Comment by L_Rahman | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by L_Rahman | Hacker News Reader

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A key reason that these are the two industries we highlight is that they are beset by cost disease. Some charts to explain the point.

1. Cost of healthcare vs life expectancy for first world countries:

http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/cost_countries.png

2. Cost of K-12 education per student versus test scores in the United States over time:

http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/primary_scost.gif

3. Salaries for K-12 teachers over time:

http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/cost_teachersalary.png http://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/cost_teachersalary2.pn...

Looking at those teacher salary numbers, I am struck by how much of a calling teaching must be to lure people to do it for such mediocre compensation.

Why can you not be more specific than total costs versus test scores? AFAIK school budgets are public, so surely there are more detailed analyses that have been done?

Being at 1.0 on the average income ratio is well above average. The median US worker comes in at .7 on that chart.

You can work a lot harder to make even more mediocre compensation -- I worked 12-hour days in manufacturing for ten years to make less, and it was pretty difficult on my body. If teaching weren't such a horrible job with little possibility of self-improvement, I would definitely envy them their compensation.

To be fair, the comparison should be with the median worker with a bachelor's degree, because (AFAIK) that is a requirement to be a K-12 teacher. As a practical matter, a master's in education is a realistic requirement in many places as well.

I certainly wouldn't do it for 60K.

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