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Comment by usaar333 | Hacker News Reader

Agreed on all points. I am sympathetic to the author's thesis, but found plenty of annoying rhetoric in the article:

Blaming soldiers vs. teachers:

Soldier quality is more difficult to assess (all of us have gone through school; few through the military), soldiers have significantly less autonomy in decisions, and soldiers (like police & firefights) get some slack because they risk their lives on the line.

"Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education" As parent noted, tenure issues are huge. Professors also don't make much, but tenure (once they get it) really makes up for it. Also, 14% isn't bad given that many teachers have 2 months off.

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> Soldier quality is more difficult to assess

School administrations try (and fail) to determine "teacher quality" by looking at standardized test scores.

Quality of teaching is easy to assess however: you just have a few experienced teachers pop in and observe a class or two, and it's obvious to them if the teacher is good or not.

> Also, 14% isn't bad given that many teachers have 2 months off.

It's not 2 months off, it's 2 months unemployed.

When they hire you as a teacher, they ask you ahead of time if you want them to reduce your paycheck amount so that you can receive checks during those 2 months.

It's not 2 months off, it's 2 months unemployed.

So, if there's a salaried teaching position for 50k, said teacher actually gets paid 41.6k (50k * 10/12)? Unless a stated salary is quietly reduced by 1/6, then it most certainly is two months off.

Teachers don't have a "yearly salary" per se ... instead, they have a number written on the contract that indicates what they'll be paid for the school year.

When someone says, "teacher $X makes $Y per year", it means that $Y is that number written on the contract for the school year.

Note, given that

* most teachers spend a couple of weeks after the school year ends tying up loose ends from the year and organizing themselves for next year,

* and then simply need time to decompress from dealing with a large number of kids every day for so long,

* and also that they spend the weeks before school begins prepping for the new year and doing professional development,

there's not really much time in between to get another full-time temporary job to supplement their income.

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