Comment by daedrdev
5 days ago
Education is not just a funding issues. Policy choices, like making it impossible for students to fail which means they have no incentive to learn anything, can be more impactful.
5 days ago
Education is not just a funding issues. Policy choices, like making it impossible for students to fail which means they have no incentive to learn anything, can be more impactful.
But holy shit is it also a funding issue when teachers make nothing.
As far as I understand it, the problem isn’t that teachers are shit. Giving more money would bring in better teachers, but I don’t know that they’d be able to overcome the other obstacles
> Giving more money would bring in better teachers, but I don’t know that they’d be able to overcome the other obstacles
Start with the easiest thing to control? Of giving more money and see what it does?
We seem to believe in every other industry that to get the best talent pay a high salary salary, but for some reason we expect teachers to do it out of compassion for the children while they struggle to pay bills. It's absurd.
Probably one of the single most important responsibilities of a society is to prepare the next generation, and it pays enormous return. But because we can't measure it with quarterly profits we just ignore it.
The rate of return on providing society with as good education is insane.
I think you need to research the issue more. Teachers are well remunerated in most states. Educational outcomes are largely a function of policy settings. Have a look at the amazing turnaround in literacy rates in Mississippi after they started teaching phonics again.
I date a lot of teachers. My last one was in the San Ramon (CA) Valley School district, she makes about $90k a year at 34 years old. Talking to her basically makes me want to homeschool my kids to make sure someone like her isn't their teacher. Paying teachers more won't do ANYTHING until we become a lot more selective about who gets to become and stay a teacher. It can't be like most government jobs where getting it is like winning the lottery and knowing you can make above market money for below market performance.
There is so much wrong with this. You cannot judge the class of teachers based on a small sample of your taste in women. You didn't actually communicate anything materially wrong with her. You listed a high income area to make us think teachers are overpaid but we have no insight by default into median income in the area or her qualifications.
Lastly its entirely impossible to attract better candidates without more money its just not how the world works.
For reference the median household income in san ramon is about 200k so 2 teachers would be below average. A cop with her experience in the same town makes 158k
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Its interesting to hear you say that you date a lot of teachers while simultaneously holding this view of their level of competence. Or just not the ones you date?
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If teachers made as much as half the people on this site, perhaps things would be better. 90k in San Ramon is more or less the median wage [1]. It's not _that_ much money.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ramon,_California#2020_cen...
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This is so basic that I feel I shouldn't need to say it, but you can't be selective if you don't pay. You take what you get.
The reason teaching became largely a women's profession when they used to be exclusively men is because we wanted to make education universal and free so we did that by paying less, and women who needed to work also had to take what they could get. The reason it has become a moron's profession is because we have made it uniquely undesirable. If you think that teachers should be amazing and imminently qualified and infinitely safe to have around children, pay them like programmers.
Instead, the middle-class meme is to pay them nothing, put them in horrible conditions, and resent them too. Typical "woman's work" model.
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I guess the problem isn't only the pay, it's the opportunity cost which only a certain kind of people are willing to pay for the whole career. If you select those people out... you're left with zero candidates.