Students may now begin teaching in AZ public schools before they finish degree | Hacker News Reader

Students may now begin teaching in AZ public schools before they finish degree

azfamily.com

22 pointsvyrotek48 comments

My wife has two friends who moved from Seattle to AZ to teach several years ago. Both had zero experience teaching anything and both had random unrelated college degrees and both were given a classroom full of children within weeks of arriving and essentially zero training or preparation.

Total pay was around $36k a year, albeit five years ago.

It is clear that parents in AZ want babysitting over an actual education for their children.

> It is clear that parents in AZ want babysitting over an actual education for their children.

More accurately: there is a landed (or otherwise wealthy) class in AZ that would rather not pay for public institutions they don't see the need for.

The average parent in Arizona is probably a reasonable human being who wants the best for their own children and the other children in their district. Very few would probably voluntarily sign onto a scheme where their childrens' education is scraped from the bottom of the hiring barrel; it's overwhelmingly a function of political alienation, civic illiteracy, and decades of disenfranchisement efforts.

> The average parent in Arizona is probably a reasonable human being who wants the best for their own children and the other children in their district.

You assume the average person gives much thought to their kids education at all beyond whining about the taxes to pay for it.

I'd like to assume a little bit better of them. Even if they don't think, per se, about their kids' education, I suspect that they (1) have their own experiences in public schools to reflect on, and (2) experience familial instincts that nudge them towards higher degrees of concern.

> More accurately: there is a landed (or otherwise wealthy) class in AZ that would rather not pay for public institutions they don't see the need for.

It's important to understand that about most red states.

And blue states.

I live in a blue state and parents never stop gushing about how great the public schools are, how their taxes are cheaper than private school tuition, and how happy they are to vote for tax increases to pay for new school stuff.

And then when their youngest graduates from high school, they immediately start complaining about taxes, and many of them eventually move to a "cheap" red state where a lot of things actually cost more but at least their taxes are lower.

But!

I also know some guys that run an investment group that owns a few small manufacturing facilities. Whenever they get a new, complicated thing to build for someone, they start it at their factory in the blue state and work on the process and quality control. Only once they've perfected things and it no longer requires much thinking to make, it gets moved to a certain southeastern US red state where the people get paid half as much.

This is basically the same thing that happens in Europe. Perhaps it is actually ok; you don't necessarily need all the factory workers to be good problem solvers.

I wish we could outlaw private schools.

What is the age range of the kids they are teaching? This would make sense for kindergarten- not so much for Middle School.

It doesn't make a lot of sense for kindergarten either -- I'd probably want someone who understands child socialization and emotional regulation in that position (if I was a parent). The younger they are, the more pressing it is for the teacher to be a professional.

50 years from now people are going to think that you're referring to a long canceled voucher program when you refer to "public education." Young people won't even know that we used to have schools that were run by the government, and that you were required to go to school until you were 16. They won't know much, unless they were born with money.

Exactly once you privatize education only the upper class will be able to afford it. The vouchers will pay for schools up to a point. When it becomes a requirement the schools will bring up their prices and desperate parents will have to pay. The government will then declare vouchers as too costly or a failed program and we will be left with nothing. Look at US healthcare if you need want to see the libertarian dream in action.

Vouchers don't cover cost of special education. They are at least all disabled students left behind.

Almost literally everything is privatized and people from all segments of society buy stuff. Cars, phones, food, clothing, computers, are all manufactured by private enterprise without being run by the government. They are not just for the elite.

The US government spends more money on health care than any other country in the world, and is 4th in terms of the percentage of its budget that goes towards health care. It is hardly a libertarian dream.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/281589/countries-with-hi...

Cars are an interesting point. Average cost of a car is $40k currently (average gas prices is ~$4.68/gallon. We are forced to drive in most places in the US, because there is very little public transit infrastructure. The transfer from public to private has led to expensive transportation, high carbon emissions, and rampant obesity. Now we cannot imagine any alternatives and private industry won't allow public alternatives.

If the gov't would stop subsidizing marriage and having children that might not be so large a problem.

Thus continues the downward spiral. If you remove the college degree requirement, you can lower the salary even further for teachers. Combined with Arizona's move towards school vouchers, it's hard to see a positive future for their public education system.

For the teachers, that seems like a win. Lower salary but lack of crippling debt.

When I was in college, the folks bound for teaching k-12 math were in the lower half of the math classes I took. Ditto history. From talking with people, I assume that was generally the case with a few exceptions like the arts or coaching.

Does a k-12 curriculum require a college degree anyway?

> For the teachers, that seems like a win. Lower salary but lack of crippling debt.

What crippling debt? You can get a BA degree in Elementary Education that will be accepted by all 50 states in the US for under $20k [1]. (You can cut that almost in half if you can handle a heavy course load).

[1] https://www.wgu.edu/online-teaching-degrees/elementary-educa...

I guess 46th in the nation wasn't good enough. What problem is this actually trying to address?

There's a teacher shortage because of poor working conditions and poor pay, but rather than fix that they would rather broaden the worker pool.

> they would rather broaden the worker pool.

That was a strange way to say lower their educator standards.

You can't increase the amount of time kids stay in school without lowering standards.

If people are stuck for 20% of their life in school we'd need 1 in 5 people to be teachers to tutor them one on one. In the US 1 in 100 people are a teacher which means that we have a student teacher ratio of 1:20.

Which is quite frankly terrible.

The only sane thing to do is to reduce the required schooling and improve it's quality. But that would mean we turn schools into places or learning instead of extended day care.

Did you learn somewhere that wasn't a school? Because I learned in school.

I'm sorry to hear you haven't learned anything new since you finished high school.

Not strange. It accurately describe the strategy their employing

Do we really need people with masters degrees teaching 8 year olds how to multiply? Maybe elementary teaching should be seen as more vocational than professional. There's no reason someone of average intelligence with a few months training couldn't effectively teach kids.

Yes, you do. 5-8 years olds are at a far more impressionable age than at any other time.

While I don't necessarily agree with AZ's direction, I also don't necessarily agree that a college education makes you less likely to screw up impressionable kids.

I would be surprised if you advocated that for your own kids (Do you even have kids?). Teachers need to have masters degrees with certifications. I am not lowering my standards.

As a partner of an elementary educator in Canada, a master's degree no, but definitely an undergraduate with some amount of co-op.

Knowing how to teach well, to 25+ students, is not something you can pick-up over a handful of years. Many don't even after their degrees. Even if a school sets a lesson plan that's "perfect", you'd still need someone to adapt and tailor that plan to the classroom, or to students with special needs.

Lowering education standards is an absolutely surefire way of hamstringing the future of a state or country.

Here's a better question, why 25+ students?

You have 2 minutes per student in the average class. That hamstrings the future of a state or country more surely than having worse teachers.

Oh, 100%. Unfortunately, that's what the unions here agreed to and there seems to be very little motive from either side to change it.

In general, people don't want to become teachers because they don't get paid enough for the amount of work they do and the amount of bullshit they have to endure. I wouldn't be surprised if this was an attempt to increase the pool of people willing to be teachers.

Oh good. Teachers will then be as well-trained as cops

Some people argue that teachers should learn to shoot better. Just sayin'.

Any parents here considered just getting together with a few others and directly hiring a teacher or two? Pretty comparable to private school and it would let you fix all the other crap about education, from early start times for teenagers to piles of paperwork for the teacher to class sizes to the weak feedback loop.

For math and technical subjects like CS, nothing beats personal mentoring. It’s what I’d consider given the resources. No matter the quality of the teacher, instruction fundamentally changes at even medium class sizes.

I don't think a college degree is the best proxy for teaching competence. There's no reason high school graduates can't teach a subject just as well or better than college graduates.

Have a certification for the subject if you want. College is overkill.

College is appropriate, teachers need to learn how to teach. You aren't going to get a good job out of someone who doesn't have a clue what they are doing.

Lol, have you been to college? I studied computer science, my wife studied natural resources and then got a degree in education.

First, colleges, at not the top ranked research schools aren’t about teaching. They’re about research. You’re expected to learn in your own, else why else have competitive admissions?

Second, my wife’s teaching degree, though supposedly highly ranked, was a joke, coming after her degree in natural resources. She was cruised by with a 4.0, and even so, was constantly dinged for things like not using enough colors in sticky-note bookmarks or highlights, not highlighting enough, etc. It was an absolute joke. She absolutely didn’t learn to teach either.

Can anyone teach? No, but a college degree isn’t the metric either. It is however a barrier to entry that keeps poorer people from joining the profession and also reinforces that institutional accolades are the mark of success, when really they are no such thing - they are an indicator of future success. Requiring four year degrees results in watering down degrees and erasing such indicators.

I could see dropping the college requirement if it were to be replaced by some other stringent barrier to entry. Teaching as a trade school style profession makes sense to me.

Having a college degree in education is definitely worthwhile. I’m not sure an associates in soap operas is going to help much however.

I definitely think teachers need (A) understanding of effective teaching methods and learning development and (B) a deep understanding of their subject.

Both are important at all ages, but (A) seems more important at younger ages, where you need to know how to engage children. Kids are also more impressionable. (B) seems more important in middle school and high school. You wouldn't, for example, want someone who doesn't have a background in math to teach calculus.

A 4 year degree certainly isn't a perfect way to impart teaching competence, but it does set a threshold for the experience that a new teacher has. I'd expect more teachers at the back end of the bell curve if you remove the degree requirement.

Presumably this depth of understanding should be deeper than the students. And probably a little deeper than the material taught. That way the teacher can inform and maybe inspire students to study further.

How much depth is required to have a deeper understanding of anything than a 7th grader? How about 2nd grade?

I think that falls back to (A) in my original post. You certainly don't need a Master's in pure mathematics to teach 3rd graders how to add fractions, but you probably do want to understand what teaching techniques are effective for children that age.

This title is misleading, it should read “Students enrolled in college may now begin teaching in public schools before they finish their degree”.

Ok, we've changed the above to that. Shortened to fit HN's 80 char limit. Thanks!

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