Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

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> But at least government employees get a nice pension so it's all worth it.

Educators get poor pay, somewhat decent benefits, and an ok pension. Their working conditions (especially for new teachers, and this is largely the problem with retaining them) are pretty crappy. They put in 7-8 hours of instruction time a day. After 3rd or 4th grade (in many states) they're teaching a specific subject area, so they have 100+ students they see each day. That's 100+ papers to grade, exams to grade, parents to contact for various reasons. And they have to do all that in their planning period and after school hours. That's effectively two full-time jobs that they get paid (depending on the state, for a new teacher with just a bachelor's degree) between $25k and $40k to do. They can get extra money by sponsoring clubs or coaching sports teams. But then that eats into the time they have to spend on the academics they're hired to teach, and puts them up to 2 full-time jobs and one half-time job (depending on the number of clubs or particular sport).

God bless democracy for fucking over yet another generation of students by cutting corners on education. Something we decided a few hundred years ago was one of the government's primary responsibilities.

> Educators get poor pay, somewhat decent benefits, and an ok pension

I hear this relatively frequently (my wife is a teacher and so are many of our friends), but I disagree. I think saying it is "poor" depends on what you compare it against.

The median earnings for a bachelors degree in the US is about $58k. In my county in MD, a teacher 10 years into their career makes $50k. Although, at this point teachers are required to get a masters.The masters scale goes all the way to $82k at 30 years.

IMHO, the pay is fairly well in line with the norm. If count the benefits and pension, which are better than the norm, then you could argue it is quite good.

Starting pay for teachers by state, averaged (varies district to district) [0]. DC (admittedly, not actually a state, but a separate entity so should be counted here) is the highest at $51,539. The rest are mostly well below that mark. Since pay for teachers is primarily time and not merit based, I searched for a few specific examples. In the state of GA you can find what an individual is paid by the state if you know their name. I found a friend with 9 or 10 years experience who's only making $41k (no masters degree). Another friend, same job and county, making some $47k with about 15 years of experience. Same county, elementary school teacher with 1 or 2 years experience made $30k. I've run out of teachers I know in that district.

This is, for this county, "good" pay. This is not, for the level of responsibility and time commitment required of them, good pay. They're expected to maintain their certifications on their own time. They're expected to remain current on the field they teach on their own time. They're expected to finish their masters degree on their own time and dime. All with less than $50k income and having families.

$82k for a professional after 30 years with a masters degree is not "good pay". It's ok pay. It's certainly enough to keep them out of debt, I'd hope, but it's not going to make up for the 12+ hour workdays they'll have spent most of their adult life dealing with. And it takes 30 years to get to that point in your state. Do they get tuition assistance for that masters degree? What's the average cost and how much of that pay raise is actually spent dealing with the debt incurred in paying for the degree?

[0] http://www.nea.org/home/2012-2013-average-starting-teacher-s...

EDIT: The teachers I looked up teach in the same district so they're getting the same locality adjustments so it's an apples-to-apples comparison. Going one county north results in boosted pay, but it's simultaneously a wealthier county and scarier (violent crime in schools) county.

Another fact that many commenters on this thread have overlooked is that U.S. schools operate about 175 days per year (compare that to 240 days for 52 weeks minus 10 holidays minus 10 vacation days).

http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_035_s1s.asp

>it's not going to make up for the 12+ hour workdays they'll have spent most of their adult life dealing with.

I know several teachers and I don't know a single one, (except for coaches who get paid to work longer), that works anywhere near 12 hour days on average--not even close.

A quick google search backs me up. This study by the BLS shows that on average they work around 40 hours per week when they work (this includes time working at home). [1]

Furthermore, teachers only work 190 days out of the year, so they end up working far less on average than other professionals.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

But over the years, teachers have been expected to supply more and more of their class materials at their own expense. I'm not saying that puts them at "fast food" level wages... but it does need to be taken into account when we talk about how much teachers make. They spend a non-trivial amount of their income to support their job.

perhaps that was a poor decision to make it the government's responsibility.

But you see, that it is the government's job to provide education is a decision that has been made way in the past and it's way over our heads the reasons for it. We should just accept that it's better. You don't want kids to go without education, right? And if the government is not providing it then no one can provide it.

For instance, the private industry can't provide accessible education for the poor because everyone that works in the private industry only does it for money and profit, which are bad things. But people that work for the government do it out of the good in their hearts (they don't care about the cushy job and the benefits at all).

So because it's impossible to gather round a bunch of kids in front of a $20 blackboard on some public space and teach them some skills, we need to spend $5 Billion (I actually think that's not enough, it should be at least $6.2 Billion) to hire more librarians.

How can you not see that this is the true way?

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