
No, Teachers Are Not Underpaid - jseliger
https://www.city-journal.org/html/no-teachers-are-not-underpaid-15867.html
======
aaronbrethorst
The website that this is from is backed by the Manhattan Institute, which is a
conservative think-tank that has been seeking to destroy pension funds for
years.

[https://nypost.com/2013/06/11/hedgies-cut-ties-with-think-
ta...](https://nypost.com/2013/06/11/hedgies-cut-ties-with-think-tank/)

Also, it's absurd to say that teachers in states like Oklahoma aren't
underpaid when they have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.

[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/educators-
acros...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/educators-across-the-
us-are-using-west-virginias-teachers-strike-to-inspire-their-own-battle-
plans/)

------
scarface74
I would have to think more through the article to have an opinion about it
overall, but I do agree with getting rid of pensions, paying them more now and
contributing to a defined contribution plan. Pensions make it too easy for
today's politicians to make promises using bad math that hurt the taxpayers
years down the road.

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fluxsauce
This is a biased article from authors with an agenda.

> Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

FYI, the American Enterprise Institute is a conservative think tank known for
attempting to bribe scientists to critique Climate Change 2007, the Fourth
Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC).

~~~
vixen99
"Ad Hominem Attacks (38) Argument by attributing prejudices or motives to
one's opponent (p 159) Approach: Point out that other prejudices may equally
well determine the opposite view, and that, in any case, the question of why a
person holds an opinion is an entirely different question from that of whether
the opinion is or is not true."

[http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Clear_Thinking/Informal_Fal...](http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Clear_Thinking/Informal_Fallacies/Tricks/tricks.html)

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blhack
If we're _just_ talking about salary, then teachers make almost exactly the
median for their education level in my state (Arizona).

To be clear: I think teachers should probably make more, but I don't know
enough about it to make a strong opinion. I just wanted to look at data.

According to [1], teachers in Tempe, AZ (a suburb of Phoenix where I live),
teachers make $51,841/year of income.

First, we have to convert this to a monthly income (teachers work 9 months per
year, not 12[2]).

51841/9 = 5760. $5,760/mo.

(If I'm being honest, I was surprised the wage was this _high_. That seems
like a pretty good wage, actually!)

Converted to a 12-month salary (which is generally what is meant by "salary")

12 * 5760 = $69,120

According to [3], the median income for a bachelor's degree holder in the
state of Arizona is $62,697.

Again, I'm not saying that teachers shouldn't ask for more money. They have
really important jobs. I just find the idea of teachers being underpaid to be
inaccurate.

Just for fun (I know a lot of you live in the bay) according to [4] this would
be like living in Oakland making $110k, or living in SF making $140k. In LA
this would be about $109k.

In IA (Des Moines), it's about exactly the same. $66k.

[1]:[https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2015/03/1...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2015/03/13/top-
phoenix-school-districts-teacher-pay/70177874/)

[2]:While some teachers certainly do things like summer school, off-season
training, etc. as far as I can tell, the salary figures are for the 9 required
months per year.

[3]:[https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Location=Phoenix-
AZ/Sal...](https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Location=Phoenix-
AZ/Salary/by_Degree)

[4]:[http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-
living/](http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/)

~~~
loganwedwards
While I am not in education, a large portion of my family is. My outside
looking in perspective would tend to agree with all of your arguments, but a
few counterpoints, I'd like to raise (based on my anecdotal evidence): 1\.
Teachers do not work 8 hour days. 10-12 hour days can be the norm, especially
if extra hours outside of school are needed for student aid or mandatory
administrative needs. 2\. Teachers do have some administrative burden during
the summer months, so technically, some work is done.

I live in South Carolina where many public education teachers make sub $50k.

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purplezooey
A lot of sketchy conclusions in this article. Not the least of which is:

 _" Wages are not determined by years of schooling but by the supply and
demand for skills."_

First off, this is simply not true in the case of executive pay, which is
rigged. If we're making comparisons, let's bring everybody in. Secondly, you
cannot compare a national priority with simple market supply and demand. We
should be paying teachers at a premium to the market to attract those who
would otherwise not go there, and also, make life not so miserable for
teachers (even if we don't attract new hires) because teacher quality should
not be subject to the vagaries of the market. That's why we (try) to do it in
the public sector in the first place.

~~~
RhysU
> That's why we (try) to do it in the public sector in the first place.

We teach in the public sector to reduce the downside risk of a uneducated,
destabilizing public.

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ryan_j_naughton
In districts where teachers get pensions, they don't get social security.[1]

This fact is never discussed by conservative groups so that they can
intentionally pretend like teachers are getting overly generous pension
benefits. This is a significant misrepresentation through omission undermining
the entire credibility of their argument.

[1] [https://www.teacherpensions.org/blog/why-
aren%E2%80%99t-all-...](https://www.teacherpensions.org/blog/why-
aren%E2%80%99t-all-teachers-covered-social-security)

~~~
scarface74
That's not true everywhere. Not only is it based on the state, it's also based
on the individual school system. My mom is a retired school teacher in one of
the 15 states that the article lists and she receives both a pension and
social security. We are in the same state, but a different district and my
wife who is also in the school system does not pay into social security.

But in our case, even if she did get social security, it makes more sense for
her to choose to get social security at a rate half of mine than get her own.
([https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/01/29/social-
security-s...](https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/01/29/social-security-
spousal-benefits-2017-what-you-nee.aspx))

------
eesmith
Of course they are underpaid.

The math is pretty simple. There is a teacher shortage such that states like
OK, UT, and AZ have passed laws that let schools hire teachers without formal
training.

I don't think anyone believes that the teachers have been able to restrict the
supply of new teachers (eg, in the way that doctors have been able to restrict
the supply of new doctors in the US).

Thus, the overall compensation must be too low.

"Compensation" is not just salary but also insurance and retirement benefits,
as well as more nebulous concepts like "respect".

------
ddingus
Teachers should be valued better than many of them are. They are professionals
and the majority of them are working in very dysfunctional systems, being held
to account for outcomes many of them lack the agency and or resources to
improve.

Frankly, I support the strikes.

Having raised my kids, I saw plenty of no win scenarios. People being
micromanaged, yet accountable for outcomes, lacking agency. It's not good.

We can, should, need to do better, and the people trying to do the hard, human
work anyway deserve compensation in line with the painful nature of the work.

Most of that pain having zero to do with educatorsthemselves, and everything
to do with basically everyone else thinking they can do better.

I expect downvotes. That is OK.

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mirimir
Yes, education doesn't the best students. But there's a reason for that. It's
hard work, and it doesn't pay well. It's traditionally been a women's job,
after all. So why would top students want to become teachers?

But of course, this is a downward spiral. Leading to a poorly educated nation.
And teachers who can't earn living wages. Sound familiar?

Edit: I don't agree with the article, but is flagging it appropriate? Isn't
the discussion useful?

~~~
tnzn
Actually, at least in France, it used to be a traditionnaly man job... back
when it was a respected one. The it shifted to a job that's looked down on, as
it started becoming a woman's job. I never studie the mechanisms through which
it went by, but it's a pattern that you can see in several jobs : that once
male dominated, respected jobs become women dominated, not-so-respected jobs.

~~~
mirimir
Huh, I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing. Sad :(

I don't mean to disrespect public school teachers. Or to be sexist. Teachers
should be respected, and well paid. Regardless of gender. Because it's an
investment in the future. Nations with uneducated populations tend not to fare
so well.

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cobbzilla
We may never truly know the appropriate salary for any employee, given the
large amount of market interference that public/government schooling brings
with it.

I'm not arguing for fully private schooling (though there are some interesting
arguments for it), but pointing out that in any government
controlled/dominated industry, the salary of any given employee may or many
not have any correlation to their competency. Yes, this happens too in the
private sector (dead-weight/overpaid employees exist in every industry), but
we have engineered (politicized) our education system seemingly intentionally
to produce these very outcomes.

Due to the ultimate intractability of the question, I am reminded of a recent
funny quote: "if we want to believe something, it will accrete a protective
layer of positive studies whether it’s true or not." [1]

[1] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/04/adult-neurogenesis-a-
po...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/04/adult-neurogenesis-a-pointed-
review/)

------
mark_edward
This website is full of people doing "productive" things like building the
next wave of surveillance tech (social media and adtech) or gambling
(blockchains and mobile gaming) complaining about the the pay of teachers. I
hope they can see the irony.

~~~
dang
That's not an accurate description of this community.

Pick any point on the opinion spectrum and you'll find some HN users there,
just like with any large population sample. But it doesn't generalize. We know
this because the generalizations people come up with are wildly contradictory,
except in one way: you can guess a person's own views from the generalization
they come up with.

~~~
mark_edward
Hey dang, you like to comment and assert community values. When the fund that
runs this site is busy trying to kowtow to China [0] and is surveillance and
authoritarian technocracy, how does that make you feel?

[0]: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/25/y-combinator-is-going-
afte...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/25/y-combinator-is-going-after-
chinese-startups-with-its-first-official-event-in-china/)

------
julesqs
it's always a bummer to see pseudo intellectual libertarian garbage on HN.
I'll just point out this line, starting off the third paragraph:

> Wages are not determined by years of schooling but by the supply and demand
> for skills.

Teachers are public sector employees. There is no market, so this is just
untrue (yes yes private schools but this article is about public school
teachers). Wages for teachers are determined by politicians that are elected
by voters.

This is stupid fucking article trying to justify teachers not even being paid
middle class wages and it shouldn't be on the front page.

~~~
scarface74
Whether the article is biased or not, it is interesting enough to have a good
conversation. It's very appropriate for HN.

~~~
julesqs
The sentence that I posted is false, not biased. There is a difference.

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fuse117
I support the idea of giving targeted raises to select teachers, such as STEM
teachers. Finding and keeping STEM teachers in the US is a problem. I say
this, because I use to be a STEM teacher. I taught for two years and then left
for the tech industry (I joined the statistic). The major factors that drove
my decision were money, time, and respect. Within two years in industry, I was
making more than I ever could have teaching. I also work less and feel more
respected in society too.

