does not care about the cost. $30,000 or $40,000 makes no difference to them. Or, to take it further, it's quite likely a Veblen good: because only families that can shrug at $30,000 a year for private school will be going there, your kid will only associate with other rich kids, creating valuable romantic and professional networks.
  - Cowicide 12y ago
    >People keep saying that, but they leave out the fact that the worst school districts--but urban ones--also have the highest per student spending. It's hard to follow your jumbled sentence. However, it appears you're implying low income areas get the most funding. That's a right-wing myth that's spewed from places like the Heritage Foundation when they attempt to profitably indoctrinate the public into privatizing schools, etc. The truth of the matter is The Education Law Center has found that low-income public schools spend $3,000 less per student than their wealthier counterparts, amounting to $75,000 less per 25-student classroom, yet low-income districts contain many more students likely to have higher needs due to poverty, English Language Learner status, or disability. http://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ELC_schoolfundingreport.2013.pdf http://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ELC_schoolf... So, if we are to examine the realities of the situation, we find that the kids with special needs who desperately need more funding -- often get less. Also, if you've ever had personal experience within schools located in low-income neighborhoods as many teachers and myself have had, you'd know this very directly. You can certainly find anomalies, but to prop up anomalies as the norm reeks of agenda instead of truth-seeking. I should also mention that I agree that funding alone certainly isn't the only issue. How the funding is applied is very important as well. However, when funding is woefully short in the first place and kids don't have the materials and supplies they need for a proper education, we have a core problem there.
rbehrends 12y ago
First of all, underpaid teachers are not a problem specific to the US. Even in Finland, which has one of the best education systems in the world, this is a problem [1], just much less so than in the US. The difference in Finland (and other European social democracies) is that with more compressed wages scales, (essentially) free college, and teaching being a high-status job, this is far more manageable. In short, you don't have to pay teachers as much in order to make teaching an attractive profession. Finland requires a graduate degree and (I think) a couple of years of on-the-job training in order to be allowed to teach at schools. In America, applying the same standards would mean that the prospective teacher not only has a significant amount of student debt, but would then also be pretty slow about paying it off. In that situation, why not aim for a better-paying job to begin with? It's not that teacher pay is low relative to the average wage in the US, it's low relative to what a college degree can get you. For similar reasons, France can pay its doctors less than America and still have them be happier with the system. In short, the US needs to spend more to pay people in high-skill professions because of higher inequality; also, other countries spend money on things that are not accounted for under primary and secondary education (such as free tuition), but later help with keeping down costs. I'll note that education spending does not in and of itself fix the problem. There are plenty of affluent countries that perform poorly on the PISA. Attracting qualified teachers is only part of any solution. If you can't attract them through pay (which in principle is possible, not everybody wants to be rich), then the job needs to have perks to make up for it; but the soul-destroying bureaucracy of NCLB is pretty much the opposite. [1] http://worldpress.org/Europe/654.cfm http://worldpress.org/Europe/654.cfm

Cowicide 12y ago

>the USA is one of the top spenders per student in the world. People keep saying this, but they leave out the fact that it's not spent equally in all places. In poor neighborhoods, the schools there do NOT get the same amount of funding as they do in wealthier American nieghborhoods. A friend of mine taught in a poor nieghborhood. She and I had to buy books and supplies for the kids because the damn school was so underfunded.

rayiner 12y ago
People keep saying that, but they leave out the fact that the worst school districts--but urban ones--also have the highest per student spending.
- xienze 12y ago
  Correct. Everyone conveniently forgets that there is NOT a 1:1 correlation between spending and results -- the variance is insane. Some districts spend very little and have great results, some districts spend ludicrous amounts of money and have very poor results.
- acdha 12y ago
  Looking at per-student is hard, though, since it requires adjusting a number of factors. There are the obvious things - cost of infrastructure, needing to pay more in salaries – but also some less obvious differences like the way the U.S. usually has the school system to pay for services which aren't directly related to education. One major example is special-needs: a single kid who needs an aid or therapist drives up the average massively but that spending doesn't benefit their classmates at all, and urban districts tend to have more of them for various reasons. (This is also an interesting factor in the charter school debate: few of the accusations about cherry-picking students note that some cities don't give the charters the same extra funding for support services, creating a massive penalty for admitting each student)
- pen2l 12y ago
  That does not sound true. E.g., some private high schools (for the rich-rich) charge up to $30k and more, that's less than a lot of really good universities for goodness sake.
  - rhino369 12y ago
    DC spends 30k a student and 83% can't read properly.
    - Cowicide 12y ago
      That's a nice, oversimplified, right-wing talking point, but there also happens to be a huge disparity in per-pupil spending in Washington-area schools: [1] http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2014/10/study_shows_huge_disparity_in.html http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2014/10/stud... Also, The Education Law Center has found that low-income public schools overall spend $3,000 less per student than their wealthier counterparts, amounting to $75,000 less per 25-student classroom, yet low-income districts contain many more students likely to have higher needs due to poverty, English Language Learner status, or disability. [2] http://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ELC_schoolfundingreport.2013.pdf http://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ELC_schoolf... In other words, I'm sure the right-wing can cherry-pick anomalies (like they do with climate change, etc. and look like fools throwing snowballs on the Senate floor [3]) while disingenuously attempting to prop anomalies as "the norm", but the greater reality is that low-income areas tend to get less funding for students overall -- and, it's a problem. [3] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sen-jim-inhofe-throws-snowball-senate-floor-attempt/story?id=29255635 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sen-jim-inhofe-throws-snowbal...
  - danielweber 12y ago
    That's a specific case where their client base literally does not care about the cost. $30,000 or $40,000 makes no difference to them. Or, to take it further, it's quite likely a Veblen good: because only families that can shrug at $30,000 a year for private school will be going there, your kid will only associate with other rich kids, creating valuable romantic and professional networks.
- Cowicide 12y ago
  >People keep saying that, but they leave out the fact that the worst school districts--but urban ones--also have the highest per student spending. It's hard to follow your jumbled sentence. However, it appears you're implying low income areas get the most funding. That's a right-wing myth that's spewed from places like the Heritage Foundation when they attempt to profitably indoctrinate the public into privatizing schools, etc. The truth of the matter is The Education Law Center has found that low-income public schools spend $3,000 less per student than their wealthier counterparts, amounting to $75,000 less per 25-student classroom, yet low-income districts contain many more students likely to have higher needs due to poverty, English Language Learner status, or disability. http://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ELC_schoolfundingreport.2013.pdf http://www.elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ELC_schoolf... So, if we are to examine the realities of the situation, we find that the kids with special needs who desperately need more funding -- often get less. Also, if you've ever had personal experience within schools located in low-income neighborhoods as many teachers and myself have had, you'd know this very directly. You can certainly find anomalies, but to prop up anomalies as the norm reeks of agenda instead of truth-seeking. I should also mention that I agree that funding alone certainly isn't the only issue. How the funding is applied is very important as well. However, when funding is woefully short in the first place and kids don't have the materials and supplies they need for a proper education, we have a core problem there.

rbehrends 12y ago

First of all, underpaid teachers are not a problem specific to the US. Even in Finland, which has one of the best education systems in the world, this is a problem [1], just much less so than in the US. The difference in Finland (and other European social democracies) is that with more compressed wages scales, (essentially) free college, and teaching being a high-status job, this is far more manageable. In short, you don't have to pay teachers as much in order to make teaching an attractive profession. Finland requires a graduate degree and (I think) a couple of years of on-the-job training in order to be allowed to teach at schools. In America, applying the same standards would mean that the prospective teacher not only has a significant amount of student debt, but would then also be pretty slow about paying it off. In that situation, why not aim for a better-paying job to begin with? It's not that teacher pay is low relative to the average wage in the US, it's low relative to what a college degree can get you. For similar reasons, France can pay its doctors less than America and still have them be happier with the system. In short, the US needs to spend more to pay people in high-skill professions because of higher inequality; also, other countries spend money on things that are not accounted for under primary and secondary education (such as free tuition), but later help with keeping down costs. I'll note that education spending does not in and of itself fix the problem. There are plenty of affluent countries that perform poorly on the PISA. Attracting qualified teachers is only part of any solution. If you can't attract them through pay (which in principle is possible, not everybody wants to be rich), then the job needs to have perks to make up for it; but the soul-destroying bureaucracy of NCLB is pretty much the opposite. [1] http://worldpress.org/Europe/654.cfm http://worldpress.org/Europe/654.cfm