
The myth of the teacher pay gap? - autokill
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-truth-about-teacher-pay
======
IkmoIkmo
> (2) Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by
> a "year-round, full-time" hours figure of 2,080 hours; for those occupations
> where there is not an hourly wage published, the annual wage has been
> directly calculated from the reported survey data.

See, this is where things go wrong. So they've got mean wage figures which are
constructed both on a fact (hourly wage) and an assumption (working hours).

I know n=1 but, my girlfriend is a teacher and I see her working about 40
hours a week, for a 24h job. She has a 0.6 FTE contracted position (and an
according 60% monthly salary), she's at the school about 4 days a week. On her
off-day, every single evening before work and after work, and at least one,
sometimes two days of the weekend, she's grading papers, designing exams,
preparing lessons, calling up parents, responding to students on their
education platform (some saas application on laptop & phone) etc etc.

There's no way she can handle a 1.0 position, she'd burn-out within 1 or 2
years. She knows this, all of her colleagues know this. Almost everyone works
part-time.

She does teach difficult classes (lots of kids from low socioeconomic
background, crappy parents, many distractions, little socialisation skills etc
etc) but even teaching 'easy' kids, you'll still top-out at 0.8 FTE for the
same mental effort / working hours / strain of 1.0 FTE at a 'normal' job (like
mine, corporate job at a financial institution).

Hourly wages can't be straight-up compared between jobs high in mental or
physical strain (e.g. teaching or construction) versus say an administrative
office job. You just can't last 40 years working the former jobs at a full-
time position. Not the average person.

~~~
jseliger
Issue is that BLS data consistently shows teachers working 40 hours per week
or less. For example:
[https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf)
(PDF).

Anecdotes consistently run one way, while data consistently runs another.

~~~
jacobolus
> _On average for all days of the week, teachers worked 18 fewer minutes per
> day, and did household activities—such as housework, cooking, lawn care, or
> financial and other household management—12 more minutes per day, than all
> other full-time professionals._

This analysis would be a lot more useful if broken down by demographic
categories, such as gender, marital status, age, and number/ages of children.

The demographic profile of teachers is pretty different than e.g. accountants
or lawyers or engineers.

It would also be useful to break this down by salary bracket.

Anecdotally, my mother, a career primary-school teacher, worked 60+ hours/week
most weeks (while school was in session; her preparation/cleanup took also
took a couple full-time weeks out of every summer vacation, but the rest of
the summer vacation she could travel etc.) for several decades. Much harder
than most of the much-better-compensated other white-collar professionals I
know.

I’m also not sure if self-reported estimates on a survey are reliable measures
of time spent. Again anecdotally, people’s self-descriptions of how hard
working they are seems to depend substantially on personality / identity. It
would be interesting to see some more direct measurements of time use.

------
Someone1234
This seems to use private education as a benchmark for the entire argument.
From quit rates, to pay, to conditions, and beyond, but ignores the obvious
which is that private pay and private conditions are largely pinned to be just
above public salaries and conditions (meaning private education cannot be used
as a benchmark for when someone is under-paid, over-qualified, or has too high
of a quit rate because they are related).

Personally I think someone required to have a degree (master's for quoted
salary), continued education requirements, and licensing earning under
$50K/year starting is too low. Plus no teacher is working 8-3, you'd have no
opportunity for lesson planning, grading, and all those extra curriculars they
are essentially guilted into organizing.

The fact that I could walk out of college with zero experience and only a
degree, and earn $20K more than that working only 9-5 in the same city seems
unfair (as a programmer). But I have no idea how society decides salaries. It
seems pretty arbitrary from my perspective.

But it is great that at the end of a long career a few unicorn teachers can
earn $100K, a salary I earned within 5 years and still no master's or
licencing.

~~~
crumpets
>how society decides salaries. It seems pretty arbitrary from my perspective.

Society doesn't "decide". It's a decided by the labor market. Nobody _wants_
to pay programmers six figures.

It's a myth that we think teachers are less important than programmers because
they make less on average. There is just a larger supply of qualified teachers
willing to work at lower prices.

Wait until you find out how little art history masters holders make. Amount of
training is irrelevant to how much money you get.

~~~
praxulus
The word "qualified" is pulling a lot of weight in your argument.

You can absolutely hire a programmer for $70k if you're willing to
significantly relax your standards. On the other hand, you probably wouldn't
be able to hire enough teachers at existing teacher salaries if you
significantly raised your standards for what counts as "qualified".

Tech companies have to use a relatively high bar, because bad developers will
drive them out of business, but such market forces don't apply to schools.
Unless you want to completely privatize education (which has its own set of
issues) we have to use the political process to drive schools to raise their
both their salaries and hiring standards.

~~~
Mirioron
Another thing to consider is that the quality of the teacher might not map to
improved results in the same way it does in tech. A programmer tends to have a
lot more choice in how they go about solving the problem, whereas teachers
tend to have very little leeway. Furthermore, it's very difficult to quantify
how well a teacher is doing as well.

------
jedberg
You'll notice a lot of people commenting here "my wife is a teacher" (myself
included). I think these statistics are missing two very big factors.

\- In high cost areas like the Silicon Valley, almost every teacher is married
to an engineer or is the child of an engineer. That is why they don't need a
second job. Because they have a support network.

\- Teacher quits are low because most of the people who would be great
teachers simply never get into the job because of the crappy pay and work
conditions. The people who are the best at it could easily get other jobs. My
wife if a great example -- during the summer she worked a temp job in the
first few years that was basically a management job that would have an annual
salary in the six figure range. She only kept doing teaching because she loved
it and because I made enough money to support us.

~~~
prepend
There’s actual data on both points you make. These anecdotes and conjectures
are not very valuable.

There are high quit rates in other industries that would have the same loss of
potentially awesome staff as well. Why do teachers quit so infrequently
compared to other professions? Maybe it’s because it is a low risk job with
really unusual benefits (2 months fixed leave every summer).

Lots of people work for jobs that they love, it’s not unique to teaching.
Comically, love of job drives salary down because it increases supply. If
teachers hated their job the salaries would go up because it would decrease
supply.

~~~
jedberg
There is no data on how many people don't choose to teach because of the
perception of low wage and poor working conditions. I'm not even sure how you
would measure that. I also can't think of another profession that has the same
reputation. Most jobs have a reputation of either poor working conditions _or_
low pay, or if they have both, are unskilled or low skilled positions.
Teaching is the only job I can think of with low pay, poor conditions, _and_
high skill required (a bachelor's+credential or master's degree).

~~~
throwaway_bad
> I also can't think of another profession that has the same reputation

Game development? Much lower pay relative to other programming jobs, insane
hours, and usually requires much deeper and specialized skills.

I guess it's not low pay on an absolute scale like teaching is.

------
tunesmith
The entire opening of the article seems to be designed to take advantage of
confirmation bias - the initial "there is no pay gap" is just an assertion,
and then a bunch of therefores are built on top of it.

Their entire argument seems to be based on "the pay gap calculation is dumb",
but the problem is, even if that is true, that doesn't disprove that teachers
are underpaid.

The point about teachers having above average pensions is a good point.

Salary correlating with required skill level also misses some of the point, I
believe, because qualitatively speaking, skill level isn't the most driving
factor behind choosing to become a teacher.

The "if teachers aren't paid well, why aren't we seeing more of them quit?" is
a lousy point. Some jobs are simply more important than others, and its jobs
practitioners know that. They are less likely to quit.

I wonder if there's a way to calculate replacement cost. Like, what the long
term damage to society would be if 20% of a particular work force disappeared.
That might be a better way to estimate how much teachers should actually be
paid.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
The whole "article" is propaganda by a neocon think tank.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute)

~~~
DougPhillips88
And this contradicts their data... how, exactly?

~~~
OBLIQUE_PILLAR
Any paper put out by an extremely ideological think tank is going to present
statistics in the most biased way possible, to try to prove their point.

------
SamuelAdams
Why not just go directly to the source?

[https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#25-0000](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#25-0000)

Secondary School Teachers: annual mean wage: $64,230

If we zoom in on a particular type of teacher, you get ranges:

Middle school teachers
[https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes252022.htm](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes252022.htm)

bottom 10% earn 39k or less.

bottom 25% earn 46k

50% earn 58k

75% earn 74k

90% earn 93k

Based on these metrics, it seems like a fine occupation. But I wonder how many
teachers are new versus how many stay in the field a long time? I also wonder
how location-dependent these salaries are.

~~~
mdorazio
I think it's more useful to look at new teacher salaries by state to get
around tenure and averaging effects [1]. Fine vs. not fine varies a lot by
location in this list.

[1] [http://www.nea.org/home/2017-2018-average-starting-
teacher-s...](http://www.nea.org/home/2017-2018-average-starting-teacher-
salary.html)

~~~
hunterloftis
For others who might be interested, the lowest starting salary listed is
Montanta ($31,418), highest is DC ($55,209).

Scaled up from 10 months to 12 months of work, that's $37,702 and $66,251,
respectively. The median household income is $53,386 in Montana and $82,372 in
DC [1][2]. In both cases, even the un-scaled teacher's salary easily accounts
for half of a typical household's income.

So even without tenure and averaging effects, this data backs up the article's
claims.

1\. [https://datausa.io/profile/geo/washington-
dc/](https://datausa.io/profile/geo/washington-dc/)

2\.
[https://datausa.io/profile/geo/montana](https://datausa.io/profile/geo/montana)

------
defertoreptar
> From the fall of 1987 through the fall of 2015, the number of public-school
> students increased by 20%, but the number of public-school teachers
> increased by 64%. More recently, in the four years leading up to the 2015-16
> school year, teacher employment grew by 400,000, even as the number of
> students barely changed.

The effect of supply and demand has on job markets gets mentioned too little
when discussing whether salaries are fair. We can't at the same time be
encouraging more students to become teachers _and_ complain about salaries
when demand for those positions don't dictate incentivizing the supply. A more
productive discussion would be about nudging students toward career paths that
need them. The article mentions there's a "premium" on nursing right now based
on the method used to criticize teacher's pay. Maybe there's a good reason for
that.

~~~
smogcutter
I couldn’t find a citation in the article for those statistics, but they don’t
smell right as an argument for teachers being oversupplied:

\- If the argument is that teacher pop growth outpaced student pop growth,
therefore there’s an oversupply of teachers, that includes an implicit
assumption that the 1987 ratio was correct. There’s no reason to assume that’s
the case.

\- There’s been a great deal more attention paid to special ed in the past few
decades. Changing special ed practices, like inclusion classrooms, also create
more demand for special ed teachers to co-teach and work in the same classroom
as general ed teachers. I don’t have figures but wouldn’t be surprised if that
accounts for a chunk of the growth.

\- > If class sizes remain at today's levels, which are themselves much
smaller than in the past...

This, from the previous paragraph, is simply false. Per [1], student/teacher
ratio in 1989 was 17.2, and in 2011 was 21.2 for elementary and 26.8 for
secondary. Per [2] (Wikipedia, but it cites a real source), nationwide average
secondary class size was 23.6 in 1992 and 23.4 in 2007.

\- If class sizes aren’t shrinking, what are all these “extra” teachers doing?
A few guesses: special ed, teaching smaller or specialized classes in
wealthier districts, or there’s something misleading about how they’re
counting teachers.

[1]
[https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28)
[2]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_size#Class_size_throug...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_size#Class_size_through_history)

~~~
barry-cotter
> If the argument is that teacher pop growth outpaced student pop growth,
> therefore there’s an oversupply of teachers, that includes an implicit
> assumption that the 1987 ratio was correct. There’s no reason to assume
> that’s the case.

Yes there is. Total cost in K-12 is up 180% since 1970 and results in Math,
Science and Reading are basically flat. Employees are up almost 100%. If you
almost triple inputs while outputs stay the same you’re probably just wasting
money.

[https://fee.org/thinkecon/articles/the-problem-with-
educatio...](https://fee.org/thinkecon/articles/the-problem-with-education-
isn-t-spending/)

[https://www.cato.org/blog/public-school-spending-
achievement...](https://www.cato.org/blog/public-school-spending-achievement-
media-coverage)

~~~
smogcutter
No, bringing in overall spending is a completely different conversation that’s
much wider in scope than parent’s argument about supply and demand.

------
childofteacher
The 10-month working year is a core issue here. It's hard to convince voters
and other government workers that teachers deserve a X% or XX% raise, when
teachers receive 2.5-3x (summer break, plus other holidays) more paid leave
than the average American. That paid leave is worth something: I think many
people would choose a job with a $50k salary and 10 weeks of leave over a $60k
salary and 3 weeks of leave.

The obvious fix would be to get rid of the summer break, and give teachers a
~20% increase in salary to compensate them for the increase in working days.
This would solve other problems as well: Summer break causes serious childcare
problems for working-class families, and research indicates that it probably
hurts educational outcomes as well. However, this is unlikely to happen for
various reasons: It would stretch (or over-stretch) the limited budgets of
local school districts, and summer break is politically popular and has
relatively powerful state-level lobbying from tourism-related businesses.

~~~
brodouevencode
I've long been a proponent of the "block" schedule, but this would be a side
benefit too.

People are forgetting the economics of this and focusing in too much on the
"teachers are heroes" thing. Teachers are paid what the market will bear. If
the market pays too low, prospective teachers find other things to do. If the
market pays too high, there will be more teachers coming in to the market.
It's simple economics.

As for the "teachers are heroes" thing: yes, they are heroes and so are
firefighters, police, military, nurses, doctors, PAs, social workers,
counselors, pharmacists, EMTs and other first responders, rehab
administrators, volunteers, those doing compulsory community service, those
doing volunteer community service, medical technicians, lab technicians,
anyone working for a nonprofit, public works employees, linemen(and women),
sewage treatment operators, and anyone else working in a job that keeps the
public safe and educated and healthy. All of the aforementioned should be paid
well for their services as long as the market will bear it. Why society has
chosen to put teachers on a pedestal over the others - I'm not sure. They're
all important. Let the market do what it's supposed to do and things will
settle themselves.

------
marricks
I’m not so sure, my mom has been a teacher for 6 years and makes ___around_
__40k. Similar story for her peers.

And even a 20% raise wouldn’t allow her to afford a home, or to send her kids
to college without a huge debt burden...

To be honest, I don’t even really care if that ends up being “in line with
industry” some how, that’s still way too damn low. At that point everyone
should be paid more.

EDIT: realize I mistyped wage, my points still stand about houses or college,
and it’s not like her wages will go up much.

~~~
jefft255
That's terrible, in Quebec median salary is 60K CAD, topping out at 80K at
most schools
([https://neuvoo.ca/salaire/?job=Enseignant%20Primaire](https://neuvoo.ca/salaire/?job=Enseignant%20Primaire)),
which is plenty to afford a house (of course not if monoparental). I don't
even think that a lot considering the responsibilities they have.

~~~
floren
60K CAD is 45K USD, so it's pretty damn close to the OP's cited figure.

~~~
jefft255
Sure but can you buy a nice two floor house for 250k CAD in the US? In most of
Quebec you can.

~~~
floren
Since Wikipedia says "Quebec occupies a territory nearly three times the size
of France or Texas, most of which is very sparsely populated"... well, yeah,
you can buy a nice two-floor house for 250k CAD in most of sparsely-populated
Texas too.

~~~
jefft255
By that I mean majors city like Quebec and Montreal. Sure Montreal is
expensive but nothing like Toronto.

------
mikeryan
The more I read articles in education based on national numbers the more I
realize that national macroeconomic views are pretty much meaningless compared
to local micro views.

I don't care how much teachers make nationally, - I care how much teachers
make at my local schools.

~~~
joe_the_user
I suppose then people elsewhere are expected not to care what teachers at your
local school make then? Isn't politics about seeing a larger picture?

~~~
reaperducer
_Isn 't politics about seeing a larger picture?_

No. In fact, there's a saying in politics: "All politics is local."

~~~
joe_the_user
There may be the saying "all politics is local politics" but this is hardly a
proof of the situation. If anything, the worst politics happens through a
purely local lens - for example, the refusal of silicon valley cities build
housing for workers in the companies around them based on "local concerns".

~~~
reaperducer
There was no specification in the OP's comment about whether it's good or bad.
But the fact remains that all politics _is_ local.

With the exception of the president, people vote for their _local_ city
government, their _local_ county government, their _local_ school board, their
_local_ senator, their _local_ representative, and on the macro level
(governor), they vote for the person who they think will best help their _own,
local_ interests.

~~~
UncleEntity
> With the exception of the president...

Well, technically, people vote to guide the electoral college on who _they_
should vote for.

------
jonstewart
The source needs some consideration. From Wikipedia on National Affairs:

“National Affairs is a quarterly magazine in the United States about political
affairs that was first published in September 2009. Its founding editor, Yuval
Levin, and authors are typically considered to be conservative.[1][2] The
magazine is published by National Affairs, Inc., which previously published
the magazines The National Interest (1985–2001) and The Public Interest
(1965–2005). National Affairs, Inc., was originally run by Irving Kristol, and
featured board members such as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,
former ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, and author Charles
Murray.”

Additionally one of the authors works at the American Enterprise Institute,
ie., his job is to promote a politically conservative narrative on issues like
these.

~~~
danieltillett
All this means is we get a conservative spin on the question rather than the
usual liberal one. I am yet to find in life a simple, one sided answer to a
complex question.

~~~
articwombat
"All this means is we get a conservative spin on the question rather than the
usual liberal one." You have excellently explained the purpose of comment you
responded to.

------
etrevino
There's something missing from this. Teachers often buy classroom supplies
themselves, instead of the district providing them. Yeah, they only spend
about $479 on average [1], but it's still a pretty unique situation.

That, I think, is where the sense (among teachers) of being underpaid comes
from: teachers aren't getting institutional support. That's something that the
National Affairs article mentions with regards to discipline, but it's true in
other ways as well. When you toss in the fact that a great deal of educational
achievement happens outside of the classroom-- as the article mentions-- but
teachers are expected to make up for that gap, often without the community
support they would need.

Saying that "I'm not paid enough to deal with this shit" doesn't seem that out
of line to me.

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/us/teachers-school-
suppli...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/us/teachers-school-
supplies.html)

------
skywhopper
This article is a political screed, cherry-picking data to discredit a single
source of data. There's no new useful data, or ideas about addressing problems
in education. Its only purpose is to provide political cover for cutting
education spending. Key detail: "Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute". Please remove.

~~~
all_blue_chucks
It's a criticism of publication from another political group. It's useful to
be able to see the issue from both perspectives.

------
nightbrawler
My wife used to be a teacher and there is something I haven't seen mentioned
and that is all the district support staff. Her district had literally
hundreds of high paid support staff. Many were older former teachers that
either wanted out of the classroom or were moved to a support position instead
of being let go, often with a pay raise.

Eliminating all the unnecessary support positions and dividing those salaries
amongst teachers could result in a more balanced salary for teachers.

~~~
sethammons
Back when I was teaching high school math in inner city San Bernardino, there
were more administrators than teachers in the district. It didn't make sense.

------
zarro
The problem with the teacher pay to me is obvious, market forces aren't
allowed to play themselves out.

Think about it: A teacher should be paid according to their skill, supply, and
demand. A great teachers time is highly valuable and there should never be a
cap on how much they make or considerations on such an important task to
hinder on concepts such as tenure.

If I hire a private teacher for my kids to teach them programming, I know that
a great teacher has options to go work anywhere and I need to pay enough to
afford a good one. I might get a couple friends kids to join to afford his
time. Put together a few different subjects and all of the sudden you have a
school.

So the question is why is this simple concept not being followed? The answer
is lack of accountability, artificial barriers to entry, limitations on
control to pick your instructors, standardized testing requirements, checkbox
mentality, teachers unions, etc.

Steve Jobs was right, if were going to continue taking money from peoples
paychecks to fund a dilapidated educational system, we are much better off
giving the money we spend on a kids education directly to the parents (with
the obligation to spend it only on education), and letting them select the
course of education for their own kids themselves.

~~~
ghostly_s
Ah yes, Steve Jobs, noted expert on such topics as education and medicine.

~~~
zarro
I do get that dealing with the main argument and providing a counter argument
is hard, but I don't think you can actually win an argument by attacking the
credibility of deliverer rather than the argument they propose.

------
p4bl0
The article is completely US-centric, but the subject isn't. Teacher's pay in
France is quite low, from primary school to university. I'm an associate
professor of compsci in France and, after 4 years, I make less than
2200€/month (it starts under 2000€ at the beginning). I should get to 3000€ 15
years from now. A typical mid- and high-school teacher is paid less than that
and can only hope to get to 3000€ by the very end of their career. Most
primary school teachers are paid just above the minimum legal salary which is
a bit under 1200€.

~~~
barry-cotter
Why do you do it?

You could work at Google for a year and take a year off to do research and
repeat indefinitely and still come off a lot better than you do now. There are
contractors in London with no degree whatsoever who work six months a year and
spend the rest in Thailand who make more than that, never mind Google.

------
vondur
Here in California, teachers make decent money now. The starting salary in
Long Beach Unified is 60k/year. It's not uncommon for veteran teachers with
Master's Degrees in Education to earn 6 figure salaries.

------
jshaqaw
The article spends surprisingly little time valuing the retirement pension and
benefits packages that teachers in a place like NY State receive. That would
make this analysis more relevant.

------
adamsea
Let's also bear in mind that if we want to think of teaching as a high-skill
profession equivalent to doctor, lawyer, software engineer, etc, then we
should be looking at the upper end of professional salaries when evaluating
teacher salaries, not the median.

Considering the outcome a good teacher can have on the life a child (even
though it may be hard to measure that) I think it makes sense to imagine
teaching as such.

------
yellowapple
> Unlike in the EPI analysis, however, teachers (the black dots on the chart)
> receive a salary premium of 9% once their shorter work year is accounted
> for.

This is exactly where the article fell apart for me. There is no "shorter work
year". Assuming that a teacher has zero work responsibilities when school's
"out" (even setting aside summer school programs, "track"-based schedules,
etc.) betrays a gross misunderstanding of exactly how much work a typical
teacher has to do outside of class hours. Lesson planning alone is a major
time sink, especially at a middle or high school level when you'll often be
teaching entirely different classes with entirely different curricula (for
example: a history teacher might be teaching both regular and AP variants of
both US History and US Government; this is, in fact, exactly what my grandpa
did).

------
brodouevencode
I want to do an analysis of the number of upvotes on a HN post versus the
number of comments. I have a hunch that if the number of comments greatly
exceeds the number of upvotes it's a politically charged post.

~~~
scarejunba
Yeah, it's the equivalent of being ratio'd on Twitter.

------
filmgirlcw
I'm not an educator but my mom is a retired school psychologist and my father
used to be on my county's school board, so I grew up around
teachers/educators.

I will acknowledge that in many parts of the country, teacher pay is atrocious
-- especially in high cost of living areas -- but I do think the conventional
wisdom that teachers are hideously underpaid for what they do isn't exactly
true.

Take my mom for instance. She got a BS in journalism, worked as an editor for
a few years and then after getting pregnant with my older sister, was a stay
at home mom for 14 years. She went back to work -- initially part-time, then
full-time, when I was 8 years old.

Now, her specialty (school counseling -- which then became school psychology),
requires a Masters, so she got that when I was in kindergarten and she was
like 41. She followed this up by getting her Ed.S a few years later (while
working full time) and then got her Ph.D (ditto) -- back then (early 90s),
they didn't have the online/paint-by-numbers grad school programs they have
now -- so she'd go to class a few nights a week after work and then full-time
in the summer. (Side note, I fell in love with college libraries when I was 6
years old and would spend summer afternoons with her at UGA, while she was
studying).

So she's 43 when she starts working (Masters), is maybe 45 or 46 when she gets
her specialist, and then was like 50 or 51 when she got her Ph.D. I point this
out b/c this is relatively late in life for most people to become educators.
Many of her peers were in their late 20s or early 30s and those closer to her
age had been working for 15+ years. I will add that a key thing here is that
she was smart and achieved tenure VERY early. If you don't have tenure, you're
fucked.

I think she was probably making close to $100k a year when she retired early
in 2013 or 2014. Now, that's probably less than most Ph.Ds make -- and it is
certainly less than she could make in private practice -- but considering the
fact that she worked 9 months a year and lived in the suburbs, that's not bad.

Moreover, even though she retired 22 or 23 years in -- meaning she didn't do
the "minimum" for full retirement -- she still got a really good retirement
package from both the state and the county.

My mom loves retirement -- but what lots of teachers/counselors/educators do,
is they retire after they do 25 or 30 years (so if you start teaching at 22,
you're like 50 when you reach full retirement), get their full retirement, and
then get hired back either part-time or three-quarter time (and in some cases,
full-time), at a salaried rate. They can do this and still earn their
retirement. (You don't get dual retirements after the fact, I don't think --
unless you were in multiple counties/states)

So my mom has friends who "retired" at 48 -- then went right back to work and
essentially get double their pay, plus benefits.

I would also add that benefits are one of the areas where being a teacher is
really valuable. With the price of health care, having high-quality insurance
that is free or very inexpensive, is a reason many people (especially women)
are in education.

That was part of my mom's impetus -- my dad is an entrepreneur (real estate)
and shit got bad and she needed to make sure we'd have good insurance and
other protections as a family. She loved what she did (and was fantastic at
it), but part of the reason she became a counselor (and later school
psychologist) was because it would allow her to be off during the summer's
when I was home -- and allow her to be home in the evenings (when she wasn't
doing the grad school years) for the family.

I'm not a parent -- but I can't discount the value of having that kind of
flexibility -- even if it means you make less than what you could. Because my
dad primarily worked for himself, my mom having summers off meant we had a lot
more flexibility as a family for things like summer vacations or cruises over
spring break.

And not to say that education isn't stressful -- but there is also more
flexibility in the job itself than in something like say, tech. She was always
able to take me to my doctor appointments growing up and handle other issues
that might come up. When my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimers and had
to go into assisted living and later a nursing home -- my mom had flexibility
in her benefits to take time off to travel to Florida to help her elderly
parents (and a sister who lived there and did much of the work). There was a
"pool" her county offered employees to donate some of their sick leave into
that would act as insurance for other employees in that pool if they needed to
exceed their own sick leave/personal days in the event of an emergency or
personal event that didn't rise to the level of going on temporary disability.

So yes -- part of me fully acknowledges that teachers/educators are often paid
less than what their skills might get in a different sector. And I fully
acknowledge that not all parts of the country are as good as the county where
my mom worked. But when you look beyond just the pay and you include the time
off, the benefits, the retirement (I mean, I'll never have a pension at my six
figure job), and the flexibility -- it's not quite as bad as it appears
either.

------
heyiforgotmypwd
This is very an ignorant, biased and misleading article.

1) Not every educator is a teacher. Teachers are paid the most and have the
best organized labor representation, while substitute teachers and T-A's are
lucky if they get enough hours to qualify for benefits.

2) Not everyone lives in a rich area of a big city. Smaller communities
typically don't have the tax base to pay livable wages. Cost of living maybe
less, but the absolute buying power of educators in rural area is next to nil.

Also, here's some anecdotal personal data-points:

\- My half sister and her husband are special ed. T-A's. They're on food
stamps.

\- Talk to elderly homeless, saner people. You'd be surprised how many were
teachers or in the education.

~~~
JaimeThompson
It comes from the American Enterprise Institute so it isn't exactly going to
be friendly toward typical working citizens.

------
markvdb
Where does this come from?

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

------
xer0x
This article does not seem like the "truth". I'd really like it be true, and
for our countries to value education. It doesn't seem like the case.

------
planetzero
One of my relatives retired from teaching a couple of years ago. She had
guaranteed raises every year and ended up making close to $100,000/year.

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
And that's with a 3 month break every year. But still, dealing with kids every
day is hard work. I know I wouldn't want to do it as a career. I thank those
that do.

~~~
lotsofpulp
On the east and west coast, I've met quite a few teachers, and none have a 3
month break every year. Maybe a few weeks, but they are frequently tasked with
continuing education or some other task during the summers. And during the
year, they're always working 12+ hour days.

~~~
negzero7
I think the "always working 12+ hour days" thing is a myth. My wife is a
teacher and I would say her and the teachers she works with will occasionally
work extra hours, but by far it's mostly 7.5 hour days (8:30am - 4pm).

~~~
jedberg
I think that's the difference between a good teacher and an average one. My
wife was a teacher (left because of the poor salary). She worked 12+ hours a
day five days a week (we made sure to keep weekends open but we were there on
weekends too sometimes). You could see which other teachers were there 12+
hours. It was the ones that sent the most prepared kids to her class. There
was an obvious quality difference between the kids who had teachers that
worked 12+ hours a day and those that didn't.

------
OBLIQUE_PILLAR
National Affairs dot com is published by the extreme right wing think tank The
Claremont Institute, started by the man who came up with Barry Goldwater's
line "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

~~~
colonCapitalDee
This is not true. National Affairs dot com is run by the right-leaning think
tank American Enterprise Institute.

------
thowthisaway
most elementary school teachers are earning $95K+ in San Diego, CA.

------
vkhn
I am willing to accept that there are studies and statistics that seem to
contradict what is commonly accepted. I'm also willing to accept a lot of the
evidence here that the problem is not nearly as bad as believed.

This was, however, clearly written by statisticians that have no teacher
friends or family. If they did, they would have asked more relevant questions
of the data. For example WHY do teachers work "on average 40.6 hours during
the work week, compared to 42.4 hours for private-sector professionals".

My wife is a teacher, and I can tell you exactly why.

Also, I laughed particularly hard at "teaching jobs are not particularly
stressful or unpleasant compared to other occupations"

Hilarious.

~~~
julianapostate
does she work summers too? winter break, spring break?

~~~
tptacek
Does that matter? If we're talking in terms of annual salary, the fact that
they "don't get paid" over the summer is irrelevant; it's just the same amount
of money distributed on a weird schedule, isn't it? All things being equal,
you'd rather have the $60k job that had "an unpaid summer off" than the $60k
job where you got paid all summer, right?

~~~
mcguire
At least the graph in the article is "adjusted" for the 10-month work year.
Typically in such discussions, that would mean they multiplied teacher
salaries by 12/10 to make them "comparable" to other professions.

Your $60k job is actually a $50k job with an unpaid summer off.

~~~
tptacek
Are you sure about that? When the Washington Post says that CPS teachers make
>$70,000, I'm reasonable sure (but not 100% sure) that's their actual annual
compensation. When my kids old school district reports high-school teachers
make $110,000, I know for a fact that's their annual comp, not something
normalized to their "working months".

~~~
mcguire
Good point. I'm being hyperbolic. But in these discussions you do have to be
careful that someone hasn't annualized a 9 or 10 month salary like the
article.

------
ArtDev
I was just talking to my daughter about why her teachers might be grumpy. Low
pay, high stress, high responsibility jobs will do that.

If you ever wonder if they underpaid, go ask one. They would be happy to
complain, I am sure.

"Well,I don't want to be a teacher",my daughter said. "Well I don't blame
you", I said.

------
thrower123
The biggest thing with teacher salaries that people usually forget is that you
have to multiply by 1.2 to 1.25 to get the equivalent for a 9-5 job that works
year round, if you want to compare apples to pomegranates. My mother as a
school teacher worked 190 days a year. I work 245 days a year.

Granted, you're going to struggle to pull in the same kind of hourly rate
during the summers working a seasonal job, unless it is something special.
But, if you have a family, your kids are going to be off school anyway, so you
could actually spend some time with them. There's some trade offs.

~~~
mcguire
Unfortunately, those who you are buying things from rarely multiply their
prices by 0.83 because you are a teacher. And you are indeed going to struggle
to pull in the same kind of hourly rate for two months during the summer and
one during the winter.

------
gridlockd
Why do teachers have such an elevated standing in society anyways? If we're
being honest, schools are, for the most part, daycare centers. Secondary
education is, for the most part, completely useless.

Yet, unlike with most other professions, the government guarantees that those
glorified daycare jobs will continue to exist. Why _should_ these jobs pay
well?

~~~
Qwertystop
Because they ought to be more than that? In some cases, perhaps, because they
_are_ more than that?

I'm pretty sure my K-12 education (public school) and college (private
university) were both above average, but I definitely learned _something_ from
at least a few classes every year in K-12, and at least could tell you what
sorts of things I've forgotten from them. Meanwhile, I couldn't tell you what
about half of my college classes were even _supposed_ to have taught, shortly
before graduation, despite passing all of them with (almost all) high marks.

~~~
gridlockd
> I definitely learned _something_ from at least a few classes every year in
> K-12

What if the guy managing your retirement fund lost 85% of your money, would
you stick with him because you got to keep at least _some_ of it?

> Meanwhile, I couldn't tell you what about half of my college classes were
> even _supposed_ to have taught, shortly before graduation, despite passing
> all of them with (almost all) high marks.

Are you beginning to see a pattern here?

~~~
Qwertystop
My point is that public primary and secondary schooling seems to have been
more effective (anecdotally) than private higher education. This is a strike
against the idea that the government shouldn't be paying for it, in that in at
least this one case the government paying for it seems to be working better
than a non-government organization doing that doing so. Since educational
institutions aren't going to disappear altogether, those are the alternatives.

~~~
gridlockd
> My point is that public primary and secondary schooling seems to have been
> more effective (anecdotally) than private higher education.

Primary and secondary public education often fails to provide basic literacy
competence. As a result, a high-school diploma isn't worth much, but the right
college degree statistically is worth even the absurd prices that are now
being paid for them.

> This is a strike against the idea that the government shouldn't be paying
> for it, in that in at least this one case the government paying for it seems
> to be working better than a non-government organization doing that doing so.

The government can pay for it without running it, see the Swedish model and
the voucher system, which has resulted in improvements. However, teacher
unions are obviously against this. They fear their jobs will be less secure if
most parents had a real choice in where to enroll their children.

