
If the U.S. Won't Pay Its Teachers, China Will - kawera
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-19/if-the-u-s-won-t-pay-its-teachers-china-will
======
brownbat
The most moving and informed coverage of the US education system I've heard
have all been through This American Life.[0][1][2][3]

Ok, there's an easy four hours of content to listen to. Enjoy!

The short takeaway for me was basically that local funding through property
taxes is a terrible idea if you want anything approaching fairness.

If you can afford to live in an area with high property taxes, the US school
system is great, your kids probably go to a great school. If you are
struggling to get by, though, living in an apartment? Your kids are usually
banned from going to that same great school by law.

It's like anti-literacy laws were too obvious, so we just made them more
byzantine.

[0] [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/562/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with)

[1] [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/563/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/563/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-two)

[2] [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/512/h...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/512/house-rules)

Significantly, on how redlining contributed to the achievement gap. The
heartbreaking story of why a girl who wants to go to school down the road is
turned away.

[3] [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/534/a...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/534/a-not-so-simple-majority)

A description of another poor high school where the kids basically have
recess, lunch, or permanent substitutes all day, because it's failed by local
control.

~~~
hash-set
Not true in MN--you can open enroll your kids in any district. You may not get
the exact school you want due to demographics, but it's still a valid counter-
example.

By the way, why do you think wealthier people shouldn't get more advantages in
life? I'm all for trying to pull people up by their bootstraps, but we can't
just level everything out in some misguided attempt at 'fairness.' You will
never achieve that fairness. The wealthy will always find ways to gain an
advantage.

Sucks about that high school, but a lot of these areas need serious political
reform first before anything else can get fixed.

~~~
nkrisc
> By the way, why do you think wealthier people shouldn't get more advantages
> in life?

Sure, let wealthy ADULTS have more advantages. However, children have no say
in their circumstances, so I do think it is right to at least give CHILDREN
equal opportunity and resources.

~~~
hash-set
Focus on what I said: You can never achieve that. The wealthy will always find
ways to undo whatever leveling you attempt. The elite social class in the US
is its own little society and most of us are not in it!

~~~
brownbat
> You can never achieve that.

You can't live forever but I still believe in hospitals.

------
bko
> In the U.S. and Canada, teachers are often underpaid—and many have quit the
> profession because they couldn't make a decent living

Is there a source for this? I often hear similar notions lamenting the demise
of US education spending but from what I can tell, the US spends more than
most other countries per student. And spending has been growing in practically
every respect

> This graph shows that average education expenditures per pupil (for fall
> enrollment) rose from $3,400 in 1965 to $8,745 in 2001. This graph shows
> that spending on education from all sources—local, state, federal, and
> others—rose from $249 billion in 1990-91 to $442.7 billion in 2000-01 and
> $501.3 billion in 2003-04. This graph shows that the federal investment in
> the Elementary and Secondary Education Act rose from under $2 billion in
> 1966 to $15 billion in 2000 and $25 billion in 2005. [0]

Perhaps teachers are underpaid, but where is the money being spent going?

[0] [https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-
chart....](https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html)

~~~
Spooky23
I always hear that lament, then I talk to my friends who are teachers.

Most are in my age group (late 30s) and are making $70-85k, with summers and
another month of vacation and good pension/healthcare. The only lousy benefit
is that maternity leave sucks.

They all are incredibly frustrated with the increasing meddling and red tape
attached to federal and state funding. Half the job is paperwork nonsense,
which wasn't true even a decade ago.

~~~
ashark
More like 35K-50K for teachers here in their early to mid 30s. Mid-sized
midwestern city, so the cost of housing is low, but that's still not great,
especially considering that you need advanced degrees to approach the top end
of that range.

Compensation varies greatly by district—typically the worst districts pay _the
best_ , but they're still undesirable for teachers because the conditions are
_terrible_ —being cursed at and threatened daily by 5th graders (no joke) and
witnessing assaults gets old fast.

[EDIT] I should add that their healthcare plans tend to suck and are _totally_
useless (1.5-2x as expensive as other options) for covering one's family, but
the retirement's good. They're also better for people planning to take
maternity/paternity leave than probably any other employer in the area,
especially if you time it so your leave rolls over into Summer and are willing
to be docked a couple weeks' pay—you can achieve near-parity with lower end of
normal for parental leave in other OECD states that way! What a perk.

~~~
nine_k
While we're at it: I think it's a terrible idea to confine 20-30 5th-graders
together. This is the age when interpersonal relationships form, and
hierarchies start building.

20 kids of same age have no other way to build a reasonable hierarchy except
forming cliques and having fights. They are all peers, painfully pitted
against one another.

For most of the human history (and pre-history) kids grew in multi-age groups.
This allows older kids assume roles of leaders, care about younger kids and
protect them, and teach the younger kids what they already learned (the best
way to learn something is to teach someone). The younger kids have some role
models before their eyes who they can relate to more easily than to adults.

This setup seems to work well in e.g. Montessori schools. It's sad that the
majority of schools do not adopt multi-age groups.

------
scott00
Headline is wildly misleading. The company that is the subject of the article
pays $21/hour, which works out to $42,000 a year, probably without benefits.
The 25th percentile for a US high school teacher is $45,520, plus significant
benefits. Median pay is $57,200.

~~~
witty_username
The purchasing power of that money is much higher in China.

~~~
devilsbabe
Yeah but the teachers are in the US, giving classes over the internet.

------
spiderfarmer
It continues to amaze me that the US is so unambitious in this regard.

Donald Trump on education:
[http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Donald_Trump_Education.htm](http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Donald_Trump_Education.htm)

His solution?

School choice, competition.

Completely ignoring what the 25 countries do that rank higher when it comes to
education.

~~~
hash-set
What do they do besides make the population so desperate to escape poverty
that they will push their kids to the brink of madness to study for exams that
are make or break for their lives?

~~~
umanwizard
Most people in places like France and Germany are not "desperate to escape
poverty".

~~~
hash-set
I was referring the India and China.

------
Pilfer
For anyone wondering what VIPKid lessons look like, here is a sample demo of
one from their Youtube channel.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it5fb0KlUjU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it5fb0KlUjU)

~~~
superplussed
It's interesting how overly animated he is given that the student is not a
child, but you can tell that she is pulled in by all of that energy. But if
you look at other videos you'll see that most teachers are a little more
contained (and maybe sane-seeming):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swc0RTrxjpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swc0RTrxjpw)

The one thing, I saw that in their teacher training they aim for a 70/30 ratio
of student to teacher speech and I haven't found any videos where that was the
case. Though maybe it is only for more advanced students.

Overall a really nice platform though!

~~~
noonespecial
>It's interesting how overly animated he is given that the student is not a
child

Absolutely don't knock this. I teach robotics and tech part time to middle
schoolers and if there's one thing that has helped me connect more than any
other its being a living cartoon. Exaggerate everything. You should be half-
way to full clown when lecturing or you're simply not getting through.

To prep for lessons, I don't study circuits, I watch CN. I'm a 40yo man who
quotes Rick and Morty and can name all of the Crystal Gems. But it works like
crazy.

~~~
hash-set
Ha! I found out the same thing teaching college students!

------
mark_l_watson
Good story about Cindy Mi transitioning her business to online, and also the
teachers in the USA now getting 20+ dollars an hour with remote flex time
work. Off topic, but as a computer programmer I have been hired twice in the
last ten years by customers in China: I told my friends I was trying to
reverse the balance of trade imbalance <grin>. Anyway, even with the time zone
differences, it was fun.

------
ceejay
First, in the US I think we need to convince a substantial chunk of the
population that it's not religion that will solve our problems, but better
education.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Probably you should start by providing evidence of this. Most of the evidence
I've seen suggests we are far past the point of diminishing returns on
education, and we should have less education rather than more.

~~~
haliax
Would you be willing to cite some of this evidence? That's a conclusion I'd be
interested to see...

~~~
yummyfajitas
So one important fact is that most of the knowledge taught in school is not
directly useful. Combine this with the fact that transfer of learning is
almost nonexistent (e.g. [http://amzn.to/2hExO6u](http://amzn.to/2hExO6u) )
and you discover that most education is wasted.

There is extensive evidence of a sheepskin effect, and most studies of
educational effectiveness are consistent with signalling theories and ability
bias (more able individuals get educated).

[https://www.nas.org/articles/The_Sheepskin_Effect](https://www.nas.org/articles/The_Sheepskin_Effect)

There is likely to be some benefit to education, but it's far less than what
politicians currently believe and what current policies are predicated on.

~~~
namlem
That could simply mean that our education system is inefficient, not that
education isn't valuable.

------
jccalhoun
It sounds like the pay is pretty good compared to other online tutoring stuff.
In grad school I was an online tutor for Pearson for 3-4 years and the pay was
minimum wage.

I hated every minute of it. You would log onto a creaky old system (one entire
year their scheduling system was down and we had to sign up for hours by
filling out a google form) then download a rnadomly assigned college paper.
You were expected to critique it in 30 minutes and give feedback using their
very specific format. There was often little context to the papers or what the
actual assignment was. I would often get nursing papers full of all kinds of
medical things I didn't know anything about.

Then you would get evaluated by your suprevisor and emails about how long you
took per paper. So there was constant pressure and it sucked so much.

~~~
paulryanrogers
Why they have non-experts grading specialized subjects is beyond me. I don't
want my physics work graded by the PE teacher or vice versa; unless they're
knowledgeable in both.

Profit motive? If so it seems short sighted.

------
aviator168
This is ridiculous. All most all of the comments here are about the US
education system instead of the company the article talks about.

------
rb808
Does anyone know how much a typical teacher in China is paid? A quick google
told me $17k which sounds high for me.

~~~
logicchains
I live in China and that seems about right, and it's probably even more in
richer cities like Shanghai/Beijing.

