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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

This seems to use private education as a benchmark for the entire argument. From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just above public salaries and conditions (meaning private education cannot be used as a benchmark for when someone is under-paid, over-qualified, or has too high of a quit rate because they are related).

Personally I think someone required to have a degree (master's for quoted salary), continued education requirements, and licensing earning under $50K/year starting is too low. Plus no teacher is working 8-3, you'd have no opportunity for lesson planning, grading, and all those extra curriculars they are essentially guilted into organizing.

The fact that I could walk out of college with zero experience and only a degree, and earn $20K more than that working only 9-5 in the same city seems unfair (as a programmer). But I have no idea how society decides salaries. It seems pretty arbitrary from my perspective.

But it is great that at the end of a long career a few unicorn teachers can earn $100K, a salary I earned within 5 years and still no master's or licencing.

View on HN

I would note that at least based on the educators I know, private schools often tend to pay LESS than public. Obviously, this may be dependent on area, but in Georgia at least, teachers at private schools typically make less once you factor in things like 401k, retirement, and health insurance. A lot less.

This is an anecdote but my cousin's wife quit her job at a public high school to work at a private school, allegedly for a more flexible schedule/slightly better base pay. She was then diagnosed with cancer (and at 35, that wasn't something she/her family was expecting) and the benefits for sick leave, not to mention medical costs, were so much worse, it was basically a nightmare. Fortunately, her husband kept his education job for the county so the insurance situation was a lot better -- but she lost access to a lot of other benefits that had a very high monetary and quality of life value.

I have other friends back home who left public schools for private, thinking they'd make more money -- found out the grass was not greener -- and then had a hell of a time getting a job back in their old school system.

It may be true in some areas with really poor public schools that private is going to pay better -- but public or private, as you say, in many cases, the pay just isn't going to be great.

Private schools are a 10k to 15k pay haircut in Seattle, most require a morality clause that makes being LGBTQ+ a firable offence, and the vaccination rates are appallingly low compared to public schools.

Seattle's Catholic Schools are single handedly bringing back Measles & Rubella as a latent disease, where it used to not exist.

With Running Start being an option for the last 2 years of High School (if your in public school), its much easier to advance your education rapidly if you so choose.

Seattle has hundreds of private schools, I doubt more than a handful have anything like the morality clause you cite, and most that I am aware of are explicit about their support of LGBTQ+. Do you have some source for your claim?

Kings School, all Catholic run schools (which are the majority of the private schools in the region) and the other various religious schools have this clause.

My neighbor was fired over it and had trouble finding work at other private schools as there are just a handful of Montessori and language immersion schools, with everything else that isn't SPS having a Morals clause.

Edit: The GSBA directory only lists 2 schools, most private schools in Seattle are not supportive: http://thegsba.org/business-resources/guide-directory/single...

I confess general ignorance of the religious schools in the area, but while this obviously this isn't an exhaustive survey the following examples seem typical of secular schools in the area (all quotes lifted from the school's websites).

Northwest School

"Diversity is our commitment to build [a] community that includes individuals and families who represent a wide variety of ... gender identity and expression, sexual orientation"

Seattle Academy

"includes and embraces a spectrum of differences in ... gender, sexual orientation"

Lakeside

"Lakeside is committed to creating an inclusive and equitable community in which all individuals can participate in and contribute to the life of the school, regardless of ... gender, ... sexual orientation, or any other aspect of their identity."

Why would anyone believe the GBSA is a comprehensive list?

The Seattle Academy isn't on the list and literally held the state conference for GLSEN this year ( https://sites.google.com/glsenwa.org/2019-conference/home ).

> Catholic run schools (which are the majority of the private schools in the region)

Going to various directories that let you filter by religious affiliations shows that catholic schools are probably ~20% of the private schools in Kings County and ~15% across Washington State. Christian schools make up another ~25% in Seattle and ~20% statewide. So, while a significant portion, Catholic is definitely not the majority and the combination of Catholic+Christian might approach 50%.

I went to the first two schools alphabetically in NWAIS's directory of members for Seattle and they both had nondiscrimination policies that included sexual orientation and gender identity. Neither is Montessori or language immersion.

Bertschi (admittedly on the GBSA list also): https://www.bertschi.org/jobs

Billings: http://billingsmiddleschool.org/employment

How is that legal? Some "we're a religion" loophole?

>how society decides salaries. It seems pretty arbitrary from my perspective.

Society doesn't "decide". It's a decided by the labor market. Nobody wants to pay programmers six figures.

It's a myth that we think teachers are less important than programmers because they make less on average. There is just a larger supply of qualified teachers willing to work at lower prices.

Wait until you find out how little art history masters holders make. Amount of training is irrelevant to how much money you get.

The labor market is a tool of society. It's like any other tool: it can be fixed or supplemented or even swapped out with something else if it doesn't perform its function effectively.

It's true, and while I also believe teachers should be paid more relative to other occupations, labor market has one thing going for it that makes it hard to replace - it's a very simple process that doesn't require any central coordination.

How much would a 10% teacher pay bump improve educational outcomes?

Teacher pay is not correlated to outcome. The US pays more for its teachers than Finland and other counties with much better outcomes.

I think the challenge is just measuring and comparing education. If we could, reliably, then we’d likely pay tons more for teachers.

>>Teacher pay is not correlated to outcome. The US pays more for its teachers than Finland and other counties with much better outcomes.

I do want to point out that these two points aren't actually related. Just because the US pays more for lesser outcomes does not mean that teacher pay is anti-correlated or uncorrelated to outcome.

Some public schools can't find a decent calculus teacher at the prices they're paying. On the other hand, if they paid a janitor to sit in the classroom while AP Calc students teach themselves, in many places that would work out great.

Thank you, I was trying to show by pointing out an example of low pay and high outcomes that pay is not corrected. But I don’t want to say that there’s a negative correlation.

I do think it’s fair, unless I see data that shows it, that pay is not correlated to outcome.

I think there are multiple factors for outcomes and I think further research will help figure this out. But for now, I think it’s false to say that we will get better outcomes if we increase pay. I can think of a few outcomes, but have no data, that would result in higher pay with worse outcomes (eg, higher pay crowds out more passionate but less credentialed teachers who aren’t in it for the money).

I'm not sure how much that holds with the government running public schools and the primary stakeholders being children.

For example if you didn't really care the much about building a software project, but had to do it, you could probably find some 'developers' who would do the work for the same salary that teachers work at.

I'm not sure how the outcome would compare to that of public schools.

You're describing every project where its been outsourced to a foreign contracting firm for bottom-dollar really.

The word "qualified" is pulling a lot of weight in your argument.

You can absolutely hire a programmer for $70k if you're willing to significantly relax your standards. On the other hand, you probably wouldn't be able to hire enough teachers at existing teacher salaries if you significantly raised your standards for what counts as "qualified".

Tech companies have to use a relatively high bar, because bad developers will drive them out of business, but such market forces don't apply to schools. Unless you want to completely privatize education (which has its own set of issues) we have to use the political process to drive schools to raise their both their salaries and hiring standards.

Or you happen to be in middle of nowhere, or there are other incentives like equity that you can use to make up for the subpar base salary.

Another thing to consider is that the quality of the teacher might not map to improved results in the same way it does in tech. A programmer tends to have a lot more choice in how they go about solving the problem, whereas teachers tend to have very little leeway. Furthermore, it's very difficult to quantify how well a teacher is doing as well.

>>Tech companies have to use a relatively high bar, because bad developers will drive them out of business

Most work in Tech companies even the top FAANG ones these days is crud work.

These people can only afford to pay well, because they make their money through advertising scale. Companies which depend on paying users, can't afford to pay that kind of salaries, nor waste their time interviewing people on rounds and rounds for proxy skills which have nothing to do with the job on hand.

In short only VC companies without profit pressure or web advertising companies pay well. Others don't have this luxury.

> ...you probably wouldn't be able to hire enough teachers at existing teacher salaries if you significantly raised your standards for what counts as "qualified".

Anecdata: Schools that won't hire more qualified candidates (e.g. graduate degrees complete) instead preferring more green applicants because the latter are contractually cheaper.

That is, in some instances schools could hire better for the same money but cannot because of labor contracts.

Society decides the laws which regulate the labor market.

What laws are supressing teacher wages?

>>There is just a larger supply of qualified teachers willing to work at lower prices.

Add to this, demand for teachers is directly tied to population growth rates. If more teachers are being produced compared to growth of class rooms the pay falls further.

Check the caption for the "Median Annual Wages..." graph:

"Teacher salaries are adjusted based on the assumption of a 10-month work year."

...which is a good way to give them a virtual 17% pay raise. I wonder if the same applies to other professions like independent contractors or lawyers, who can only charge for part of their working time.

Yeah, and this makes so much sense considering how easy it is to find a high-paying 2-month temporary job. /s

It's the old "You don't understand, teachers only work 10 months out of the year!" argument but dressed in some nice statistical clothing. It's asinine to make that argument because teachers can't actually get paid for the other two months. When I was temping in a warehouse unloading shipping containers one summer, there were a few teachers there who were just making ends meet until the school year started.

On the other hand, plenty of people working other jobs that would like to have 2 entire months off every year.

Sure. It's one of the biggest advantages of teaching. But you still can't pay for groceries with time off.

You can't pay for groceries with health insurance either but you still have to include fringe benefits when calculating total compensation.

Well, in other first-world countries you don't.

I'm not sure what your point is. You have to include fringe benefits generally when calculating total compensation. Whether or not that happens to include healthcare is pretty immaterial.

Yes, but the value of benefits is highly dependent on the employee. 30% off international flights might be an awesome deal, but unlikely for someone who cannot even afford a car.

Vacation has great value, but usually only after basic needs are met. Cutting someones hours is often used as a punishment for a reason. At the same time it also makes total sense that other companies don't want employees reducing their working hours.

> Yes, but the value of benefits is highly dependent on the employee. 30% off international flights might be an awesome deal, but unlikely for someone who cannot even afford a car.

Sure but that's a strange point to make given that they know what the benefits of the job are in advance. It's not like summer vacation is something that's sprung on teachers after they've taken the job.

> Vacation has great value, but usually only after basic needs are met. Cutting someones hours is often used as a punishment for a reason. At the same time it also makes total sense that other companies don't want employees reducing their working hours.

Most teachers are not incapable of meeting their own basic needs. They may be paid less than comparable private sector workers, but they're not literally starving. Given that, vacation is unequivocally a benefit. They may prefer the opportunity to work more...but if they preferred that, then they should have taken a different job.

Yeah came here to talk about the same thing. Teachers have a 40 hour a week in the school job paired with a 10-20 hour wfh job preparing lessons, grading papers, etc. Those summer months are paid for by extra hours during the school year as far as I’m concerned.

This is also not even getting into how much teachers spend of their salary money on the classroom. Which is so prevalent that there’s a tax deduction for it. How many masters professions involve spending salary money for the employer?

How many master's professions insist on local monopolies for their employers? Other than predisposed ideological beliefs, it doesn't make sense for teachers' unions to be as against school competition as they are, at least with respect to employing exemplary educators.

Teacher’s unions don’t opposes “school competition.” They oppose school privatization, which is largely a predatory scheme with wildly misaligned incentives. We don’t need a repeat of all the problems with the US healthcare system in education.

Conflating performance with unions is bunk anyways. Japan’s teachers are heavily, heavily unionized, historically far more militant than teachers in the US, and they’re consistently among the highest performing OECD countries.

> Teacher’s unions don’t opposes “school competition.” They oppose school privatization,

How would one have meaningful 'competition' without privatization?

Though I doubt it would work very well in practice, students could be free to enroll in school in another school district with their home district paying a tuition fee to the host district.

It’s entirely possible within a publicly funded framework to have different models and observation of outcomes. Schools just have to be allowed the leeway to experiment without threat of privatization. State universities and community colleges do this across the country. And it’s not as if high-performing countries arrived at their (almost exclusively public) systems without this kind of iteration.

Teachers on the whole aren't particularly threatened by the funding model of a school. Unions, school boards, and administration certainly are.

> It’s entirely possible within a publicly funded framework to have different models and observation of outcomes.

Possible, yes. Practical? No. Democratic bureaucracies are effectively incapable of learning and adapting. Schooling is basically implemented identically today as it was 100 years ago.

> Schools just have to be allowed the leeway to experiment without threat of privatization

This is a strange statement to me. In what sense is privatization a threat to public schools? If public schools were so great and privatization were so bad, why would people want to send their kids to privately run schools? Wouldn't public schools invite the challenge if they believed their model was superior?

The fact that they even view it as such an existential threat tells you basically all you need to know. Even they believe they'd be outcompeted almost immediately.

> And it’s not as if high-performing countries arrived at their (almost exclusively public) systems without this kind of iteration.

Firstly, the idea of differential country performance of schools is largely a myth. When you disaggregate by ethnicity, most of that disappears. Japanese kids in the US do about as well here as they do in Japan. Which is to say that differential performance between countries is more about who is in those countries than how it is those countries educate.

> If public schools were so great and privatization were so bad, why would people want to send their kids to privately run schools?

A good old prisoners dilemma. If you got more resources to spend on education, you don't want to sit in the same class as someone who can only contribute little to the course. Just like worse graduates will ruin the prestige of the school and thus value of your degree. Outcome-base exclusion can be fine, unless it ends up as proxy to select for socio-economic factors and thus make society offer less equal opportunity.

Just looking at "existential threat" -> "outcompeted" only works in a highly simplified world with no market failures and other issues.

> differential performance between countries is more about who is in those countries than how it is those countries educate

I'd like a source on that. I do understand culture will have a significant influence, especially on what value people place on education. But your statement seems to go a lot further into "school doesn't matter" territory. This directly contradicts with earlier statements and e.g. many chines studying in the US.

> A good old prisoners dilemma. If you got more resources to spend on education, you don't want to sit in the same class as someone who can only contribute little to the course. Just like worse graduates will ruin the prestige of the school and thus value of your degree. Outcome-base exclusion can be fine, unless it ends up as proxy to select for socio-economic factors and thus make society offer less equal opportunity.

Let's trace that out a little more. Are you implying that private/charter schools have more dollars to spend per student? Because that's certainly not true for Charter schools. It's probably true for some private schools, but also not all. And if that's not what you're saying, then i'm not sure I understand your argument.

> I'd like a source on that. I do understand culture will have a significant influence, especially on what value people place on education. But your statement seems to go a lot further into "school doesn't matter" territory. This directly contradicts with earlier statements and e.g. many chines studying in the US.

I can no longer find the source where I originally read it, but we can reconstruct the data. I'm going to show it for math, but the results are similar for other subjects.

PISA Rankings by country:

https://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-of-ma...

As you can see, the US looks pretty abysmal, given how rich it is. However, if you look at the math PISA scores for whites and asians, you see this:

https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2015/pisa2015highlights...

Now, the US doesn't jump to the very top, but it does jump to just below Norway and right above Austria. Certainly a solidly high quality education. You'll see the same results across other subjects too.

Of course, that doesn't mean our educational system doesn't have room for improvement. It most certainly does. But the idea that we're severely lagging the rest of the developed world is mostly false, when you adjust for this confound.

In what ways do teachers' unions campaign to give agency to students' families and career choice to in-demand faculty?

Seems like the incentives are mostly oriented around getting teachers to stay in one place and grind out another year of experience, round of continuing education, and extra degrees whether they are wise or not.

Otherwise, why don't teachers just quit schools with poor safety records, working conditions, pay, equipment funding, and uncompensated overtime? Because no district really has to worry about being held accountable like that.

>In what ways do teachers' unions campaign to give agency to students' families and career choice to in-demand faculty?

I’m not sure what you mean by agency here or how many teachers you actually know. But unions have regularly campaigned for more resources for students outside of themselves, including access to things nurses, counselors, and libraries. Schools in many cities are highly racially and economically segregated in the US because of the country’s broader history of redlining and corresponding deprivation. Teachers unions are one of the only interest groups who have consistently fought against this denial of agency for their students.

As to career choices, I have union member teachers in my family and they change schools as they see fit. There are some problems with state licensing incompatibilities that prevent teachers from being as mobile as they might like and we should probably move to uniform federal standards to correct this.

>Seems like the incentives are mostly oriented around getting teachers to stay in one place and grind out another year of experience, round of continuing education, and extra degrees whether they are wise or not. Otherwise, why don't teachers just quit schools with poor safety records, working conditions, pay, equipment funding, and uncompensated overtime? Because no district really has to worry about being held accountable like that.

Incentives around higher education are perverse in the US in almost every regard, so I’m not sure that teachers are that much of an outlier (especially for their domain, education). As to why teachers stay - I’m not sure if you’re aware but most people tend to live in the regions they’re actually from, where they have family ties and social bonds.

https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/12/17/who-moves-who-sta...

Applying some sort of rational actor economic heuristic to civil servants in a service profession seems a foolhardy endeavor. I mean, I’ve worked for big companies across the country, none of which were any better run and some of which were not better resourced than a failing public school, and they all had their fair share of people toughing it out too. What binds people to a place socially and materially, especially among more working class professions, is different from white collar workers.

> Schools in many cities are highly racially and economically segregated in the US because of the country’s broader history of redlining and corresponding deprivation

But also because of the public school system that ties zip codes to affluence and introduces artificial geographical barriers to integration. Something teachers unions have a vested interest in, at least indirectly.

> ...most people tend to live in the regions they’re actually from...

One can switch schools and districts without switching regions. But it should be much easier than that, even.

> Applying some sort of rational actor economic heuristic to civil servants in a service profession seems a foolhardy endeavor.

I'm just saying it's counterintuitive that teachers unions in particular are for teachers without being especially for empowering individual teachers to have leverage with respect to their employment agreements and conditions.

> required to have a masters degree

This isn't true from my experience. I have several friends who teach K-12 education. They only have a bachelor's degree, many times in different areas than what they are teaching (English degree teaching Math, for example).

I updated the wording a little to be clearer. I was trying to say, to earn $50K starting salary quoted as a teacher you were required to have a master's degree ($43K otherwise ($45K otherwise)).

It varies state to state. Some states require you to have a masters degree, some require you to have a masters degree or being the process of obtaining one, some states require you to have a masters but will waive that requirement if there's a need and some states require only a bachelors degree. Edit: there is a list of state requirements here: https://www.asha.org/Advocacy/state/StateTeacherCredentialin...

That list is for speech teachers, most 'regular' K-12 teaching positions only require a bachelor's.

My wife's about to hit a wall on pay increases at right at $40k if she doesn't get a master's degree. Never get another real raise, just sub-inflation bumps every year. With quite a damn while left until retirement.

Mind, the master's degrees most teachers get aren't exactly hard—there's a giant market for easy-as-pie degrees for teachers for exactly this reason, and that's what most universities deliver and what most teachers go for since it's not like you get paid more if you do study in a real program—but you still have to pay for it, and it's not cheap on a teacher's salary.

Why does the school require it? If everyone agrees its silly, why don't they just drop the requirement?

Dunno, they all do it though. I know school stats report the % of teachers with higher degrees and of course they all want those percentages to be higher. Possibly there are state incentives. Mostly it's just a bunch of people doing dumb crap without anyone having the power & motivation to fix it so they can all knock it off, which is a pretty common phenomenon, actually.

[EDIT] I mean to you wanna be the superintendent reporting that proportion of district teachers with master's degrees is up by seven percent since you started, or the one explaining that most of those degrees are bullshit and you don't care about it and neither should anyone else? Bear in mind most people have zero idea what teacher education looks like.

Yup. NC recently got rid of the automatic pay bump for having a masters degree while simultaneously increasing base teacher pay and there was a huge uproar over it. Nobody wants to lose their boondoggle.

Teachers' master's degrees are, in effect, a way to divert money from (mostly) teachers and (a little bit, some places) school districts to universities for no actual benefit, so that's great. Hope they manage to keep it up and that spreads.

OTOH it'd be nice if there were still a way to reward teachers who'd done a real and relevant master's (which very few of them do now), but I don't think anyone's interested in nailing down that distinction. It's not even just degree mills, either, AFAIK the vast majority of postgraduate programs aimed at teachers are designed, primarily, to be pretty easy to pass and to have relatively low time commitments. They all want a piece of that action, and if they increase the rigor demand for their product will drop because a hypothetical very hard, non-bullshit teaching master's from a prestigious school brings the same pay bump as a very bullshit one from a third-rate state school.

> divert money from teachers and school districts to universities for no actual benefit, so that's great. Hope they manage to keep it up and that spreads.

I am hearing sarcasm, which I would wish to encourage in the US, but it is possibly out of place on HN.

So far New Orleans has been my favourite US location that seemed to have sarcasm as a culture (although I have sampled very little of the US).

I believe a portion of it ties into school accreditation.

Are you suggesting they dumb-down our educational system?! These are our children, our most important resource, we are talking about here!

You got hit with downvotes, but your (sarcastic) reaction is, as intended, spot on for the kind of thing no-one wants to risk hearing if they try to change the way higher degrees work in education. That the whole thing is an (expensive!) load of crap is 100% true, but that isn't widely known, I think, and trying to explain it's harder and riskier (for administrators & others with decision-making power) than just going along with the flow.

Right -- if you want to get above that wall, you need a Masters. And many then go on to get an Ed.S (specialist) and even a Ph.D.

As you say, there is a whole cottage industry of online accredited places (Liberty University, which I don't even consider to be the level of University of Phoenix, is accredited/recognized (unlike University of Phoenix) and used by MANY teachers in the state of Georgia, for instance -- I have a hunch there is some sort of financial relationship between the state and Liberty but I have no proof) -- some counties even offer easy access to loans/do tuition reimbursement.

> This seems to use private education as a benchmark for the entire argument. From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just above public salaries and conditions (meaning private education cannot be used as a benchmark for when someone is under-paid, over-qualified, or has too high of a quit rate because they are related).

Huh? The article makes a ton of arguments. Most of which do not hinge on any comparison to private education. This is the most core argument being made:

> Reporters might be more skeptical if they realized that EPI's own pay-gap methodology leads to some other conclusions that are, to put it delicately, less intuitive. Using the same Census data and the same basic techniques that EPI applies to teachers, we find that registered nurses are "overpaid" by 29%. Meanwhile, telemarketers deserve a big raise, as they currently suffer a 26% salary penalty. Aerospace engineers are apparently overpaid by 38%, but "athletes, coaches, and umpires" are paid 21% less than their skills are worth. Photographers should consider going on strike, as they make 16% less than comparable workers. Firefighters are moochers by contrast, taking in 25% above their rightful salaries.

> If all this sounds ridiculous, it's because EPI's method is so simplistic. To arrive at its 21% pay gap, EPI merely compares teacher salaries with the salaries of people who have roughly the same number of years of education and the same demographic characteristics. More specifically, EPI performs a regression analysis using Census Bureau survey data, in which respondents provide information on their salaries along with their age, education, region of residence, marital status, and other factors that are predictive of earnings. Included in this analysis is a "dummy variable" indicating whether the individual is a public-school teacher. The coefficient on the dummy variable represents the effect on salary of being a teacher after controlling for all of the other factors listed above.

Nowhere is private education mentioned.

> From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just above public salaries and conditions

Most of the private schools around here pay a lot worse than the public schools, especially if you factor in total comp w/ benefits. We have a tiny number with high enough tuition that they might pay well (but I wouldn't count on it), but almost none of the rest do, the bulk of which are Catholic or protestant religious schools.

You can make $42k teaching computer science at a private school in silicon valley.

Yeah, I'm not in education, but I was surprised to 'learn' that private schools generally pay less than their public counterparts -- and I've continued to understand that to be the case, but I'd love more information on the matter to correct any misunderstandings I might have.

My secondhand understanding is that they make up for it by offering more control over the students, down to selecting and expelling them.

Less competitive, at least in my state. The higher paying public school districts have a lot of applicants, who are often more senior and have either higher degree levels, or degrees related to the subject they would be teaching. The parochial schools are seen as being somewhat of a stepping stone for new teachers or those who are trying to get a foothold in a desirable location.

> Personally I think someone required to have a degree (master's for quoted salary), continued education requirements, and licensing earning under $50K/year starting is too low.

The effects of M.Ed. and other educational training on teacher effectiveness is not reliably distinguishable from zero. This contrasts with experience which increases teacher effectiveness up to six years and subject matter expertise.

So if continuing education and the most common teacher’s Master’s degree does nothing for students and costs money we shouldn’t reward it. By all means encourage and subsidize things we know help students, like a Master’s in Math for Math teachers or in English for English teachers, but M.Ed.s and Ed.D.s don’t do squat for anyone except the teachers who get better pay and faster promotions.

I read the article and over and over it mentions "public-school teachers" and "public-school students".

It mentions that the union lobbying organization compares their salaries to that of private sector employees with different jobs, but Masters, and who are not in rural areas as much as teachers. The author then argues that may not be the best comparison.

No where in the article do we see a look at private school teachers as you claim.

It's fascinating you're the top voted comment and no one has noticed your thesis isn't true. This suggests no one here in this entire thread has read the article. Weird.

Anyway, private school teacher salaries are generally lower than public school teachers anyway. Good teachers will take a salary hit to have better students, more control of their classroom and curriculum, and enforced discipline. When I went to a private school most of the teachers had PhDs and the classes were comparable to university level.

> I have no idea how society decides salaries.

Supply and demand.

> But it is great that at the end of a long career a few unicorn teachers can earn $100K,

Teachers tend to get very generous benefits packages, including retirement pay.

> The fact that I could walk out of college with zero experience and only a degree, and earn $20K more than that working only 9-5 in the same city seems unfair (as a programmer). But I have no idea how society decides salaries. It seems pretty arbitrary from my perspective.

Salaries are set by supply and demand. Being a programmer is in greater demand relative to its supply.

> The fact that I could walk out of college with zero experience and only a degree, and earn $20K more than that working only 9-5 in the same city seems unfair (as a programmer).

So what? With many other degrees, you can walk out six figures in debt and land a job at McDonalds. Is that fair?

> But I have no idea how society decides salaries.

In the open market, it's (supposed to be) supply and demand. If salaries are high, that's a signal that there's too few people in the profession. Programmers are privileged for now, but lots of people are joining in.

Once supply outweighs demand, salaries will fall. Just wait for the next recession when the bullshit startup train will go off the rails.

> Personally I think someone required to have a degree (master's for quoted salary), continued education requirements, and licensing earning under $50K/year starting is too low.

Take away the master's degree (which many teachers don't have) and just say degree, and you've got a great description of a hair stylist. Look into how many hours are required for licensing a hair stylist in your state. Does $50k/year sound too low for that profession, as well? It may, but if not, you have to admit there are more factors at play than just education and training.

> But I have no idea how society decides salaries.

I think your confusion stems from the fact that society does not decide salaries. In the private sector, salaries are based on how much one's involvement in some endeavor causes that endeavor to generate more revenue (or how much you can convince someone your involvement generates more revenue), combined with how easy it would be to find someone willing to do the same job with the same impact at a lower rate. If the value add is high and there is no one able or willing to do what you do for cheaper, you will have a high salary. If you add little value, and no one is willing to do what you do, you will be fired and likely not replaced -- they'll do without. If you add lots of value, but someone else is willing to do your job for less, you will be kept around if you accept a lower salary. If you add little value and someone else is willing to do your work, they will be hired for a lower salary. This isn't rocket science.

> In the private sector, salaries are based on how much one's involvement in some endeavor causes that endeavor to generate more revenue

That's never been my experience. I've seen people add tons of quantifiable value to a business, including dock loaders, customer facing staff, and even cleaners but in spite of their value being quantifiable they weren't rewarded. Clients and customers would literally say that staff is why they came back, but nothing.

Your post seems to be largely a THEORY of why salaries are set the way they are. In my experience social "value" seems to be a far bigger indicator of future salary rather than actual historical value. Meaning people are paying for perception, not measurements.

You can see that just by looking at affluence typically white kids flowing from private schools, to named colleges, straight into the financial sector. When did they generate historical value for the business when they were hired at double the natural average salary?

No, value to the business only sets the ceiling. The floor comes from the labor supply side of the market. (i.e. can the company find qualified people willing to do it at X rate)

Value to the business is the floor more often than not. Plenty of business activities simply don't generate much money in the first place, with salaries capped accordingly. Albeit not the typical tech company or F500.

Hiring and compensation decisions have enough of a principal-agent problem that value to the business doesn't even set a firm ceiling.

When there last name brought associations to wealth to mind and brought in more business. The financial sector is more about trust and imagine than anything. Someone wearing a suit will sell more products than someone in shorts.

Do you think having Obama's daughter on staff will bring in more clients?

> Meaning people are paying for perception, not measurements.

I mentioned that explicitly in my theory by pointing out that it is the ability to convince others that you add value, not necessarily the value added itself.

Don't you realize most people don't have the patience or ability to be a software engineer? That it is one of the most intellectually demanding jobs in society? And that 4 years computer science education is both expensive and difficult? Recognize your privilige - you are very smart and, for you, programming is easy. You are in the minority.

How about dental hygienists? Dental Hygienists made a median salary of $74,070 (2017). https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/dental-hygienist/... That's a very easy job that only requires 2 years of training. Shouldn't they be paid less so teachers can be paid more?

> And that 4 years computer science education is both expensive and difficult?

Exactly. As a point in favor of this worldview, I'll use my mother. She completed her economics and English degree in India (undergrad). She also completed her liberal studies undergrad and a graduate teaching credential again in the United States (they would not accept her foreign undergrad, so she had to repeat). She said that the teaching education was mostly a joke and her classmates absolute dunces. This was at a public university -- cal state fullerton, to be specific.

Ultimately, teaching education, even graduate education, is not difficult and mostly a joke, which is what is reflected in their salaries.

> Ultimately, teaching education, even graduate education, is not difficult and mostly a joke, which is what is reflected in their salaries.

Flip side: not enough people would put up with going through a "serious" teacher ed program to fill the demand, unless pay went way up. Not even close to enough.

Flip side: intellectuals tend to like intellectual pursuits. Having a dumbed down teaching curriculum means turning these people away, not for monetary reasons, but for lack of stimulation that is easily accessible in the private sector.

My mother, and many other people I know who wanted to go into teaching, wanted to do so because they wanted to be teachers, not the pay. What turned them off to the profession is the incompetence demonstrated by most teachers, professors of education, and school administrators.

Sure, I get that, but you're not gonna replace all the incompetent people in education with competent ones just by making the relevant degree programs tougher. That's a lot of people. Pay would have to go up, probably quite a bit.

I see no reason we can't do both. Remove the requirement of a teaching credential to teach and raise salaries for teachers who deliver results.

Teaching doesn't require patience or ability?

And where I went to college the 4 year CS degree was the same price as a 4 year education degree (aside from books/misc expenses). They both required the same number of credits, and class costs were largely normalized (with a few exceptions). Plus then teachers have to take the licensing exams and pay for your own background check/license.

If people really believe teachers have it made I strongly encourage them to give it a shot. We could always use more teachers. Plus then it might give a perspective on what it is like being a teacher (workload, hours, pay, conditions, stress, etc) and why the turnover rate is so high.

> Teaching doesn't require patience or ability?

Working as a teacher certainly doesn't.

Source: had teachers (not in the US, just for the record).

These days especially, get ready to get to know kids then have them not show up one day because they killed themselves. Or have one you taught a while back do the same when they're moved up a couple grades. A couple not show up because they're in the hospital because they took a bunch of pills. That kind of thing. Pretty often. It's really bad. And that's at a pretty tame suburban school—the ones with gang violence and such going on are even worse. Plus the kids at those sometimes threaten or even attack teachers, too, and verbal abuse from the kids (talking like 4th graders and up) is a daily occurrence. So that's fun.

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