
Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record - dpflan
https://www.wsj.com/articles/teachers-quit-jobs-at-highest-rate-on-record-11545993052
======
allcentury
There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for
the last 22 years is so ready to retire.

I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up
with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world
use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid
lights up when they understand the value of what their learning.

Now though, over the last 8 years, she told me that parents have ruined the
job she loves. Especially now that she has to post everyone's grades online,
instantly emails roll in when a student didn't perform as well as the parent
expected.

She told me of an email she received that said "X is trying to get into
Princeton - an A- isn't going to get her in. What extra credit can she do to
make this an A?".

It's endless and my mom, for fear of a lawsuit, doesn't know what to do. The
teachers union in Massachusetts made all the teachers sign liability waivers
and arbitration waivers if a lawsuit happens. My mom is scared stiff and
either bends over, or doesn't and let's the vice principal or principal take
the heat, ultimately it leading to an extra credit assignment.

My mom's job sounds miserable and if you were to ask me 15 years ago, what I
might do in my retirement - I would have said taught CS at a disadvantaged
high school. Now though, I'm seconding guessing that retirement plan.

~~~
ineedasername
Okay, I get that's more work, and sounds like a hassle. So this isn't a
criticism of your mom.

But on the A- and extra credit issue, I never understood the point of rigid
grading schemes. I've taught at a college level, and I _always_ give students
the chance to improve their grades if they want to put in additional work. To
do otherwise seems like saying "nope, even if you learn more and improve to
the point of A-level knowledge, you're still getting a lower grade".

~~~
nilkn
It’s more work, and that’s exactly the problem. A teacher deserves to go home
and enjoy their family and life outside of work. The only way to make this
possible is to have students and parents understand that after a certain point
the grade is simply final, so if you want a good grade it’s your
responsibility to learn the material prior to exams or large projects or
assignments being due. Everyone knows this; there is no secret. So I don’t
think it’s fair at all to expect the teacher to do more work for you when you
didn’t put in the effort to learn the material the first time.

~~~
woolvalley
Well it's a pay issue too isn't it? If a family paid for the teachers time for
extra work, then I'm guessing the pushback wouldn't be as bad.

~~~
jogjayr
It's not a big leap from "pay extra for extra credit assignments to improve
grade" to "pay extra to improve grade".

I'm not suggesting that the vast majority of teachers would be tempted or give
in to bribery. But it sets up perverse incentives and the optics are terrible.
It's also unfair to students who didn't do well and whose families can't
afford to pay the teacher to grade their extra credit assignments.

~~~
ineedasername
I've hearrd of teachers in the local school district that offer for-pay
tutoring to their students... It's always struck me as something of a conflict
of interest, but I'm really not sure how I feel about it.

------
tranced
Haha, I just finished quitting my job teaching high school computer science
today.

I went from private tutoring CS to teaching in an afterschool program to this
because I really enjoyed helping students break through conceptual blocks and
mental ones.

The work is emotionally exhausting but satisfying. Only recently have I
wondered whether or not this was the right thing to do instead of going to
industry(maybe it's because a lot of my interviewers have been asking me that
exact question) but it seems blatant now that my friends are senior engineers
who have almost infinite job opportunities.

The real crux of it is that teachers get put into this triangle of pressures
between students, administration, and their parents which almost takes away
all agency from the job. I got so tired of getting put into difficult
situations that were almost always juggling acts.

At the end of the day, if you want to fix anything as a teacher it's almost
like going against an institution. You risk your pension, your 401k, or maybe
just your potential future in industry for what?

I wasn't in it for the money and I would imagine most teachers aren't
either... but what happens when your hands are too tied to actually teach?

 _sigh_ maybe I could've done everyone justice if I had some tech money to
fall back on.

~~~
reilly3000
"The real crux of it is that teachers get put into this triangle of pressures
between students, administration, and their parents which almost takes away
all agency from the job. I got so tired of getting put into difficult
situations that were almost always juggling acts."

I think that is also happening today with medical doctors and it is an
absolute travesty; the opposite of progress.

------
shados
Articles like these, while only loosely related, always make me think that the
software engineering bubble has to pop. You have people with ton of education
busting their behind dealing with little brats all day to try to make sure
they have a future... During that time, some bro who read a couple of books
and hammered on his keyboard, and MAYBE did a 3 months bootcamp gets bummed if
he can't pull in 100k in one of the coasts with a flex schedule and free
lunches/coffee/smoothies/whatever. God forbid they get paged in the middle of
the night, they'll scream bloody murder. Same contrasts with trade workers:
hiring qualified carpenters/plumbers/painters/whatever is becoming incredibly
difficult.

Obviously I'm only considering the extremes here, but those extremes
are...very common.

Society can't go very far if the ONLY thing people do is write keywords in a
text editor all day. We need to properly value other professions too.

~~~
xamuel
Most people wouldn't be able to cut it in software dev, whether they did the 3
month bootcamp or even if they managed to pass a 4-year university program.
99% of the time, Little Jimmy's 4th grade English teacher would have a
snowball's chance in hell as a professional developer.

~~~
zanny
This might have been true 20 years ago when software development meant
everything from a fundamental understanding of hardware (including how pixels
are laid out, how to manage gamma, etc for the front end) to knowing a lot of
theory (because you had to implement your collections in house, manage the
code base by hand, etc) but nowadays I'm pretty sure at least half of everyone
could be pointed at a web framework and bootstrap and make a functional
website in half a year.

Sure a professional would have made that in a week, but their next site will
take half as long, and then half as long... until they are within striking
distance of someone who _does_ still know all those fundamentals. They will
mostly be limited in what they can do, but most people don't really need
developers that can do anything even if they pay for them without realizing
that.

Programming is being commoditized. In the same way you don't see a doctor
first thing when you go to one; you see a nurse, tech, or assistant. Not
everything requires the most expensive learning investment. Most programming
jobs don't require you to be able to write a proof of the code you copy paste
from Stack Overflow.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Anyone can build an app, just as anyone can build a house. But if you want a
roof that won’t rot for 20 years, you need to pay someone who knows how to
build a proper house.

By the same token, if you want an app that will still be maintainable in 5
years, you need a professional. An amateur can build most requirements, but
the architecture will seize up if it’s just layers of hacks.

It’s sort of an interesting situation for startups, because their business
requirements for newly acquired users are often changing on <5 year
timeframes. So actually throwing away the whole system every few years turns
out to be an OK strategy.

The problem is previously acquired customers, who won’t generally deal well if
you tell them half of your products features are going away for 18 months, or
maybe forever.

You can sometimes hack around this by basically ditching all of your old
customers and taking a high turnover strategy. That can work well for the
middle of your growth curve. You burn a chunk of your addressable market in
the long term. Also most companies don’t have the nerve to do it.

And it can cause cash problems.

But there are viable strategies that way.

~~~
alexhutcheson
Eh, I haven’t seen any evidence that experienced professionals can build a
website that will last for 5 years either. Business requirements inevitably
requires hacks and kludges, and abstraction layers implemented to deal with
the problems of today become tomorrow’s layer that everyone wants to rewrite
or refactor.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Refactoring over the five years is the opportunity a good developer gives you.

When I say the architecture “seizes up” I mean it gets to the point where

1) a refactor that would shave 100 points off your annual planned work costs
more than 100 points

and 2) hacks are slowing your pace to the point that a realistic estimate for
your annual planned work is growing faster than your team is working it down.

Note that in such a situation you will still be “getting things done” but your
costs are rising while your output is decreasing. Eventually that grinds to a
halt and your team will demand a costly and often fatal 2.0 cycle.

A good developer can refactor as they work, and say no to unworkable plans,
such that your cost per point grows only linearly, so you can maintain stable
feature output while growing your staff linearly.

------
blitmap
I'm going to state a couple of strong opinions and hope it doesn't backfire on
me:

1) Teachers should be paid more.

2) Teachers shouldn't be pressured to work so many hours off the clock (after
school).

3) Teachers may continue to make their own lesson plans, but they should
always have available lesson plans available to them.

4) School administrations should protect teachers from harassing parents.

5) The number of administrative employees & administrations in general should
be reduced or consolidated. You have some school districts with over 100
schools, and others shepherding just a few. The differences between districts
can be very big (especially when it comes to lesson plans).

6) Politics is f-cking us hard here. Education should be easy to fund and a
non-issue. The current situation is under-serving our children, and will
create a feedback loop of underfunded/undervalued education. I personally
believe a lot of allocated funds are spent wastefully on the administration
and not teachers.

7) I wish we had online examinations that students could take over and over
from day #1 of the school year to improve on over the year. There could be
material that requires teachers be present to administer, and others that
students can do on their own at home (and possibly cheat on). It would have
helped me immensely to be familiar with what we were going to learn about
"next month". I first encountered a syllabus with a month-to-month plan in
community college.

8) Can't forget this: F-ck zero tolerance policies. Schools need a lawyer on-
site looking out for the rights of students.

9) You shouldn't need a masters degree to teach 5th grade algebra. It should
be easy to hire someone off the street who can pass a background check and
exams against the course they might teach.

10) And then easier ways to account for students so it doesn't take 15 minutes
to 'start class'. Longer days that start later (8am) & less/no homework.

~~~
cheez
I'm going to state a very strong opinion here and know that it will backfire:
families should be educating their kids themselves, and society should make
this financially possible (let's start off with eliminating the dual-income
family). Teachers, as they are currently qualified, should be adjuncts to the
family school.

~~~
kaitai
That's what we've done with literacy in the US for the past few decades and
literacy rates have decreased. An abject failure.

What a terrible idea for society -- religious zealots only teaching their
children one religious book (whichever one they like), people afraid of math
teaching their children to be afraid of math, thespians only teaching theater,
violinists whose children never get to try cello.... parents who don't speak
English doing what exactly in English?

It works fine if you're a shoemaker teaching your kid to make shoes. But I've
seen what my kid learns from her teachers and peers. It is really fun and
stuff I'd never come up with.

~~~
cheez
Isn't the US the country spending the most, per-capita, on education? I don't
see how your claim follows.

In any case, given the company, you're probably well off, live in a high
property tax area and have good public schools.

~~~
therealdrag0
Wouldn't you expect us to be at the top of list, when our average incomes are
also top of the list, and a very large country?

------
nsriv
[https://outline.com/ZuA8TG](https://outline.com/ZuA8TG)

~~~
sjroot
Last time I saw a paywalled article, someone commented and mentioned the idea
of (1) prohibiting those sites or (2) automatically redirecting to an outlined
version.

~~~
glenneroo
Why not just tag the titles with [Paywall] so users can avoid them? Granted,
they tend to be from the same sites, but it would be one less thing to
remember.

~~~
sjroot
I think this is the way to go. I should have clarified that in my OP.

------
kumarski
It is harder and harder to be a blue to gray collar worker in the USA than
ever before.

66 jobs have bigger licensure requirements than EMT's.

Cosmetologists spend ~400 days training, EMT's - 33.

[https://www.adamtownsend.me/regulating-licensing-gig-
workers...](https://www.adamtownsend.me/regulating-licensing-gig-workers/)

~~~
robertAngst
Wrong place to post this.

HN loves their government regulations.

------
neom
One of my favourite hypotheticals to play out is what would be like if we
somehow paid public school teachers and emergency services/law enforcement
professionals an extreme of today, a million usd a year, and increased the
difficulty to attain this work. I usually end up in a pretty good place but
I'd be curious what others think/why this couldn't work?

~~~
rayiner
> I usually end up in a pretty good place but I'd be curious why this could
> not work?

It would be fantastically expensive. Chicago has 21,000 teachers. Paying them
$1 million per year would cost $21 billion, dwarfing the city's current $3.8
billion budget. Even paying them $100,000 per year on average would cost half
the city's budget.

And there is little reason to believe it would yield better results. American
teachers are well paid compared to other OECD countries where students do
better: [https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-
country-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-
country-2017-5#elementary-school-teachers-best-and-worst-1).

~~~
randomdata
_> And there is little reason to believe it would yield better results._

This is an important point. $100,000+ per year is not unheard of for teachers
in Ontario (conveniently public sector incomes >$100,000 are required to
publicly disclosed[1]), and they have problems with graduates not having even
basic literacy and numeracy skills[2].

[1] [https://www.ontario.ca/page/public-sector-salary-
disclosure](https://www.ontario.ca/page/public-sector-salary-disclosure)

[2] [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-one-in-
four-o...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-one-in-four-ontario-
university-students-lack-basic-literacy-numeracy/)

~~~
Scoundreller
It's a very recent thing for teachers to be able to reach that, usually by
hitting the top of the seniority scale and qualifications scale, or having
some extra paid work (e.g. being a department head).

------
wallflower
It is not mentioned in this particular article and my teacher friends say that
dealing with parents is a constant pain. Of course, not all parents are a
pain. Only a few.

Teachers are not in the profession to listen to why little high school age
Johnny did not get an A on his paper, not the least _because_ you, the parent,
helped him write that paper.

~~~
labster
Teachers should stop assigning tasks that necessitate parent participation,
then. I was assigned to write a novella in sixth grade, for crying out loud. I
like creative writing now, but I didn't back then, and the assignment sure
didn't help.

~~~
wallflower
It wasn't clear in the original comment but the paper that the high school
student did was not supposed to be written by the parent or receive assistance
from the parent in any form. The student was in high school!

~~~
labster
I've never had assignments that were supposed to have parental assistance
after preschool, yet many of them needed it to get a non-failing grade.
Perhaps 1% of middle school kids can do a science fair project on their own
with all the research tracking and results board and all. But still if you
failed that, you failed the class. Utterly ridiculous. Kids that age should be
exploring and apprenticing, not coming up with original research.

Not implying there aren't exceptional students, but they are exceptions. And
for everyone else, we train them to be good factory workers for the
disappearing industries of America. The one thing we all agree on is that the
system is broken.

~~~
vanviegen
So which is it? Are we asking middle school kids to come up with original
research, or are we training them to be good factory workers? These statements
seem to point in exact opposite directions.

~~~
labster
Unfortunately, both. We ask kids to be on time, every day, sit orderly in
their seats. Don't talk to neighbors, you're supposed to be at your job or
learning. Collaboration is only allowed when authorized. Looking up
information is only allowed when authorized. Any disruption is grounds for
punishment, too many notices is grounds for dismissal, er, expulsion.

And then these same kids are sent home and asked to complete creative work, as
if we had been training them for a creative job all along. We do not do this,
but we expect the results nonetheless. And teachers pat themselves on the back
for letting their students "get creative" while upholding the authoritarian
system 99% of the time -- which they have to do, because it's their jobs on
the line.

So no, those statements are not contradictory.

~~~
wallflower
Another comment mentioned John Taylor Gatto. If you are not yet familiar with
his writings, check then out.

[http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html](http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html)

------
ilitirit
As a "previously disadvantaged" South African whose mother was quite "high" in
the education hierarchy - she set the final year national exams for high-
school students one year in one subject and moderated examiners' marks for
many years before and after that - I find this quite interesting.

Well, interesting is perhaps not the right word.

Disgusting.

Not at America, but toward my country's own education system.

My mother _never_ cared about the money. In fact, she was offered huge
salaries from so-called private schools (the wording/nomenclature is a story
for another time). She never took it. Her main goal was always education for
students who she felt were disenfranchised. Growing up, I'd often see her very
sad about a bright student who got killed because of their surroundings or
something else regarding their upbringing. But she always remained determined!

It breaks my heart these days to see that she is unhappy not because she is
not able help the same students from the same backgrounds, but because she
simply REFUSES to. She does not believe my country's education system is
equipped to give them what they need. So, instead of taking a big salary from
government (she is officially retired, btw) to teach "previously
disadvantaged" students in government-endorsed programmes, she does it gratis
when the students approach her personally.

I just realised why I never mentioned why she doesn't sign up for "government-
sponsored" initiatives in terms of education. She - as do I - simply believes
the standard they expect is not of the quality that should be given to the
youth. So she will rather offer her standard "for free". I hope I don't have
to explain why her method is not compatible with the paid-for alternative...

~~~
erikpukinskis
You are presenting a false choice. Your mother had to choose between getting
paid a fair wage and teaching the kids who need it most.

In a healthy community she should get both: a fair wage for teaching kids who
need her.

------
sethammons
I left teaching over 8 years ago. Elevated myself from programming for fun and
sometimes pay to being a full time software developer. Best career move ever.

~~~
ikeyany
Started out studying to become a secondary math teacher. Saw the writing on
the wall and switched my major to engineering. One of the wisest decisions
I've made in my life.

------
drawkbox
Some solutions to education and teacher/parent/difficulty:

\- Teacher rotation or a couple teachers + tutors rotating to help as more of
a team effort, could be larger classes to offset costs but it would help take
pressure off the sole teacher. Students can be involved in teaching as well,
teaching you learn the most from. Finland uses this in their leading education
system [1][2].

\- Separate teaching from grading, have grading be a teacher/tutor committee
where teachers are only part of it, so when parents complain there is more
information and it also eliminates errors, is more fair and teachers can't
just dislike some kids.

\- Allow superstar teachers to be virtually/online accessible to students and
teachers for teaching certain curriculum with the class and teachers as
helpers to go over it.

Basically a team based approach to teaching and more access to winning
learning strategies and teachers/methods, especially with so much information
online available.

We also need more project based teaching (individual and team) and curriculum
like Finland [1] which will help in many ways, they also do more open plan
learning i.e. not in one classroom [2].

A big problem is the legacy/current model we use with one teacher, bunch of
students, one room, curriculum that is memory based but not even good memory
learning like spaced repetition and very little interesting subjects while
students/teachers have to get up too early and are on too much of a schedule
while learning/teaching.

Finland has it right, and more like the real world, project based, with more
time to be free and explore what you are learning in concrete project examples
with teams of people/teachers/tutors to help you learn it.

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-39889523](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39889523)

[2] [https://www.bbc.com/news/av/education-45727843/finland-s-
sch...](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/education-45727843/finland-s-schools-
ditch-traditional-classrooms-for-open-plan-learning)

------
skilled
I was a right prick at school, can't imagine being a teacher and having to do
deal with 30 or more of others like me.

------
r00fus
I sense the pressure of privatized education is making itself felt here
through legislation (NCLB, ESSA bills) and money injected into campaigns.

------
mista_duval
I can personally relate to this story. My wife has been working in education
for the past 6 years. She frequently complains about the rediculous workload,
byzantine regulations and red tape and the rediculosly low pay she gets to
deal with it all. But she’s not alone. I frequently hang out with her and her
co-workers and they all seem to be feeling the same way. Many are wondering if
all their efforts are making a diffrence at all. Some of them have left and
found jobs in the corporate world where they can work a steady 9 to 5 while
receiving better benifits and compensation. Many of them found jobs in
corporate training where they can put their education expertise to good use.
I’m not sure what it’s going to take but something has to be done to stop this
trend. The education brain drain is going to have serious reprocusions in a
few short years. What’s going to happen when there just isn’t anyone willing
to take on the workload? Sure, raising pay would help but that just seems to
be the tip of the iceberg. Educator need more resources to do the job right
and it seems they’re just not getting them right now.

------
alistairSH
My anecdote... My mother recently retired after teaching ESOL (English for
non-native speakers) at the elementary/primary school level for decades. She
was getting burned out and was at retirement age, so no real need to keep
working. Now, she happily goes back to volunteer several days/week. She still
enjoys teaching; it was the administrative tasks that wore her out.

------
cs2teach2cs
Apologies for the wall of text, as a programmer, turned high school teacher,
turned programmer once more. Throwaway account.

I was about to graduate with a CS degree from a top 20 program in 2006 when it
occurred to me that I really, really loved my time as an undergrad TA running
the labs for the intro to computer science course. From a kid up till then,
I'd always received the complement that I had a way of explaining things and I
figured if I could do this every day for my career I'd never work a day in my
life. So I went on to enroll at Illinois State University, the program that
produces the most teachers in the state, to get a second bachelor's degree in
secondary education and get certified in teaching Math and Computer Science.

My time there involved taking a few additional math courses, a course about
unions, a handful of pre-student teaching type courses where you go and sit in
on real high school classes and observe, and a couple classes where I learned
everything there is to know about social justice, which I and my peers were
all about and ate up whole-heartedly (and I still believe in).

Fast forward to our last semester when we're about to graduate and someone
finally asks our well liked professor, "Is now the time when you'll teach us
about classroom management?" Which, over the course of three years had been
drilled into our heads as the #1 reason that teachers quit early on in their
career. Our professors, people that spoke at the conferences we attended, and
the teachers we shadowed all told us the same thing over, and over, and over.
The answer we got from our professor was "Ahhhh, well, you know, that's
something everybody needs to work out on their own." And that was it. We
graduated and were left to fend for ourselves.

I should also say, there were no courses on lesson plan writing either, at
all. Which is strange because it is something a new teacher spends a huuuuuge
amount of time on, since tomorrow is going to come, and there’s nothing to
present until you make one. And this is on top of grading papers. Also strange
is that there is no central repository for celebrated lesson plans. The
assumption is that every teacher should come up with their own unique take on
things and design their own version of a given lesson from first principles.
It came from a place of "Boy, It'd sure stink if we were forced to teach a
prescribed lesson plan when I've come up with a better way, one that fits my
delivery style better and would truly be better for my students". Which are
real concerns. But to not give brand new teachers at least a starting point of
'best practices', which they could then iterate on as they go, and perhaps
even contribute their improvements upstream, is absolutely criminal in my
book. You graduate and you start with nothing.

So that was me, a Computer Science grad at heart with the best of intentions,
plunged into teaching nothing but low level math (because I would have to work
at _least_ five years before I’d have enough seniority to teach anything else)
at an inner city high school where students would get up and start dancing in
the middle of class to music played on their phones, throw skittles at me when
I’m at the board, and if you send them to the dean then you can’t manage your
classroom. And I certainly couldn’t!

When it came time for parent teacher conferences, it was a total of 4
student's parents that came. And those were the 4 parents that I didn't need
to talk to because their sons and daughters were doing just fine. It was the
other 116 parents that I really needed to talk to :-(

The people I saw succeed were the children of parents who were also teachers.
I assume they grew up with their parents telling them the little nuggets of
wisdom that are so crucial, but left out of the formal education process. Such
basics as, “It’s easier to relax rules later than to institute more strict
rules down the road”. And many others. I really, really hope other schools are
better. And that Illinois State University has improved. But based on the
experience I had by enrolling in 2006, it’s really seems like it's just a
sham, and you had better have some way of gaining actual knowledge of how
things work in the classroom from elsewhere if you want to succeed.

~~~
CydeWeys
Ouch, that's rough. If you've graduated college, you can learn the high school
level material on your own; no need to be taught it explicitly. But not to
cover classroom management and lesson planning?? One of my friends is an
elementary school teacher and that's basically _all_ she does. She's been at
it for most of a decade now so she's good at it now, but I was living with her
during her first years of being a teacher and being thrown into the deep end
of that was rough.

------
RikNieu
I have three friends who were teachers for a decade who changed careers within
the last 5 years. One moved into banking, another became a tatoo artist, and
the last teaches dancing privately.

They all quit because of low pay and long hours, litigious threats from
parents, and being faced with constant accusations of being
abusive/racist/whatever-other-random-excuse students could come up with to
deny their own failures and behaviour. The schools always side with the
accusers by default.

This is in South Africa, not the USA, so it seems to be a world-wide phenomena
- at least maybe in the English speaking world.

~~~
barry-cotter
Teaching has always had quite a high outflow. More than half of people with
qualified teacher status in England and Wales don’t teach. Most people can’t
do it. Of those who can plenty decide they can’t do it any more. Long holidays
and a fantastic pension aren’t worth a job you hate.

I doubt South Africa is worse than the U.K. The Guardian’s Secret Teacher is
awful. [https://www.theguardian.com/profile/the-secret-
teacher](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/the-secret-teacher)

------
jstewartmobile
Articles like this never come as a surprise to a Gatto fan:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto)

[https://archive.org/details/WeaponsOfMassInstruction](https://archive.org/details/WeaponsOfMassInstruction)

[https://archive.org/details/DumbingUsDown-
TheHiddenAgendaOfC...](https://archive.org/details/DumbingUsDown-
TheHiddenAgendaOfCompulsoryEducation)

------
mikekij
I loved teaching high school physics, but couldn’t see owning a home and
raising a family on $47k a year. Went to grad school and work in the medical
device field now. While I’m happy in my current role, I would likely have
stayed in education for my entire career if I had been paid $75k a year. I
would love to see 5% of the US military budget diverted to increasing teacher
salaries by 50%. I think you’d see a rush of qualified people entering the
field.

------
libraryatnight
One of my friends was a teacher. He enjoyed it, but the money was so bad it
was frequently a point of stress for his family. He asked about raises, they
said no - but that they could pay more to teachers that have a masters. So he
went back to school and got one (a difficult choice since that also costs
money, but it seemed worth it). After he received it, there was a wage freeze.

Long story short, he now works in corporate training.

We treat teachers badly.

------
colechristensen
Good.

Unemployment is at a local minimum for the last couple of decades. Schools
have to exist and teachers leaving raises demand for teachers so schools will
actually have to compete, maybe a mass exodus will get the shitty school
situation in the US fixed a little bit.

The most powerful form of protest is to leave for something better.

------
romeisendcoming
Both parents were teachers and spoke strongly against the profession when they
retired 15 years ago. My exit/retirement strategy from this IT circus was
always teaching but I guess I could revisit that for midnight shift as a DC
tech somewhere.

------
pojzon
Teaching is hard, unfortunetely we dont value good teachers as much as we
should. Thus they quit. My mom is a teacher and she loved her work, her
students also loved her. But the atmosphere in schools is now so bad, not many
can take it.

------
revskill
The best teacher i've learnt with is an engineer, though i've studied through
countless teachers. Which made me ask myself, you couldn't just graduate a
Pedagogy School to teach other effectively.

------
arrty88
They are also retiring at an alarming rate due to baby boomers. Wonder what %
of teachers are baby boomers vs millennials / gen x / gen y

------
drewmol
Suggestion to rename 'Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate since 2001' as that's
when this record was started.

------
sys_64738
Grade inflation and extra credit are the two big items which let American
schools down. A class should have a bell shaped curve after the final exam and
extra credit should never be given as it's form of cheating the system.

~~~
thatfrenchguy
Bell curves are a lie though. What if you taught well and everyone understood
your lesson and they fared well on the test ? The French way of grading
without a curve is much better in that aspect.

~~~
sys_64738
Generally bell curves are applications of the material together that make it
hard to attain higher grades. Otherwise the exam is too easy.

------
dominotw
parents have wayyy to much power over you. No thanks.

------
partycoder
tl;dr: Education rant. If you don't like rants don't read this comment.

7 hour a day have no motivation other than preparing kids for 9 to 5 jobs and
depriving kids of their valuable time and potential.

Software used in education has a lot of room for improvement. A 1 man
operation like 3Blue1Brown has done more for education than man-centuries of
work in education software.

Kids spend years learning inefficient arithmetic algorithms. An 8 year old
abacus user wipes the floor with an American teacher in mental math.

With respect to civics, kids learn about democracy in Ancient Greece but don't
learn about corporations and lobbying, which nowadays has more weight than
democracy.

A lot of adults today don't remember that Americans were given free land
grants in the Mexican states of Alta California and Tejas (now California and
Texas respectively, top American states by GDP) and then revolted against the
Mexicans to later be annexed by the US. Similar story in Hawaii. The US set a
shitty precedent in terms of respecting borders, sovereignty and immigration,
creating the crisis that is now being weaponized today by corporations to
transfer their blame to laborers that spend all their money in food rather
than the true reason for our economic situation: trillions of dollars taken
from taxpayers to pay "Quantitative easing" to the financial mafia and more
trillions wasted in wars that achieved nothing other than make private defense
contractors richer.

Kids won't learn about how the US Chinese exclusion act started the opium
poppy planting industry in Mexico that later evolved into the humanitarian
clusterfuck that is the War on drugs.

Kids won't learn about mass incarceration and its legal foundations like the
loopholes that are possible by the 13th amendment to the US constitution.

Kids won't learn about mass surveillance by corporations and governments and
how their privacy is being taken away.

Kids won't spend a lot of time thinking about compound interest and how it can
make or break their lives, or how population doubles every 63 years and what
will happen to us if this keeps happening.

~~~
reilly3000
Of course they will learn, eventually. Or like me, they will learn at a young
age but struggle to apply the concepts in adulthood in a meaningful way,
because we're all learning these lessons as we go, but we haven't learned
effective antidotes yet to concentrations of power that become destructive.

------
stupidbird
You mean no one's lining up to get low pay and frequent parental abuse? You
don't say.

------
ancorevard
“It’s a more boring place now, and they see their friends finding exciting
opportunities,” Ms. Pollak said.

So in other words, this is a healthy thing. If people are bored being teachers
and they quit, that should be celebrated.

~~~
yourbandsucks
No way. Teaching is really, really important for society. And we've made it
low-status, because we are morons.

If it were higher-status, you'd see fewer people being 'bored' and seeing the
'excitement' elsewhere. The fact that we've screwed this up should not be
celebrated.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Pay more and treat teachers better. Market forces at work.

~~~
potbelly83
Depends where. In Westchester/Nassau counties (bordering NYC) teachers get a
pretty sweet deal.

~~~
throwawaymath
It is extraordinarily difficult to move from a relatively low paying teaching
job (such as in the NYC DOE) to a high paying job in Westchester. There is
far, far more labor supply than there is demand. If you don't get in when
you're young (and therefore cheap), it's most likely not going to happen.

When I was growing up my father worked in an "elite" Westchester private
school and my mother worked in the NYC DOE. The job fulfillment,
administrative support and overall ease of working was like night and day
between them.

------
jseliger
I believe we see this article every time we have a strong economy. When the
economy is strong, teaching is unappealing. When the economy is weak, many
people cannot find other gigs and so flood into the relative security of
teaching.

Teaching may also be less pleasant in the social media and smartphone age, for
reasons enumerated in _The Coddling of the American Mind_ (a highly
recommended book). There may also be a gender dynamic at work; today, it would
be hard for me to recommend that guys go into teaching:
[https://jakeseliger.com/2014/09/08/why-dont-more-men-go-
into...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/09/08/why-dont-more-men-go-into-
teaching-fear-of-the-accusation).

~~~
tomjakubowski
Do you have any evidence other than a Reddit thread of anecdotes (about
students "seducing" their teachers - ugh) that male teachers routinely have
their lives ruined by false accusations of molestation?

Here's some evidence on the "other side" of the issue: Chicago public schools
routinely broke the law by failing to report credible accusations of
molestation of students by teachers and staff.
[https://graphics.chicagotribune.com/chicago-public-
schools-s...](https://graphics.chicagotribune.com/chicago-public-schools-
sexual-abuse/index.html)

~~~
klipt
I think most male teachers in the US will tell you that they have to be
careful never to be alone in a room with a student, and careful never to hug a
crying student.

Meanwhile female teachers either don't have to worry about this much, or will
even be applauded for comforting a crying student by hugging them.

~~~
tomjakubowski
If we're exchanging anecdotes, I had male (and female) teachers in middle and
high school (early to mid 2000s) who often spent time alone with students -
including myself. Maybe things have changed.

I also would have felt weird being hugged or otherwise touched by any teacher,
male or female. I don't remember seeing much of that.

------
lr4444lr
Lots of comments to the tune of "pay teachers more." Teachers in large urban
areas with strong unions tend to be paid quite well, especially factoring in
benefits, and it doesn't necessarily correlate that well with various metrics
of "success" in education (standardized test scores, on-time graduation rate,
fewer violent incidents) once you look into individual cases and see through
the administrative means by which those numbers can be rigged. Of course,
there are markets where teachers make very little, with many needing to take
second jobs, and I don't mean higher salary wouldn't help in those districts.
I think the comments that speak to the respect for the profession,
unreasonable accountability, and increasingly risky liability are more on the
mark about why people jump ship when their career prospects improve in a
strong economy.

~~~
sethammons
In the area I taught, median pay was about $60k/yr. After 20 years and getting
more advanced degrees, you could get to $80k/yr. Most of the teachers I worked
with worked more hours per year than just about any software engineer I know.
Only very lazy or very tenured teachers were getting the fabled summer
vacation or winter break. I have more income, more vacation, and better hours
as a developer than I ever did as a teacher

~~~
barry-cotter
[https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/EDFP_a_0013...](https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/EDFP_a_00133)

> Using data from the American Time Use Survey, I find that teachers work an
> average of 34.5 hours per week on an annual basis (38.0 hours per week
> during the school year and 21.5 hours per week during the summer months).

~~~
sethammons
I don't understand the numbers. A typical highschool teacher is on campus from
7am to 3pm minimum. That is 40 hr/wk. That allows a 30min break for lunch and
typically one hour "planning period" that is insufficient for handling all
lesson planning, grading, and assessment stuffs. I'm left questioning the
validity of the responses to the ATS. Multiple teachers I've talked with
report earning less than minimum wage after counting all the everything they
do. For the ATS responses to be counted, the "households that have completed
all eight months of the Current Population Survey (CPS)." That feels like a
pool of respondents that will self select out very busy people.

------
smaili
> The departures come alongside protests this year in six states where
> teachers in some cases shut down schools over tight budgets, small raises
> and poor conditions.

Even as a child myself growing up in the US education system, this was a
common topic where even the students knew teachers were underpaid and
education in general had a lot less money in it -- but at the same time I
don't ever recall schools _shutting down_ because of it. I can't imagine what
it must feel like to be a student now and being told school is closed because
my teachers are protesting.

Not really sure why I'm getting downvoted so much, just wanted to express
empathy.

~~~
jacobolus
> _I can 't imagine what it must feel like to be a student now and being told
> school is closed because my teachers are protesting._

Students should feel proud that their teachers care enough to stick around and
fix things instead of quitting and finding another job. I know several people
who have left the teaching profession in the face of poor pay and lack of
autonomy and respect, or moved out of states where teacher pay is poor.

------
gammateam
Thats because teaching was the fallback plan and all the students they work
with daily already realize it.

Every teacher that brags about their prior dream in their specialized trade is
immediately shot down by middle schoolers asking "so why are you a teacher"

"Well Jimbo, as you suspect, it's because something went horribly wrong and
I've rationalized my acceptance of this low wage life teaching this nation's
future"

~~~
sethammons
There are teachers who do it because they can't do anything else, and there
are teachers who do it as a labor of love. As a student, the vast majority of
my teachers struck me as the latter. When I was teaching, it felt kinda half
and half in the inner city school I was at. Bless anyone who can do that gig
in inner-city San Bernardino CA. As a teacher, I resigned myself to never
owning a home and never paying off my student loans, meanwhile dealing with an
overwhelming amount of disinterested students, and more than my fair share of
problem students. As a software developer, I now hope to pay off my house in
the next two to three years.

