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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps I should have written underfunded teachers. Teaching isn't a desirable profession, and that combined with high student:teacher ratios, plus the terrible food they give kids tells me that there are vast improvements that can be made in the system, if we are really incentivized to provide a good education.

Also, the whole local taxes pay for local schools model is obviously not working. Things used to be more distributed, but now it's so easy to optimize for all the best schools and best neighborhoods that it creates a huge class system. Which was always there, but as the divide grows larger and the consequences life long, I don't see how it helps to cultivate a feeling of "country".

Providing equal footing to kids (and I know the home situation is most of the problem) could help alleviate a little bit of the problem.

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Are it's teachers underfunded compared to other countries or underfunded compared to your ideal of their worth?

I am claiming that a significant number of people who would make great teachers probably don't want to be one because pay and quality of life is much greater in other lines of work. If we, as a society, want the best teachers, then we have to make that a viable option for the best people. An uncertain school budget, beaurocratic school administration and myriad legal and funding issues don't make for a good working environment. I haven't heard any parent proudly claim or want their children to become teachers.

of course, maybe I'm wrong about increasing quality of teachers will increase quality education, but I think it's a good place to start.

US middle school teachers for public institutions received less than the OECD average pay per year in 2013.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Fig2Sta...

I've never heard of teaching not being a desirable profession. There's no shortage of teachers around, and the low wages are partly due to the teachers being a buyer's market, frankly.

Maybe things are different outside of the northeast, but between the enviable schedule, the union protections, and things like tenure, teaching is quite desirable, even if the raw salary looks poor on paper.

I don't believe tenure is still a thing.

Tenure is a thing because a certain section of the population believes that teaching evolution is a firing offense.

Tenure is a thing because a certain section of the population believes that reading a book in which a priest has a venereal disease is a firing offense.

I can go on.

The argument was that teaching was a desirable job because of things like tenure. Tenure is becoming increasingly rare[0] and I very much doubt it plays a big role when people are deciding if they would like to pursue teaching as a career.

> The period since 1972 has seen a steady decline in the percentage of college and university teaching positions in the US that are either tenured or tenure-track. United States Department of Education statistics put the combined tenured/tenure-track rate at 56% for 1975, 46.8% for 1989, and 31.9% for 2005. That is to say, by the year 2005, 68.1% of US college teachers were neither tenured nor eligible for tenure; a full 48% of teachers that year were part-time employees.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_tenure_in_North_Ameri...

Tenure isn't what you think it is. Tenure isn't necessarily supposed to be related to full-time status

Tenure isn't some magic "I can't be fired" button. It IS a "I am no longer an at will employee button". Once someone has tenure, you must have a documented reason to fire them. And those reasons are delineated up front.

People are upset that you are teaching evolution--not fireable. Teaching creationism in a science class--likely fireable(but unlikely to occur for various reasons). Too expensive a salary--not fireable. Dating a student--fireable even if you are both of age and consenting. Plagiarism or academic misconduct--fireable even if it wouldn't be so in private enterprise.

The problem is that school administrators tend to be very political--they are always working on getting their next job/promotion and need approval from their current/future teachers, current/future board, and current/future community. This interacts to form a feedback loop.

If an administrator gets a reputation for firing people, he's not going to get approval from the new teachers. Firing people costs money, so the next board is going to be suspicious. The new community may be staring at the fact that the old community rallied behind a teacher that the administrator tried to fire.

So, as an administrator, your best political bet is to shunt aside someone quietly rather than documenting and firing them.

If course, this assumes that the teacher actually needed to be fired. Administrators (especially in small schools) are notorious for playing petty political games of the "Do what I want or I'll give you the shitty class" kind. Older teachers tend to have zero tolerance for that kind of crap and, in small communities, may be able to zap the administrator for it and incur their wrath.

The thing you have to keep in mind is that the political situations in a large university, a small college, a large high school (like New York City), and a small high school (like rural New York) are VASTLY different and tenure serves slightly different purposes in each.

Whatever it is, people are getting far less of it.

It must be regional. There absolutely are teacher shortages in the Midwest. Salaries have stagnated as healthcare chews up larger amounts of funding. Social respect has diminished while accountability metrics have reshaped school missions. Sure, there are plenty of applicants in Minneapolis, but rural districts can't fill core subject area positions. It didn't used to be a problem.

Also, tenure in k12 typically just means you have to have a PIP before they can fire you (NYC rubber room insanity is not representative).

There are many teachers, it doesn't mean they're all the best and brightest you could get. The best ones I had were people who'd made enough money in industry and then switched to teaching for ideological reasons. It doesn't pay enough to be a goal in and of itself for many ambitious people.

Teaching being a tenured position after only a couple years also means that many great younger teachers end up getting fired to maintain older checked-out teachers. A lot of adverse selection going on.

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