Hacker News Reader

requires an advanced degree

For no reason whatsoever besides credentialism.

very long hours with no flexibility

My dad worked hard as a teacher. But he didn't work 60 hours a week or anything like that. He'd grade papers while the kids were doing homework.

low pay even before you adjust for true hours worked

Two months vacation.

and you are given very little professional discretion.

I agree with you here. The constraints put on teachers and schools by all sorts of outsiders are very limiting.

Most of them are because the people paying the bill want some sort of feedback and control mechanism. Instead, I think teachers should be given great leeway, but also be very easy to hire and fire. If a parent isn't happy with their teacher/school, they shouldn't need to appeal to the schoolboard to place rules on the teachers. Instead they should be able to vote with their feet. Exit beats voice.

To put some facts into the discussion: this assessment by the American Statistical Association found that teachers are responsible for 1 to 14% of student's test score variance

If the theory is that teachers aren't that important, we shouldn't worry so much about who they are, or if we are paying enough to attract quality teachers. NB I am not saying I agree with the antecedent.

> If the theory is that teachers aren't that important, we shouldn't worry so much about who they are, or if we are paying enough to attract quality teachers. NB I am not saying I agree with the antecedent.

I was just trying to point out that we're talking about a small part of the problem. I think teachers are incredibly important but they only have a limited area within which to work and the results are hard to reduce to a single number. Merit pay systems aren't a bad idea in theory but basing them so heavily on standardized tests doesn't seem like it'll set good incentives since it discourages all but a very small part of what you'd hope someone learns in school.

By analogy, imagine how it'd sound if we looked at America's obesity problem and said that the problem was caused by bad doctors and we should fix it by linking pay to their patients' blood pressure, measured annually.

Nobody would spend a minute taking that person seriously but the equivalent is basically the mainstream consensus for how to talk about education - even the Democrats who generally considered friends of the teachers unions always talk about how we need to attract better teachers, which is basically an insult to anyone who currently has the job.

always talk about how we need to attract better teachers, which is basically an insult to anyone who currently has the job

I'm going to just leave this as is.

So your one experience with your father not working 60 hours weeks means what exactly when talking about teacher hours? Not much. I know a lot of teachers, most of whom work in very poorly performing urban districts, which are much different than say a well funded suburban district. They work all the time. 7am-10pm. They work weekends. They teach 4-6 classes of 40 kids where 5 students leave and 5 join every 2 weeks and 90% are ESL. Even with "2 months vacation" which also is shortening every year with professional development requirements (not saying those are bad, but it is becoming a myth in a lot of places that teachers get the summer off) it doesn't balance out.

Sure there are some teachers that don't need to work all those hours. Some because they are in a good district, some because they are fine doing the minimum, but you just can't make the blanket statement that teachers don't need to work long hours and "it's ok" because of the summers break. It just is not correct.

My data point sure isn't dispositive, but it heads off the "none of you know what teachers jobs are really like!" noize. As a rule almost all my friends have a parent who was a teacher or worked as teachers themselves.

shortening every year with professional development requirements (not saying those are bad

I'll say they are no good. They are, again, credentialism: put up some hurdles for people to jump over, and then say that they should get paid more because they jumped over some hurdles.

A quick google gets me this quote:

"Chicago school teachers make a median salary of $71,017. That's a whole lot more than the city's median household income (which can include multiple salaries for households with more than one earner) of $46,877, and greater still than its median per capita income of $27,148"

According to the actual Chicago Public Schools site that average is now $74,839. "Low pay" seems like quite a reach for me, especially for an employee who works only 9 months out of the year.

I agree with your last line very much, but I don't think it hurts to aim some focus towards getting students that extra 14%.

It sounds good compared to the median for the city but you're talking about a job which requires a masters degree - look at the median for that and then remember that you're talking about job which has a RIGID daily schedule, no vacation time during the year, etc. If you're a bright college student, how does that look versus say learning enough Python to get that income straight out of college? Before answering, remember that one of these jobs involves dealing with difficult children, bad parents, often pointy-haired administrators, meddling politicians, etc.

9 months of the year is a popular claim but it's very misleading: most teachers are working 60+ hours during week (and weekends) during the school year and the summer vacation has been steadily shrinking as schools add various administrative days and many teachers are required to engage in ongoing professional development which means that they're using some of that time to take classes.

This isn't to say that teaching is abject misery but we aren't exactly going out of our way to make the job appealing. If you look at the total time commitment or stress levels, there are plenty of jobs where you'll get a better deal.

The master's requirement is nonsense. It was put in place as a credential roadblock to make entering the teaching profession more difficult, but it has zero effect on student results.

If we are going to compare inputs in that way, we can look at the test scores of college students going for education degrees, and see that they have worse English scores than the math majors and also have worse math scores than the English majors.[1] For most education majors, their alternative isn't to become a lawyer or scientist or Python developer.

The education degree is useful for people who are doing research into education, not actually teaching themselves.

[1] First google hit among many for SAT scores of education majors: http://www.joshuakennon.com/sat-scores-ranked-by-intended-co...

I'm not saying that masters degree should be a requirement but it is in many districts and if you look at the pool of college-students who are able to get a masters degree in any subject, teaching pays worse than most of the options after you balance the low pay of academia with the considerably higher level of flexibility.

My sample is skewed by knowing mostly science teachers but basically 100% of the ones I know could easily learn to program as well as a fair percentage of the developers I've worked with. They might not be doing original CS research or doing kernel driver development but there's an awful lot of work, much of it quite well paying, which depends more on skills other than core programming ability.

and if you look at the pool of college-students who are able to get a masters degree in any subject

If you keep on bringing up the Master's degree as some kind of proof of the other jobs they could get, I'll have to keep on posting things like[1] It's almost like the Master's of Education has been watered down to a credential to people who are willing to put in a bunch of busy work.

I'm not surprised that science teachers are pretty smart. Almost all my science teachers were pretty on it (I can name two exceptions). We probably need to do something to attract more quality science teachers. But, of course, saying that is an insult to current teachers.[2]

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/heres-the-nations-easiest-colleg...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7739759

You obviously feel that it's useless, which is debatable but not the issue under discussion, namely that it's a professional barrier to entry which requires extra time or money to get. My point was simply that it's misleading to compare the median incomes for an city to a subset almost entirely comprised of people who've completed both an undergraduate degree and masters program.

You can argue about the merits of the requirement, whether schools of education should change their practices, etc. but until that changes, honesty compels you to compare the median incomes of people with roughly equivalent time invested in their professional skills.

> We probably need to do something to attract more quality science teachers. But, of course, saying that is an insult to current teachers.[2]

You appear determined to misunderstand that comment: it's a question of balance. The next time you hear a politician talk about education, see how many times they say anything positive about teachers versus the negatives – and note the dubious aspect to, say, “hard working” when you know that means “nights and weekends at no extra pay”.

How would you feel if your CEO kept talking about your company is releasing buggy code and we need to hire better programmers and make shipping bug-free code a key part of your pay? And, of course, no department is getting more staff, pay isn't going up in absolute terms, and none of the major obstacles people have been trying to get fixed for years are getting addressed first.

Now consider if it was paired with, say, major investment in a world-class QA operation, internal support resources and developers gaining some influence over deadlines and features. The core program might be the same but how it would be perceived is completely different if it's backed by signs of commitment and doesn't feel like you're being scapegoated.

You obviously feel that it's useless, which is debatable

If you want to bring it up again, this time I'll throw Teach For America onto the list of organizations that say it has no impact.[1]

that it's a professional barrier to entry which requires extra time or money to get

This is exactly credentialism. EXACTLY. "I don't know if it provides any benefit, but it takes time and money to get" is the perfect description for a useless credentialism structure.

when you know that means “nights and weekends at no extra pay”

I really don't know this. NPR seems to be part of the conspiracy keeping me ignorant [2]. Teachers work about 30 or so minutes less per day than other professionals, and that includes weekend work.

How would you feel if your CEO kept talking about your company is releasing buggy code and we need to hire better programmers and make shipping bug-free code a key part of your pay?

Like any professional, I would leave and get a different job. Fortunately my profession has not worked hard to arrange that there is only one employer in town. Since my wages are roughly what I would get on the market, as opposed to being set by some third party despite my market value, it means I haven't priced myself out of other jobs. My current employer pays me (roughly) enough to keep me around which is (roughly) what I would get elsewhere.

If I was being paid way above market for some reason, though, I'd raise a stink to high heaven and keep a hold of that prior job no matter what.

Modulo the need to keep things staffed for a whole semester, switching jobs into or out of teaching should not be as insanely difficult as it is. The beneficiaries of this system are the high-seniority people currently in the field who have no plans to leave. If someone wants to switch into teaching from another career, they need to go through the silly Masters-In-Ed hoops via night school. If someone wants to switch out after a few years, they are walking away with nothing from their pension-vesting system, and they have a "Masters In Education" degree which no one values besides school boards that have negotiated contracts.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what-mak...

[2] http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2011/10/05/teachers-work-few...

http://www.cps.edu/calendar/student_days_off/Pages/StudentDa...

If you subtract the number of teacher/administrative work days they get about 20 days off per year - during the school year.

My wife has been a private school teacher for almost a decade now and worked briefly in public schools. She saw firsthand the insane rigidity of the teachers union and how incompetent teachers were kept on because they were fast to involve the union and were more senior.

The median Chicago teacher's salary is over $70,000. I'm not sure the "advanced degree" is required (the degree you're referring to is a Masters in Education).

A Masters in Education is, literally, an "advanced degree" by every definition I've ever seen. Ignoring definitions, the point is that it's expensive in both direct and opportunity costs relative to its future earning potential - most earners of masters degrees can expect to enter fields with significantly higher salaries, especially later in their careers.

Another point of irrationality. Nobody can show any correlation between having that masters degree, and being a better teacher. Its just more institutions included into the education industrial complex ... now the Masters accreditation institutions fight reform too ... because without this shit system, we don't need them and their deadweight either.

This is weird, you and danielweber both put the same words in my mouth. I made no comment at all about the value of the degree, only about its necessity to teachers and its expense.

I can't speak for the other person, but my point was only that the expense of the degree wasn't actually necessary for the proper functioning of an education system. Its just more waste.

I agree with your first part that a Masters in Education is a hassle to get, even if you are currently a teacher during the day plugging away at night school to get the degree. It's a lot of sunk time (and money if you don't have it paid for somehow).

I'll disagree that it's any benefit to job performance. Any evidence that it is indicative of other job qualifications is very limited. It's telling that the first page of google results for "benefits of a masters degree in education" are mostly about how it can improve the teacher's salary, not how it makes one a better teacher.

Master's degrees for other liberal arts degrees don't bring any salary boost.

I didn't make that point at all. I really have no clue whether the degree has an impact on job performance. All I meant to say is that many teachers are required to get it to progress in their careers and that it is expensive to do so without much future compensation for that expense relative to other degrees.

Where are teachers required to have that masters?

Yeah, I figured I'd be (rightly) called out on that - I don't know of anywhere that teachers are required to get the degree, but I know teachers (in Colorado) whose career progressions are limited early on without it (hence "required ... to progress in their careers").

Do we know if the median teacher also has a masters? I know what my kids teachers make (significantly more), so wouldn't be surprised to learn that 70k is reachable without the degree.

70k is significantly above the US median salary.

FWIW: My mom was (until a couple years ago) a CPS teacher with a Masters and a focus on BD/LD teaching; she has strong feelings about this stuff, but I think I might disagree with a lot of them.

To change tack a bit, because I don't have data to answer your question: Am I meant to think that 70k is a really high median salary for the teaching profession? Because I really don't - it seems really low for such an important profession. Especially now that so much teaching at the college level is done by similarly low-paid adjuncts, I wonder, why does it seem like our society doesn't think teaching should be an attractive employment choice for the smart, talented, and well-educated among us?

Well, ~70k is ~20k higher than the median salary; in other words, an entire full-time minimum wage salary higher. That 70k salary comes with a 3-month break and (much more importantly) a defined-benefit pension plan.

Relative to investment bankers, teachers are not highly paid. But relative to the economy and, in particular, to supply/demand, they have what seems to be a pretty solid deal.

I don't think either minimum wage workers or investment bankers are the proper comparison. I think we should be talking about professionals like doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other businesspeople; those are the professions that teaching competes (largely unsuccessfully) with for talent.

Ok, let's make that comparison: a CPS teacher makes 70k, and teachers have low single-digit unemployment and defined-benefit pensions. Lawyers, on the other hand, make a median 110k, but don't have a 3 month vacation, don't as a rule have defined-benefit pensions, and have ~12%(!) unemployment.

A lawyer is also required to shoulder an average of 85k of postgraduate education to enter the field; a high school teacher can start with a bachelors.

Unemployment rates for teachers are projected to fall. The unemployment picture for lawyers is bleak, due to the slow-motion collapse of biglaw.

And yet, those current and prospective unemployed lawyers almost certainly aren't flocking to become teachers! There are absolutely things that are attractive about teaching, I'm not at all arguing that it's the pits, just that it isn't as competitive for talent as I would like it to be. I'd love to see more of those smart kids from Stanford that go work on websites go educate our youth instead.

I read "most earners of masters degrees can expect to enter fields with significantly higher salaries, especially later in their careers" as "people with masters degrees make a lot of money, so we should people with a masters of education to also have high earning potential." (That may not be what you said; I'm just saying how I read it to clarify discussion.)

I should not have implied that you said it indicated job performance; that was the wrong place for me to challenge your statement (as I read it). Instead, I will say that it's not proper to treat a masters in education as giving the same signal as a masters in other fields.

"The problems start outside of the classroom and need to fixed there."

So you'd agree that more money for schools is not the answer?

In general, yes, although I do have one major exception: paying teachers more would reduce turnover (which is expensive to deal with) and I think there's still plenty of room for improvement in support services: tutors, particularly for non-native speakers, special needs assistance, counseling / mentoring / etc. In many cases simply having a second person in the classroom who could help a kid who's struggling, deal with discipline issues, etc. without disrupting the overall lesson as much would be a worthwhile investment.

This would cost more, although I'd hope we could compensate by having fewer administrators making hard-to-discern contributions at [generally] much higher pay.

What about the route of lengthening school hours, which would keep kids away from the problems "outside of the classroom".

This would certainly require more money to be put into the school systems.

I would say the amount of funding the US education system as a whole currently has is adequate to achieve much better average results than are currently being produced. That does not mean that there are no individual schools/districts which need more money to efficiently achieve better results than they are now. It also does not mean that removing money from the system will not further reduce its efficacy.

You can't fix US education by pouring more money into it, but you're also not going to fix it by dismantling it. The source of the primary problem isn't the education system, it's poverty.

I do not think the statement you quoted implies this. Schools could always use more money -- the money just needs to be better spent. The article mentions that a lot of money went to high-priced consultants, some of whom earned $1,000/day. What a teacher could do with a grand a day...

Moreover, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive: the outside-the-home situation could need improvement AND schools could benefit from more money.

One thing article clearly illustrates is that only throwing money at a problem does not work and difficult discussions must be had to improve the schools in this area. This benefits the economy in the long run.