
Are teachers underpaid? It depends. - jseliger
http://jseliger.com/2011/07/10/are-teachers-underpaid-it-depends/
======
timjahn
My wife is a high school English teacher. The ongoing joke with teachers is
they get 3 months a year off. What other profession gets that, right?

Speaking from experience, she generally brings home work every night (grading,
lesson planning, etc). Weekends too. This fluctuates based on time of year
(grading a round of research papers, preparing new lessons for a new quarter,
etc).

Summers off? Kinda. New lessons and curriculums often have to be prepared for
the following year. She's been doing that for a bit already whenever our
little guy naps.

The other part of overlooked is the emotional toll. In my wife's case, she's
dealing with high school freshmen, juniors, seniors, all who are one hell of a
handful most of the time. Last year, she had a class that had her crying more
than a few times. The kids were literally trying to make her cry.

But besides all that, teaching is a profession that is charged with preparing
and educating our youth for tomorrow. Obviously, teachers go into it knowing
this, and often for that very reason. But in my eyes, that's quite a
responsibility. There are plenty of better paying jobs out there with less
vacation that, at the end of the day, don't make much of a difference.

(For the record, my wife's district actually pays pretty well, so I don't
think she's underpaid).

~~~
jseliger
"Speaking from experience, she generally brings home work every night
(grading, lesson planning, etc). Weekends too. This fluctuates based on time
of year (grading a round of research papers, preparing new lessons for a new
quarter, etc)."

That might be true for her. Nonetheless, the plural of anecdote is not data;
as I observe in the post: "According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data,
the average teacher works slightly less than 40 hours per week. If you have
better data, I’d like to see it. Note too that people getting teaching degrees
at the graduate level get substantially lower GRE scores than those in almost
all other disciplines. This will come up later."

~~~
vacri
The BLS data being based off the survey question "How much work did you do
yesterday" and extrapolating from that, instead of something more direct like
"how much work did you do last _week_ ". Anyway, Google is loaded with heaps
of research into teacher workloads, this line "if anyone has better data, I'd
like to see it" is just a handwaving throwaway line.

But if you really do have a problem with anecdotal data, why do things like
bring up Bill Gates, who is not only an anecdotal point, but an obvious
outlier at that?

------
learc83
When I was in college several of my friends majored in early childhood
education.

Without a doubt it has to be the easiest major out there. While I was writing
papers, my friends were learning how to make name tags with construction paper
and crayons, and learning kiddy songs (this is not an exaggeration).

The problem is that once you get the degree and jump through the hoops, you're
in. That's all there is to it

If any idiot can become a teacher, and a bad teacher makes the same a great
teacher, then the pay is going to end up as the average of what you'd pay a
bad teacher and great one.

Side-note: my mom, who also has a degree in early childhood education, tells
me that when she was there 30 years ago it was much more academically
rigorous.

~~~
sliverstorm
I gather it depends on how you're entering the field. My mother studies early
childhood _development_ with a focus on how it can go wrong (I forget the
technical term, but things like severe autism)

It doesn't seem to be a 'hard' science, but it's still a science. As such,
there's no glitter and construction paper involved, except when they are
interacting with the children!

~~~
learc83
I think that vast majority of aspiring elementary teachers are not going to
pursue a degree focusing on developmental disorders.

~~~
sliverstorm
Certainly. I actually kind agree with your original point, from what I've seen
of education majors. I took an education class in college, aced it and got
rave reviews on my papers, and I barely even tried. Made me a little concerned
about my fellow students in the course.

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tba
It's not hard to believe that the average teacher is paid about what they're
worth.

The more important question is whether the pay is competitive to attract
teachers of sufficient quality.

~~~
tokenadult
There is an interesting proposal to get more teachers of better quality for
American schools.

<http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/files_det.asp?FileId=258>

[http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads...](http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads/Hanushek%202009%20CNTP%20ch%208.pdf)

The proposal considers issues of pay, but crucially it also considers issues
of other working conditions, including the issue of whether working teachers
who do better quality work than other teachers are recognized for that
achievement.

~~~
aik
Very interesting -- thanks for the reference! Will read through it this
evening. I sincerely hope it proposes good methods of improving teachers, ones
other than the horribly flawed method of judging teachers based on student
test scores.

------
T-R
I just want to say thanks for the great post. I thought your comment on the
other thread was particularly good, I'm glad to see you expand a bit more on
it. Honestly, I was a little disappointed to see patio11 reference yummy's
comments, since they really leave the impression that he has a horse in this
race - it's nice to see a more even handed treatment of the matter.

------
aik
> "The first time you teach a class, it’s incredibly hard and time consuming,
> but the difficulty drops like a logarithm to a relatively low plateau after
> you’ve done it a few times. This appears to be reflected in data."

I'm not entirely sure if this is a good reflection of the teaching role, or at
least what it should be. Also, this statement to me gives the impression that
teaching is a fairly static or fixed process -- once you've done it a little,
your subconscious can take over. Sadly one can get by with that mindset (and
unfortunately I've had plenty of teachers who act like they believe this), but
any good teacher would be saddened by this. Proper teaching is so much more
than just knowing the subject, or the routine. The amount of effort and
thought involved in skillfully and effectively teaching any idea or concept to
a wide range of different people with different backgrounds and knowledge and
world views isn't a task that I believe can become automatic. Good teaching
involved understanding your students and understanding where they're coming
from and what they know, and tailoring everything you do to get each
individual student deeply involved in the subject at hand. That's no easy
task, even for seasoned teachers!

I'm not suggesting you necessarily are part of this mindset, however sadly so
many in the US have such an obscured view of what teaching truly is. In my
opinion, that is one of the core problems with education in the US.

> "Note too that people getting teaching degrees at the graduate level get
> substantially lower GRE scores than those in almost all other disciplines."

Sorry I don't understand -- what's your point with this, what is this supposed
to prove, or how does this contribute to the argument?

~~~
redxaxder
As another graduate student who teaches, I can confirm jseliger's claim.
Teaching difficulty drops of insanely fast. Don't think of it as making the
task automatic, but rather having familiar territory off of which to base the
things you say.

After one semester teaching a class, you discover what ideas the students tend
to find most confusing and what types of errors are the most common.

Having leftover notes from the last time you taught saves you you most of the
planning work, too.

~~~
aik
Perhaps we need to talk in scales or include some comparators here. I
completely agree that difficulty does drop some with more subject knowledge,
teaching experience, and familiarity with the subject and types of questions
and students, but by how much really? To me it sounds like it's being
suggested that teaching becomes "easy"? Effortless? Not necessarily mentally
taxing? Not necessarily time consuming? I can't see how one could
_effectively_ teach and think this.

Again, I don't see teaching as simply "transferring" facts/knowledge. Students
can test well and have no conceptual understanding whatsoever. Or, students
can show understanding but have underlying mental models untouched (making
them even more confused than previously). Both of these cases are failures.

The book "What the Best College Teachers Do" has amazing insights on how
involved, dedicated, knowledgeable, and wise very successful and effective
teachers are. The amount of thought and effort they put into their courses is
staggering, so I'm approaching this discussion from that frame of mind, rather
than what the average teacher (or student teacher) does.

~~~
jseliger
"To me it sounds like it's being suggested that teaching becomes "easy"?
Effortless? Not necessarily mentally taxing?"

I doubt teaching will ever be "effortless," at least if you're any good or
aspire to be any good, but the idea that you have to spend five hours of prep
(or some ridiculous number) for every hour of class; I probably spend ~15
minutes prepping for a 50 – 75 minute class if I've already read the material
a couple times, have a loose lesson plan, and, as one of the above posters
mentioned, know where the likely trouble spots are going to be.

If you're good or want to be good, I don't think you ever just phone it in.
But these stories of hero teachers spending 12 hours a day, every day working
to prep for class sound highly improbable to me, based in part on experience
and based in part on the aforementioned BLS data.

Teaching can also be hugely mentally taxing _while you're in the classroom_.
That's when I'm most on my toes and most ready to follow where the class goes;
if a bunch of people want to discuss a subject, or unexpected questions arise,
or whatever, you have to be ready to roll with it. Those are often the most
satisfying classes. Most of the time I go in with a loose plan that'll cover
whatever I'm shooting to cover that day, and if the class goes in another
direction that's still productive, I'm ready to roll.

~~~
aik
> "But these stories of hero teachers spending 12 hours a day, every day
> working to prep for class sound highly improbable to me"

The stories I hear about are the ones of teachers working ~12 hours a day
because they teach several different subjects a day and constantly have mounds
of documentation the state requires of them on every student. In addition,
they have large classes and spend hours and hours grading and providing
valuable feedback on homework/projects and exams.

For the sake of the discussion, some sample thoughts about what the "good"
teachers think about:

What about considering the larger questions? Why are the students in the
course in the first place? Throughout the course, are they being inspired to
continue their studies outside of class? Why is the material on the syllabus
actually on the syllabus -- what purpose does any of it serve the students? Is
this purpose taught in such a way that it is understood by the students? Are
they often intrinsically motivated to learn or are most of them just seeking a
good grade? How can you structure each activity, lecture, and exam to ensure
or encourage students to be intrinsically motivated and care about their
learning and development? How can you help students desire the knowledge long-
term, rather than just for the course or for their studies...? Are the
students learning to think about the subject at a deeper level -- more like
the experts? How can you encourage such thinking? Is the learning environment
or atmosphere itself safe and welcoming -- encouraging students to ask
questions without fear of failure or looking dumb, and is free from
stereotypes and negative expectations -- does it encourage free-thinking,
discovery, negotiation of meaning -- does the teacher feedback encourage all
this? Is the learning functional or is it just leading to correct answers? Do
the students to the proper extent have control over their own
education/learning? Are the expectations in place to encourage this? Is it
thought about what should be expected of the students once they complete the
lesson, section or course? What deep mental models does it appear the students
have that prevent them from learning to their fullest? How could those be
tackled? How can it be encouraged to collaborate on finding answers? How can
the course be taught by having the students asking the proper questions rather
than being told what to think?... and so on.

Taxing...

------
waterside81
First observation: geez teachers in the US don't get paid "that much". In
Ontario (province in Canada), teachers can max out after 12 years at > 100K a
year, it's not at all unheard of. The teacher's union here is _very_ powerful,
for better or worse.

I think deciding on how much a teacher "should" earn simply based on the time
they put in and then compare it to another profession misses a valuable point
- teachers can make a _huge_ difference in the life of a human being. What's
that worth to society? If a great math teacher encourages 3 kids to become
engineers, then his salary is much less than it should be.

I saw a post on HN the other day about a teacher who told an otherwise
disillusioned student that he was "gifted". Simply by being told so (he wasn't
giften in the traditional sense) completely changed his perspective on school.
If he goes on to become a contributing member of society, a good father, and
good role model for others, then that teacher is probably worth more than 70K
a year.

~~~
learc83
I agree that a great teacher is worth a substantial sum of money, but in order
to pay it we first have to work out some objective metric.

It's relatively easy to become a teacher, so if we just start paying every
teacher more money we just attract more substandard candidates.

~~~
timjahn
It's easy to become a teacher but not as easy to stay a teacher.

~~~
learc83
Where did you get that information from. In most districts it's nearly
impossible to fire teachers.

~~~
timjahn
It's nearly impossible to fire teachers, but staying a teacher is tough in
terms of dealing with the emotional and mental stress (or simply wanting more
money).

[http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20090222/articles/90222032...](http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20090222/articles/902220325?Title=Teacher-
dropout-rate-higher-than-students-)

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antidaily
There's something uniquely American about bitching whenever someone has
something you don't have. Most people have shitty benefits and 2 weeks off.
The rest of the world has free healthcare and double the vacation days. But
the problem isnt that our employers are cheap bastards, its that the teachers'
unions are too strong. Right.

------
jcromartie
I keep hearing from die-hard conservatives that teachers make "exorbitant"
salaries with "unbelievable" benefits, and that they are a drain on our
society. On the other hand, every single peer/friend I know who went into
teaching is pretty much lower-middle class.

------
njloof
The article's comparison to teaching undergrads is just sad.

------
sliverstorm
This seems to be sort of a catch-22.

If the quality of teachers was uniformly high, we could pay them all what they
deserve to be paid and not have to worry about leeches so much.

If good teachers were paid what they deserve, the quality of teachers would be
uniformly high.

------
maeon3
The reason teacher's salaries are set incorrectly is because supply and demand
has been pushed out of the equation.

1\. some teachers can't be laid off.

2\. schools don't get proportionally more money for exceptional work.

3\. most parents are indifferent to maxing out their child's education
quality.

4\. most of the teachers effort must be applied to the hellions and problem-
makers. optimization for max output requires removing the bottom 20% that
cause 80% of the problems.

If you want teachers to be paid what they are worth, you have to take the
Communism out of the school and replace it with that evil Capitalism thing
that makes salary tied to how much a worker is worth.

~~~
T-R
I agree with your overall points, but sarcasm and characterizations of those
who disagree with you as communists isn't conducive to conversation.

~~~
shaggyfrog
Couldn't agree more. The nonsense at the end is a disappointing postscript to
an otherwise thoughtful comment.

