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Comment by m348e912 | Hacker News Reader

Teaching salaries start at $48,112 on average. If schools want advanced degrees the industry needs to pay more, and that's beyond whatever adjustment the provide for holding an advanced degree.

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All things considered, it's much better than it's made out to be.

Teaching is pretty stable, offers pensions, unionized, yearly adjusted for CPI, opportunities to increase pay schedule + extra pay with extra curriculars / duties, lots of time off, good hours.

Don't get me wrong. There are issues and it does depend on the district (US).

Now the aides..

True. As long as we can agree that that means that tripling the current compensation is a necessity. Quadrupling it (ie. matching entry-level FANG) is not that necessary.

Btw: there is also the aspect that while children can get inspired and that is enormously motivating. Children also sabotage teaching and I've seen teachers leave because of that as well.

And where do you think that money will come from?

Well, the way you get instant raises in the public school system is by completing more advanced degrees

They're already paid better than adjunct professors or grad students which is the normal career path for people with advanced degrees.

"The industry", at least at a pre-university level, is entirely at the mercy of state and local governments for its budgets.

If you want schools to pay their teachers more, you have to push for higher taxes, because that's where the money for them comes from. And you have to explain to your families and friends that yes, the extra $30.45 they had to pay this year is very, very meaningful, because it lets starting teachers make enough to actually afford rent, food, and clothes all in the same year. (You probably have to explain that part ad nauseam.)

Teachers get can paid more whether you raise taxes or not. Chicago public schools runs a $700,000,000 deficit every year no sweat.

Chicago pays teachers more than any other place in the country and has close to if not the absolute worst student outcomes. Paying more doesn’t solve much

this. there's almost no fiscal incentive to even BE a teacher, let alone a well-educated one.

Most public K-12 teachers teach 9 months out of the year. So annualizing that salary gets you to $64,149. Supposing a two income household of two teachers earning that amount ($128,299), the household would be earning a good bit above the median household income of $83,730.

Now, add in the pre-tax earnings that would be necessary to emulate a teacher's risk-free pension. One would need post-tax investments which must be turned into an annuity on retirement. It's not a small sum.

When you overpay teachers, people who hate teaching, and hate being teachers, will become teachers for the money.

Is a good idea to select the people who hate teaching to become teachers?

Yeah, why would we pay top dollar for top talent and then hold that talent to high standards? That certainly doesn’t work in any other profession.

If you are paying top dollar for top talent, then you are not overpaying anyone.

If you can read, thank a teacher!

When you overpay CEOs, people who hate leading, and hate being CEOs, will become CEOs for the money.

Is a good idea to select the people who hate leading to become CEOs?

Yes

You say that as though it’s an option

CEO is selected by the investors for whoever will side with the investors 100% of the time over every other group including employees

What you suggest would subvert this and so it won’t and can’t happen

This was far more of an option in the 1980s and earlier; a CEO being compensated 20-30x a line employee was pretty standard around then; now it's closer to 250-300x. I think there's more optionality than we may assume, we've just left the structural incentives that drive that difference in place.

We call this new movement “involuntary CEO”. Bob you’re now it.

Absolutely dumb take. There are plenty of very bright and talented people that would have made excellent teachers but chose different career paths because - surprise surprise - the pay is better.

When you underpay teachers, people who hate teaching, and hate being teachers, will become teachers because all the people that had better options did something else.

And then you will have people who absolutely love teaching, and are willing to live in poverty to do so, speckled around that cess pool of mediocrity. It reminds me of high school actually.

That means overpayment is wrong and underpayment is wrong.

Teachers should be paid the correct amount, no more and no less.

I love how it took three comments to arrive at a tautology.

This is true of every single job.

Teachers are high in big five trait agreeableness which means they typically don't negotiate on their own behalf

Teachers usually outsource negotiations to their unions and therefore largely cannot negotiate on their own behalf, even if they wanted to.

You made an assertion that is based in fantasy, and then asked a question based on this silly assertion. Just wow.

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