Comment by yumraj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yumraj | Hacker News Reader

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> Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.

Why? It is perfectly fair for a taxpayer to question public spending, including for salaries. It is when we stop questioning, or start making statements that we should not question something, that we end up with a situation that spending go out of whack since there is no oversight. BTW, that is exactly what happens in the case of CEO compensations also.

Secondly, regarding $150K+ salaries for teachers, how do these salaries compare to the salaries of fresh Asst. and Associate Profs at Universities. Many of them are paid lower I believe, for example Assistant Prof. at UC Berkeley seems to make about $100K [0]. So, there needs to be some oversight around teacher salaries also to make sure that the salaries are actually going to well educated competent teachers and not the ones with some random degree from the University of Phoenix or similar. Education and experience in teachers should be rewarded and the salaries should not be flattened.

EDIT: To add, there are student evaluations for Profs at all Universities. Where are the student/parent evaluations of public school teachers? How are they graded? How are they promoted? Assessment results? If so that is not the correct method, since IMHO it depends more on the parents than it does on teachers. I'll hypothesize, put a bad teacher from a crappy school district in a currently great school district and I guarantee the scores will not change much, if at all.

[0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/uc-berkeley-associate-pro...

A professorship is a prestige position that’s subject to extreme competition. Berkeley can get away with paying their faculty barely enough to survive because every newly minted PhD dreams of becoming a professor. The same isn’t true of a grade school teaching job. People aren’t lining up to babysit a bunch of misbehaving kids.

Can we decouple the high-prestige teaching from the low-prestige babysitting? Meaning, restructure in such a way that different people can specialize in each.

Especially becoming a prof at a top tier school like Berkeley. Part of the compensation is generally thought to be the ability to have that school on your resume. Its like getting a job at FAANG but instead of tech for resume passing in academia

> A professorship is a prestige position … Berkeley can get away with paying their faculty barely enough to survive …

Per that logic FAANGs should be paying the least to their software engineers, since prestige..

Sorry, but while I’ll agree there may be something to it when comparing one university to another, it doesn’t add up when comparing a K-12 school teacher to a PhD faculty.

Moreover that was just an example, other universities’ salaries are similar..

FAANG employment derives its prestige from the compensation.

The K-12 job is usually a hell of a lot harder. In most cases you have to have knowledge in more than one subject, and then deal with whatever psychological issues the students present - whether that's starting fights in class or just not wanting to participate.

In a university setting a problematic and disruptive student just gets kicked out. Nowhere near as much drama.

It’s supply and demand, not prestige. There are few perfessorship positions, and many qualified to do it, so there is great supply. In this case, supply is high even without high pay due to the prestige.

FAANG high salaries are due to the low supply of engineers skilled enough. Otherwise, FAANG would not compete on pay. As high as FAANG pays, supply is still not high enough to lower pay significantly.

OP is arguing that teachers should not be compared to professors because supply may still not be high relative to demand. Additionally, the job is still essential enough to keep demand high despite lack of prestige.

Teachers do not make 150k in SF. The pay schedules are public [0].

If you’re comparing entry level professorship at UC Berkeley, then the highest paid position for a first-year teacher with the maximum number of extended education credits (since I assume you need a higher degree for professorship) is 69k.

[0] https://www.sfusd.edu/information-employees/labor-relations/...

If you want your fellow citizens, workers, doctors, etc. to all be morons, then I'd say paying teachers poorly is a good way to go about it.

It's also a good way for a country to fall behind.

Not sure where in my comment I’m advocating for paying teachers poorly.

I’m merely objecting to the fact that the salaries can’t be questioned by tax payers, and am questioning what is the metrics used in their promotion, since I’ve never seen any input ever being solicited from students/parents unlike in universities. I want the same standards employed.

Ideally I want the salaries to be high enough to attract highly qualified people who are subject matter experts and not random barebones online degree holders.

In addition, I’m saying that the university faculty salaries are low. So in fact I’m advocating for those to be higher.

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