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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> Like management and shareholders aligned against workers, parents and administrators are aligned against teachers, who are underpaid, under resourced, and being asked to deliver far beyond what they can accomplish on their own.

Teachers are not underpaid. We live in a free market society and they have extensive collective bargaining agreements. If anything, they’re overpaid vs a totally free market.

Those who can and want to use those same talents in a different progression are free to do so. Nobody is forced into the progression (okay maybe grad students but that’s something else…).

> I recommend being a teacher to no one, and will help any teacher who wants out into a better career or industry.

People who genuinely want to teach should be teachers. Just as people who genuinely want to cure the ill should be doctors.

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Teachers in my state are lucky to crack $75,000 salary after 10 years. Yes, they are underpaid.

I happen to have a friend group that has a few teachers in it.

Most teachers have 14-16 weeks a year off. That alone is a tough counter argument to surmount. In a few of our local districts, on average teachers are making $130k/yr if you scaled their pay to a normal 48 week career schedule. This is on top of gangbusters benefits.

Beyond that, once you get a few years into it and have your scaffolding built, you can kinda just cruise control for the rest of your career with only minor changes.

Yes, the job is challenging and stressful, but lowkey most $130k/yr jobs are.

The real devotion of teaching is being willing to have so much unproductive time which would be filled in a different higher paying career.

14-16 weeks off a year is no compensation for dealing with little shits 5 days a week (and their parents), while attempting to teach the minority that want to learn.

> Most teachers have 14-16 weeks a year off. That alone is a tough counter argument to surmount.

Teachers in my district take extra work for the district doing maintenance and tutoring and drive doordash to pay their bills during that time.

it's very dependent on state and most states are underpaid even including getting summers off. The benefits aren't very good in my state and we're one of the better paying states in the region.

There are some huge outliers like California but most states teachers are just treading water. I know this in my state because I was trying to get accredited earlier this year.

Why do you claim they are underpaid?

If there’s plenty of people willing to do the job, that’s simple supply and demand.

“I think educators should be paid more” or “I want us to pay them more” does not mean they’re underpaid.

1) There aren't plenty. It's hitting the lowest-paying and least-otherwise-desirable areas first, but there's an ongoing staffing crisis that's been worsening for years. Enrollment in teaching programs has plummeted.

2) People often talk about wanting the median teacher quality to be higher, and to be able to fire more bad teachers. A nigh-necessary early step toward addressing that complaint is to increase pay. A major implicit component of such complaints is that supply of good teachers is too low, suggesting we need to raise wages.

> A major implicit component of such complaints is that supply of good teachers is too low, suggesting we need to raise wages.

This would be a fine argument if we could somehow align incentives, fire low performing teachers, and rate them retroactively based upon the outcomes of their respective students.

> fire low performing teachers

Why can't we fire them? The typical answer is "unions" but a bunch of states de facto don't have teachers' unions (as far as unions with any ability to collectively bargain or meaningfully protect teachers from firing), and still have to retain all but the very worst teachers... because the supply of good teachers is too low. These same states tend to have poor educational outcomes, further suggesting that ability to fire, on its own, isn't helping much.

> rate them retroactively based upon the outcomes of their respective students.

This, unfortunately, turns out to be a really hard problem. It's been sincerely attempted in a bunch of ways and they've all turned out to suck, is the short history of the notion.

Almost all states offer pensions, or hybrid pensions and direct contribution plans. You have to add 1/3-1/2 or more (especially for states with retirement health plans) to yearly salary to appreciate real compensation.

In my state the pension plan is pretty mediocre, it does not make up for the low pay.

I think you need to do some reading on externalities and how they lead to misallocation of resources in a free market.

> Teachers are not underpaid.

A teacher with 20yr of experience in my district makes $5,000-$10,000 less than the state median wage.

And their retirement actually sucks.

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