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Comment by ryanobjc | Hacker News Reader

Ah yes the "just the facts please" argument, regardless of context.

Turns out getting a teacher cred is a little bit more than "just" getting a undergrad, and has ongoing licensing requirements.

On one hand, kudos to the OP for using median rather than average, but still a single number to represent all teach jobs in a country with 300M people seems a bit weak. There's a lot of stories out there, and it's just not being captured here.

"Data data everywhere, but not an ounce of wisdom within sight" -- old proverb

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Lots of occupations require ongoing licensing requirements. What’s the big deal?

For example barbers in Ohio need 8 CE credits per year. (No connection, just chose a middle of the road state at random)

https://cos.ohio.gov/CONTINUING-EDUCATION/BARBER/CONTINUING-...

willcipriano's reference was to "Person with bachelors degree".

ryanobjc's objection is that the reference should be "Person with bachelors degree in a job which requires a state license and CE requirements."

FWIW, your reference appears to be 8 CE credits every two years = 4 credits per year for barbers.

https://learn.org/articles/ohio_certification_licensure_for_... says educators need 18 units every 4 or 5 years, which is also about 4 credits per year.

Getting to the main topic, 4 credits/year is about 40 hours/year. When do educators do that? Is it paid time or unpaid time?

BTW, many teachers have a Master's degree, so I think using a bachelor's degree as the baseline isn't correct.

ryanobjc: > Turns out getting a teacher cred is a little bit more than "just" getting a undergrad, and has ongoing licensing requirements.

Plenty of occupations as a class or specific jobs have education, certification and licensing requirements. Teaching is not an outlier in that regard. The barber is just one example of a mundane ongoing requirement.

When do educators fulfill their CE credits? My guess is whenever they want as long as it happens on time. They can be grown ups like the rest of the world, conduct their business and move on.

What percentage of teachers have a Master's degree? If it isn't a job requirement, why would it matter? If there are excess numbers of people holding Masters degrees and they work in occupations not requiring a Masters degree, that is a problem between them and their granting institution's accreditation body.

The smart accreditation bodies restrict supply in order to optimize the workforce size and skillset to demand. The nonselective ones that produce skills in excess of demand are essentially diploma mills or vanity projects. At best they make entry into non-Masters degree fields harder for those without the resources to obtain a Masters. At worst they wind up being a giant economic drag through student debt that won't ever match income expectations.

> Plenty of occupations as a class or specific jobs have education, certification and licensing requirements.

Completely agreed. So we should expect their salaries to be higher on average than jobs with the same education requirement but without certification and licensing requirements, right?

> If it isn't a job requirement

Some districts pay more for teachers with a Master's degree. Eg, https://www.teachingdegree.org/states/florida/ says "Florida teacher salary can increase to $59,050 for educators with a master's degree and 20+ years of experience."

The smart accreditation bodies optimize workforce competency by incentivizing increased relevant training.

> My guess is whenever they want as long as it happens on time.

Sure. But I'm making a rather different point.

As you likely recall, willcipriano compared a teacher's summer break as being equivalent to "bachelors degree if they took summers off unpaid."

If the teacher does a week of continuing education during the summer, then that comparison (and calculation) is invalid, because the teacher is not "off".

Continuing Education:

Summers are still “off” even if CE is performed then if CE is considered a requirement of the profession not tied to a particular employment agreement. Funding for CE or anything else doesn’t come from magic. It comes from the value generated by a service provider.

An employer “providing” CE funding and/or time is really just skimming money that could be provider paycheck into CE. There may be pragmatic advantages to this such as volume pricing or tax rules.

My guess is that CE is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. Should one expect occupations with higher licensing and CE requirements to have higher salaries than those without? Would the difference in pay be undetectable because it’s within the natural range of variability?

In terms of producer-consumer relations licensing acts as a signal of base quality for products that are difficult for consumers to evaluate. This may not mean that consumers will pay more for it if there is no option of a lower cost unlicensed product compared to a higher cost licensed one. In the absence of alternatives then it would be impossible to know what an unlicensed valuation would be.

"Off" seems to mean different things to you and me.

Suppose I am a teacher, and have two months where I don't teach students, but during those two months I take continuing education courses, and make lesson plans for the rest of the year, is that "off" in the same way that someone who takes two months from work to tour Europe is "off"?

If so, we have an irreconcilable disagreement on basic definitions.

My issue isn't 'An employer “providing” CE funding'.

My issue is that willcipriano didn't include that unpaid time in the comparison between a teacher and a hypothetical 'Person with bachelors degree'.

That is, I argue the calculation should not be based on calendar days, but on hours worked in order to have the career - both paid and unpaid.

> My guess is that CE is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.

CE is a rounding error. Supporting extra-curricular activities is a rounding error. Grading in the evening is a rounding error. Doing lesson plans on the weekends is a rounding error.

But put them all together and it's no longer a rounding error.

> "Off" seems to mean different things to you and me.

I don't think it is reconcilable. I'll offer: In this context "off" refers to time not spent in paid employment. Is that a fair definition?

My assertion: Spending time outside of paid employment to be able to retain paid employment or to gain improved compensation is not uncommon. My reference to a rounding error was not well written. The rounding error has to do with the difference between the effect of licensing on compensation and the natural variation in compensation between occupations. If license effect on compensation is small, then the comparison of teaching to other occupations requiring a bachelors degree without respect to licensing is valid.

Some of the difference in variability has to do with the standard compensation models different occupations chose in the early stage of the profession's development. As an example, nursing is principally compensated hourly rather than by salary. Outside of productivity improvements, when additional duties are required then there are choices of: less valuable duties are delegated to lower skilled workers, or less valuable duties are depreciated, or the amount of time budgeted increases.

For teachers on a salary any time spent on duties outside classroom hours is effectively a pay cut. Presumably this is a mechanism for less efficient teachers to realize their predicament and self-select out of the occupation.

> Is that a fair definition?

No, it is not. The comparisons were "Person with bachelors degree" and "Person with bachelors degree if they took summers off unpaid".

In the context of teacher salaries, the phrase "summer off" always refers to having vacation time, not doing unpaid work. Eg, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/time_off#English has "I've got some time off next week, so maybe we could meet up then?" with synonyms of "holiday" and "vacation".

Or, consider someone doing the single-person start-up thing, self-employed, not taking any income until things (hopefully) get off the ground ... then finding out that business model isn't successful, so finds a job. Is that person meaningfully "off" while working 15 hour days for a year?

> Presumably this is a mechanism for less efficient teachers to realize their predicament and self-select out of the occupation.

If you recall, the title is "‘Exhausted and underpaid’: teachers across the US are leaving their jobs" -- that's self-selecting out of the occupation.

But that doesn't mean that those who are left are more efficient. What if the people who are left are those who don't care about doing more than the bare minimum their job is worth, knowing it's hard to get fired because there aren't enough teachers available to replace them?

You get what you pay for.

"Person with bachelors degree if they took summers off unpaid"

> In this context "off" refers to time not spent in paid employment.

I don't see an appreciable difference between the two statements. Is your assertion that seasonal unemployment should be treated as a paid vacation?

Maybe it would be more accurate to describe teaching as a seasonal occupation rather than having "summers off." There are some similarities to seasonal labor underemployment in that the periods in which a seasonal firm doesn't operate are "A period of time where one is not required to work." Seasonal labor would fit that definition and also goes beyond in that work in that field is largely not available. I write "largely" since teacher acquaintances are able to find some work when schools are closed by teaching summer school, grading AP exams and various other work that requires a professional teacher but occurs outside the school year.

The critical part of separating "seasonal employment" from "paid vacation" is the employee's volition in setting the time period and duration of the time away from work. In many non-seasonal occupations a vacation may be scheduled by the employee and it is generally important for not all employees to be not working at the same time.

In the case of teaching, there are summer and other work closure periods which more closely resemble seasonal employment or maybe some manufacturing jobs that have periodic furloughs because the individual worker cannot choose when those periods occur.

> What if the people who are left are those who don't care about doing more than the bare minimum their job is worth

Performing to the required standard and not getting burned out seems like a positive vision for a workforce. It is especially important for one with little in the way promotional hierarchy to incentivize going above the standard in order to achieve higher renumeration.

If you have a 35 hour work week and I have a 40 hour work week, where neither of us have work obligations off the clock, then you have more time off work then I do, yes?

I don't know what you mean by "should be treated as a paid vacation".

The comparison is for yearly income made by someone who is a teacher (which requires a bachelor degree), vs. yearly income for the median someone who has a bachelor degree pro-rated to ~10 months on the assumption that that person has no work obligations for 2 months. Call that "paid vacation" or call it "seasonal unemployment" - it doesn't affect my argument.

I do not believe there is any real meaning in comparing those two incomes in order to establish if the teacher is over- or under-paid.

> teacher acquaintances are able to find some work when schools are closed by

Yes, one of the other issues I have with the comparison (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28826659 ) is that I couldn't tell if the $62,870/year for a HS teacher included that additional income, which would make the presumptive time-off-for-summer comparison even less relevant.

> Performing to the required standard

A.K.A. work-to-rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule even lists teachers as an example.

Ha! Here's a guide for teachers on what to do/not do in a work-to-rule action! https://taaaconline.org/pdf/wtr-kit/WORK%20TO%20RULE.pdf

I have no problems viewing this as a valid labor action against a bad work environment. I object to willcipriano's analysis arguing that teachers are being paid roughly market rates for their jobs.

> If you have a 35 hour work week and I have a 40 hour work week, where neither of us have work obligations off the clock, then you have more time off work then I do, yes?

Yes, agreed. And if our earnings are equal then I am effectively being compensated better for my time. On the other hand, if I earn .875 to your one, then we are being compensated equally. Likewise, if person A works 10/12ths the time of person B and earns 10/12ths the wage, then they are also compensated equally.

As I understand your claim, for teachers uniquely the other 2/12ths are spent performing non-compensated activities that are necessary to remain a member of the profession in good standing or to satisfy requirements of a particular workplace such as extra-curricular activities or off-clock administrative work. As a result, it is wrong to discount the average salary of a teacher by 2/12ths.

I don't agree with this analysis and I have addressed both topics.

For professional licensing, many occupations have continuing education coursework and examinations and even many workplaces outside of a particular profession require the same. Teaching does not seem unique to me in this respect. Do you consider the professional licensing of teachers to be radically different than the many other occupations with requirements for a bachelors degree and licensing?

Teachers may also engage in labor outside their regular duties that may or may not be completely voluntary and compensated. For the purpose of this discussion I will focus on involuntary and uncompensated labor. To the extent and degree that this exists outside of catchup work due to unproductive workers (such as grading papers after hours, preparing curricula over the summer, etc), I have not seen quantified or compared to other workplaces. Thus it would be difficult to compare to other occupations with requirements for a bachelors degree and licensing. Do you have quantification for this claim of involuntary uncompensated labor?

> As I understand your claim, for teachers uniquely

No, that is not my claim.

My claim is that the summary numbers at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28823492 , which purport to demonstrate that teachers are being paid at roughly market rates, is invalid. [1]

I don't claim anything unique or radically different about teachers.

[1] To wit: the analysis shows equal earnings, but 1) doesn't show equal time, 2) doesn't show that the earnings are only from teaching over 10 months, and 3) doesn't factor in the teachers with a MS degree or higher.

> Do you have quantification for this claim of involuntary uncompensated labor?

I do not know what "involuntary uncompensated" means. I do not know how to categorize when off-school-grounds work is "catchup work due to unproductive workers" or due to some other factor. I do not see how those terms are meaningful.

At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28825539 I linked to https://www.scholastic.com/primarysources/pdfs/Gates2012_ful... which says "teachers work an average of 10 hours and 40 minutes a day, three hours and 20 minutes beyond the average required work day in public schools nationwide".

Different sources give different times, and I am not able to tell how to interpret all of the sources. Eg, if a teacher works in an office job over summer, is that income counted in the total annual income to the median teacher? And are the time estimates similarly adjusted?

Ok, so your claim is that a particular analysis of teacher compensation is invalid because it does not include factors you think are important but for which you offer no evidence in terms of significance or quantity other than a Gates Foundation self-reported survey in which the claim of 10.7 working hours still acknowledges that the "average required work day for teachers is 7.5 hours."

On the other hand, the comment with summary numbers cited Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers combined with an objective overall measure of productive working months of the year.

If the majority of teachers are so inefficient that they spend 44% additional hours to accomplish their daily mission then there is a much larger problem than compensation. That this occurs in a well-unionized occupation is bizarre. It's as if the unions were aligned against the workers for some reason.

I realize it may be tedious for you to go through my several comments on this topic, but it is equally tedious for me to re-post every link I previously made and repeat myself.

At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28826659 I linked to a BLS report titled "Teachers’ work patterns: when, where, and how much do U.S. teachers work?", at https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf . (Note: this is also a 'self-reported survey'.)

Do note this BLS report uses "health care professionals, business and financial operations professionals, architects and engineers, community and social services professionals, managers, and others" as the baseline, and not "people with a bachelor's degree", so it is not a 1:1 equivalence with willcipriano's baseline.

In particular note figure 8 where "Teachers were more likely than other professionals to be multiple job holders" and the caption pointing out how teachers who work over the summer in a field other than teaching are included in the "other professional" category.

Thus, I have a hard time figuring out if a teacher who has an extra job grading an AP exam is counted as "teaching work" or "other professional." I also can't tell if continuing education is categorized as "work" or is one of the other activity categories not shown. (BTW, https://www.weareteachers.com/teacher-overtime/ estimates 100 hours on professional development, not the 40 I mentioned for continuing education.)

This is what I meant by "Different sources give different times, and I am not able to tell how to interpret all of the sources." and why I wrote "I have no belief that a simple analysis using the numbers [willcipriano] presented gives a reliable understanding."

Regarding your statement: "summary numbers [which] cited Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers combined with an objective overall measure of productive working months of the year"

As I pointed out, that same BLS source reports the summer holidays are 2 months, not the 2.5 willcipriano stated, and the BLS source comments that teachers "may also work evenings and weekends to prepare lessons and grade papers." This of course changes the analysis and increases the uncertainty, by an unknown factor.

Regaring "an objective overall measure". That sole measure is "awarded a bachelor degree". We already had the discussion that the median bachelor degree holder doesn't have the accreditation and continuing education requirement teachers have. Furthermore, the BLS "Teachers’ work patterns" document uses "professionals" as the comparison category, not bachelor degree. Why is willcipriano's baseline objectively better than the BLS's?

> If the majority of teachers are so inefficient

You have not established that they are inefficient. I do not even know what this means. How do you measure it?

An airline pilot is paid for flight hours. All other times, eg, flight precheck, staff meetings, etc. are unpaid.

Are pilots inefficient?

> average required work day for teachers is 7.5 hours

Why did you omit the qualifier that "required work day" was only "time during which they are required to be on school grounds"?

Have you established that teachers are expected to have all of their grading and lesson planning done while on school grounds? The BLS doesn't think so - why do you?

https://www.businessinsider.com/teachers-time-spent-after-sc... "spoke to six teachers and asked them how much time they spent on their jobs outside of the classroom. Answers varied, but on average most said that they take home two to three hours of work a day. Additionally, nearly all of the teachers we spoke to said they come into school early, and stay around an hour late."

> well-unionized occupation

Teacher unions are not that strong. Eg, the WV teachers had a wildcat strike in 2018 because the union wasn't effective. Unions in the US are not that strong - Taft-Hartley took away a lot of union power.

Agreed, thinking through this thread is tedious because you avoid convergence and add tangential topics. The BLS report claims teachers don't work more than 40 hour weeks (chart 2) which doesn't jive with the Gates claims. Therefor the BLS must think that teachers have their work completed within 40 hours a week, which is a culturally accepted number of hours in a work week, even if a salaried employee does not have a min or max number of hours unlike an pilot who has agreed to be paid by flight hour. willcipriano's baseline is two weeks different than the BLS's. That doesn't change the math much (4%), within the natural variability of salaries.

Thing is, I looked at several different sources, with conflicting numbers, which is why I wrote: "Different sources give different times, and I am not able to tell how to interpret all of the sources."

Take Chart 2. That is teachers "who were employed during the week prior to their interview and who did some work during that period".

In Chart 1 we see at least 50% of teachers did at least some work in summer. Eg, if they did 1 hour of work in that week then the average in Chart 2 would be lower than the hours spent on a typical school day, which is what I believe the Gates report concerns. What I want is "hours worked in a year", which that BLS report doesn't give.

Looking around more, I found https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED575193.pdf ("Results From the 2015–16 National Teacher and Principal Survey"). In it I see "On average, regular full-time teachers in public schools spent 53 hours per week on all school-related activities, including 27 hours that they were paid to deliver instruction to students during a typical full week. Public school teachers were required to work an average of 38 hours per week to receive their base pay (table 5)"

Curiously: "53 hours per week" if interpreted as 53 hours per 5 day work week = 10 hours and 36 minutes per work day, which is very close to the Gates report of 10 hours and 40 minutes. I .... think I'll trust the Dept. of Education when they use a 7 day week instead of a 5 day work week.

If this is correct:

  53 hours/school week * 9.5 job-related months
     (9.5 = two months for summer + 2 weeks Christmas)
  = 53 * (9.5/12) * 52
  = 2182 hours / year

which is above the ~2,000/year for a bachelor's degree (at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28825539 I cited "Those with a bachelor’s degree or higher worked 8.0 hours per day" giving 20000 working hours per year.)

Thus:

  HS teacher pay per hour worked = $62,870 / 2182 hours = $28.81/hour
  median bachelor degree = $72,830 / 2000 hours = $36.41/hour

Do you think 21% lower is still within "the natural variability of salaries"? Bear in mind that median is used because it's a robust measure, which should be less influenced by 'natural variability'.

You haven't explained how "inefficiency" has any relevance, much less how you measure it. You haven't explained why the "objective overall measure" is a relevant measure. You added tangential topics like union power.

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