Comment by AndrewGaspar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AndrewGaspar | Hacker News Reader

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> all of the teachers I know regularly work nights and weekends

There's a difference between difficulty and exertion.

> how important is the outcome

It's pretty damn important that the garbage man comes and collects the trash every week, but we don't pay him the marginal value of trash collection to the county.

> another assertion I have issues with - there are rampant teacher shortages nationwide

I actually agree that the market doesn't seem to be clearing due to stingy education departments and state government. We should probably break their monopsony power by privatizing education.

> could you not be potentially getting a better teacher and having broadly positive effects on society if you're offering more money

If you want to make the argument we should fire all the current teachers and replace them with people who would otherwise be accountants or actuaries or software engineers, I'd be amenable to the argument.

> I actually agree that the market doesn't seem to be clearing due to stingy education departments and state government. We should probably break their monopsony power by privatizing education.

If the state is still paying, they're still going to be stingy.

A private school has roughly the same administrative staff as a public school. Their buildings may be a little bit less expensive, as they probably can get away with less ADA accessibility. They probably don't pay into pensions and may not provide as nice of health care, so they may be able to move more of total comp into salaries, but they may also compensate their board members more. Word on the street is private school teachers get paid less and have less due process, but also have less stringent degree requirements and fewer mandates in their classroom. But they also get a lot more parental engagement, and a rather different cohort of students.

Note we tend to pay garbagemen more than teachers! I think that probably seeks to the job desirability. More people are willing to be teachers than haul garbage and that is reflected in the pay, net of other impacts.

Where are people getting this shit from?

According to the BLS garbage collectors have a median annual wage of $ 42,780[1] whereas elementary school teachers have a median annual wage of $61,400[2].

[1]https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes537081.htm

[2]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/kinde...

thanks for the correction

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