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Comment by notch898a | Hacker News Reader

>>> "Who's gonna go teach a high school class for $50,000 a year when they can make $85 to $100,000 a year... in the trades?"

I don't have the last 10 year data, but from ~2000-2014 the pupil-teacher ratio was flat and at all time recorded lows. This works against the thesis there is a shortage relative to post WW-II history.

It appears whatever teachers is paid, the feeling they get from helping kids vs building cogs for evilCo must be enough additional incentive to keep us near record low pupil-teacher ratio.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_208.20.a...

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That's the thing though. Working for some highly bureaucratic and political organization (i.e. any given school district) where you're micromanaged by management but thrown under the bus by them when convenient, where you see waste all around you, you see bad teachers who play the game well rewarded, where you see all sorts of dumb stuff going on that is counterproductive to the mission of actually educating children feels a hell of a lot like working at evilCo. And if you're gonna work for evil, you had better get compensated accordingly. You either pay them in dollars or you pay them in intangibles (i.e. a job that's so good people will do it for cheap). School districts are incapable of providing the latter and the demoralizing work environment creates the kind of demoralized, jaded and poorly performing employees that taxpayers will not agree to pay more to creating a self-reinforcing local minimum.

The latest info I'm able to find indicates we're still close to record low pupil-teacher ratios. So teachers are working, and even meeting students in ratio basically as close as ever (post WW-II at least).

> demoralized, jaded and poorly performing employee

Ah this is a teacher bashing session to disparage the ones we currently have. Personally I highly value the efforts of our teachers and can't imagine making such a statement.

>Working for some highly bureaucratic and political organization (i.e. any given school district)

I think we're on the same page here. If you want to argue the idea of the institution of public schooling sucks, I won't disagree with you. That's why my jurisdiction has voted to allow you to use your tax money to bypass the public school district institution.

>Ah this is a teacher bashing session to disparage the ones we currently have. Personally I highly value the efforts of our teachers and can't imagine making such a statement.

Have you ever actually worked for government or highly bureaucratic government adjacent industries?

There's a reason the phrase "going postal" exists. The conditions at these sort of highly bureaucratic and regulated to the hilt employers with broken incentive systems really wears on the average person. Working for these shitty organizations (which most are, although there are occasional pockets of goodness) wears on you. Most people become jaded and you just phone it in and do the minimum because even if you hit your KPIs the pay is almost all based on seniority anyway.

Tons of people go on to be good performing employees once they leave this environment. Many who stay start a side business and continue to be jaded at their 9-5 work but pour all their real effort into the side business which at least prevents them from burning out too hard.

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