Important choice of words. This is a universe away from "satisfied
about their job remuneration".
The motivational psychology around some professions like nursing,
teaching and policing is utterly different from, and incompatible
with, the dominant commercial ideology.
In most industries you can pay people enough to suck up more of your
stress and bullshit. Vocations don't work like that. You actually have
to treat people with respect and listen to what they say. You, as a
servant manager, are there to support them. And they in turn are there
to serve their charges (patients, students, citizens). The power
structure is upside down.
The biggest issue I've heard (pre-covid) from talking to teachers and student teachers, is that the policies of the schools and/or behavior of the students is in conflict with what they believe to be best.
For example, my friend thought it was BS that if you put your name on the test you can't get under a 50%. Even with this policy, there were kids who would not put their names on the blank test, even if you tried to work with them. Another teacher I know had kids hit/kick/etc her.
This sort of stuff is demoralizing. What's the point of teaching if the kids don't care, you're assaulted, and the school policies are geared to passing kids off to the next grade without learning much? I think I would enjoy being a teacher as a retirement job, if it wasn't for all the horror storied I hear about behavior and misguided policies.
Teachers have had to pay out of pocket for their own supplies from their meager salaries for decades. That’s nothing new. But on top of that they have to now deal with pandemic insanity, as well as gun violence insanity. Teachers are now on YouTube reviewing the latest bullet proof backpacks for kids. States are passing laws to arm teachers. Who the hell wants to deal with this? I just want to teach.
Somewhere in my post history is a link to a school district in Georgia who had dozens of faculty/staff die from covid over a few short weeks last summer. The median age of deceased faculty was 40 something. Teachers live this reality, but if they request PPE and vaccination standards they are called satanist traitors to America and get death threats.
This doesn’t even touch upon the moral panic currently sweeping certain parts of the country, where they are looking to criminalize teachers if they say the wrong thing to the wrong student. Literally they are calling teachers “groomers”. Do you have that straight? We teachers are unpatriotic, satanist, groomers who should simultaneously be armed to protect ourselves from gunmen, while our words are policed by the state. Oh and we are also expected to die for our classroom in case of a shooting.
Teachers are looking over their shoulders from every direction, so it really won’t surprise me if this exodus comes.
edit to the dead comment: my perspective comes from my own experience and that of my fellow teachers. And also that link I mentioned that I can't be bothered to dig up right now.
This kind of event went basically unnoticed in the larger scheme of things. But this kind of situation happened all across the country, without any time to grieve or even reflect on what was happening. Teachers were expected to be back to work, and worse we were told that it was perfectly fine and safe. Meanwhile many school districts were running short on substitute teachers to fill in for the covid deaths and hospitalizations within their ranks. GA had it worse than most -- average age of dead faculty that summer was just 46.
You're the one who moved the goalposts to "forcing". The GP comment said "States are passing laws to arm teachers". Nobody needs to be "forced" to take up arms for "arming teachers" to be an accurate characterization of what lots of states are doing. And besides, my point was just how easy it is to find lots of examples, here's Texas [1], here's [2] an article from 2019 where lawmakers in 6 states (Florida, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Texas) were also trying to allow it. And I literally haven't even left the first page of google results for "arm the teachers". Lots of people would rather have teachers stepping right into the line of fire rather than address the root cause.
> Boy you must be fun at parties.
Not really, but "you're no fun" is hardly a rebuttal.
Would you please stop posting flamewar comments and using HN for ideological battle? You've unfortunately been doing it a lot lately, and we ban that sort of account. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. We want curious conversation here.
My daughter is starting kindergarten this fall (was in daycare prior). Down the road from me, someone shot at a bus. I've accepted the fact that in the next 12 years of my daughter's life, she WILL be impacted directly or indirectly by a school shooting. They sell inserts you can put in a backpack, which I will def consider. They don't 100% stop all bullets by something is better than nothing.
And also traditionally female-dominated. At a base, cultural level, our society has a very real problem with seeing female-majority professions as actual professions.
I mean, yes, a lot of "low status" jobs are dominated by women, and this is an unfortunate pattern, but I don't think the gender is driving the status, or the attrition problems?
Or really a problem with seeing women as anything but either ungrateful servants or caring mommies. In another female-designated profession, library science, men actually run into something called the "glass floor" where they find it difficult to stay a librarian because the institutions they work for keep trying to promote them into management or administration.
In both nursing and teaching I wonder where people will go, assuming they can't afford to take a big drop in income. I looked at that 90% and am very doubtful many will follow through.
Yeah, it's perhaps a decent way to measure sentiment but not at all likely to be reliable to predict actions. You can "consider leaving" your profession in the next year for 30 years straight. If there are no attractive alternatives, you're just not gonna do it.
Can't speak for nursing - but I have interviewed a few teachers looking for a career change. Get a certification in scrum manager, project manager then apply...Certainly have overlapping skill sets.
It will be interesting if the data show high attrition, I expect it won’t as teaching is a pretty unique job from a work schedule standpoint.
I had some great teachers (and horrible ones) and I remember one explaining how he liked his job because it had a built-in two month sabbatical each year and it allowed him and his family to have a pretty unique travel plan. He had an option to be paid over 10 months while he taught (annual/10) or spread over the whole year (annual/12) and he got insurance either way. So he had a very regimented plan where he taught for 35 years, did cool travel each summer and retired at 55 or something with 75-100% income.
There aren’t many other jobs that offer that structure.
Of course the job is demanding, but most jobs are. I’m not sure how to reconcile the job difficulty Olympics so I usually just nod and agree when people go on about their job is hard.
For comparison, I’ve always had to spend $500-2000/year on supplies and equipment. It’s not right and my employer should, but they never had in 30 years. And I work in programming. So it seems like all employers are lame about not paying for all supplies so I don’t quite think this is a unique negative factor. For comparison, my six grader had a list of supplies that cost $200 for the year and included 25% going to a common pool. So the school system not paying for supplies dings parents in addition to teachers.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were approximately 10.6 million educators working in public education in January 2020; today there are just 10.0 million, a net loss of around 600,000.
The BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey found that the ratio of hires to job openings in the education sector reached new lows as the 2021-22 school year started. It currently stands at 0.59 hires for every open position, a large decrease from 1.54 in 2010 and 1.06 in 2016.
When I graduated in 2008 teachers were doing this. Most I knew had second jobs in the summer. Never really heard of teachers using the summer as a vacation unless they had a spouse who made more money.
Oh boy, your second-hand experience with teachers 20 years ago is very different than what teachers experience today. My wife just resigned after 8 years of teaching. The first thing people always say when you talk about teaching being difficult with little pay is oh they get two months a year off to lounge around and do whatever they want. You want to know what single sentence will trigger a teacher immediately? That one. Teachers are still required to plan and get ready for the next school year over the summer and then they go back a couple weeks earlier than students so it ends up not being as good as it sounds.
Most teachers have extremely high anxiety and are stressed to the max. Neverending paperwork, admin that won't help, and parents that don't care and/or are extremely overbearing. It's a grind and it really takes a special kind of person to do that job yet we pay them so little.
I don't doubt all of your points, and can imagine the frustration, but regarding the summer off being interrupted by planning work, what's to plan? If you're teaching mostly the same thing year after year, wouldn't you have an established plan that doesn't require significant modification? What does "get ready for the next school year" entail?
> what's to plan? If you're teaching mostly the same thing year after year, wouldn't you have an established plan that doesn't require significant modification? What does "get ready for the next school year" entail?
I’m bookmarking this as a delightful example of “begging the question,” wherein the question is actually begged. You correctly identified and ran past the fundamental underlying assumption: teachers teach virtually the same thing each year.
In reality, curriculum changes can happen as a result of (1) changes in the underlying textbook and course material, precipitated by publishers (2) changes in student and teacher KPIs precipitated by school administration, (3) changes in technological education-delivery platforms, precipitated by school IT, (4) personal changes, precipitated by experience and personal/professional motivation, and (5) changes in professional best-practices, precipitated by scholarship and professional organizations; to name a few.
These things happen regularly, and often simultaneously.
I thought it was a good question, and I didn't really believe your answer. I wanted to see if any statistics support what you said, and the reality is a bit different. Teachers put in fewer hours than other workers, and they work on average 20 hours a week during the summer [1]. To be clear it's more nuanced than "fewer hours" in the article, but the average teacher works 40ish hours a week.
If you're a teacher, I'm sure you're tired of hearing people wonder whether teachers are working all summer, but the fact is it's a great fucking question and you shouldn't be offended when someone asks it. It beggars belief, and it's a question that should be asked over and over again until the answer is "no".
My mistake. When you responded to someone asking what teachers did all summer, you responded in a way that made me believe you thought they did. But now the question is, if you weren't saying that teachers work all summer, what was the point in itemizing the things they have to do each summer? Maybe you responded to the wrong comment? To make things easier, I'll bring back some context from earlier in the thread:
> Teachers are still required to plan and get ready for the next school year over the summer. . .
I thought this was more or less the entire topic of interest. That, and how much teachers work. What do you think the conversation is about? Pretty confused how you could think it's not relevant. You were needlessly combative earlier, so I guess I could chalk it up to that.
I’m not even a teacher and the first and super obvious thing that came to mind is working with special needs children. Like an adhd child or an autistic child might require different lessons plans to incorporate different sensory processing. Don’t teachers also have to re-credential or prove they’re taking continued education every few years or something too? And don’t teachers also teach summer school? Idk. I think maybe we should give teachers more credit… I’m sure there 10x more than I thought of and I am not a teacher nor do I I interact with teachers.
Edit: also wasn’t a huge number of changes made recently on state levels to target schools that teach anything a parent might deem CRT/LGBTQ shit? I’d expect lots of teachers to need to change their lesson plans regularly because of wild political environment nonsense…
I’m sorry your wife quit and I hope she finds a job she likes.
I know many teachers nowadays too. They are friends and neighbors.
In my county, teachers get 10 weeks off and they go back a week early to prepare for school. They also have a few days at the end of the year to wrap up. So it’s actually only 8-9 weeks off where they don’t have to think about school. Of course many do. Just like I think about work on my vacation.
Pay in my state is $53k/year, slightly over the average salary of $51k. So teachers aren’t paid “so little” in my state. It’s not an amazing salary, but it’s ok.
It doesn’t take a “special kind of person” any more than countless other jobs. People fit into jobs and don’t fit into jobs.
I don’t doubt that teachers are stressed out, but I don’t know how much more stressed than other professions. Most jobs are stressful. At least teachers don’t have to worry about layoffs and they have a pension and they have summers off. So there’s pros and cons.
Two noteworthy dimensions when considering difficulty of job, especially as it relates to other professions, including highly-compensated tech workers:
(1) Average salary of teachers is approximately 40% less than the average salary of any STEM-related-field worker).[1]
(2) Schools are a unique legal environment with respect to torts and the criminal law in that actions against teachers which would in other contexts constitute unlawful acts appropriate for remedy in courts is instead most often investigated, adjudicated, and penalty rendered by a combination of the school’s head, administration, and resource officers.
There is also the non-emergent but nevertheless constantly renewed concern about the viability and mortality of teachers and students with respect to mass violence as well.[2]
By contrast, the BLS [1] says the median pay is $60k, and the bottom 10% earns at most $45k.
This doesn't seem to square with "most teachers make less than $37k".
Perhaps the BLS data is skewed? I'm Canadian, so don't know how they collect it. But my intuition is that they are likely to have access to much better data than ZipRecruiter. The fact that ZipRecruiter thinks no teacher earns between $55k and $70k is also a little dubious.
You’re right that the BLS is a stronger authority and a more reliable source, generally.
I’d just note that the statistics you cite relate to high school teachers, who are compensated most highly among K-12 teachers, while the discussion in the thread and the ZipRecruiter data relates to teachers broadly, including K-8.
This is a good call-out. Looking online, the BLS uses its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (https://www.bls.gov/oes/mb3-methods.pdf) to gather their underlying data.
I put my comment together based on a quick google search and an appreciation for graphics; BUT, I’d take the BLS survey’s response bias over ZipRecruiter’s sample bias any day (the data is derived from ZR’s own job listings).
I’ll make edits to reflect your information. I think the underlying observation that teachers are compensated much less than tech workers is unchallenged (average salary of a teachers is approximately 40% less than the average salary of any STEM-related-field worker).[1]
> Average salary of teachers is approximately 40% less than the average salary of any STEM-related-field worker).[1]
This makes sense as teachers are basically median pay and STEM is much above median. Also, I think STEM has a very different skill set and higher risk. People get fired all the time in STEM while teacher is a very low risk job.
The related analysis is that comparing one’s expenses without also comparing comparing income is an incomplete comparison. That was the nature of inclusion in the comment in reply to the grandfather commentor.
Your 2nd hand experience of teaching from an educator 20 years ago is very different from the current reality. School districts have taken on more task and passed the responsibility of executing them to the frontline workers (teachers).
To save money they technically get laid off every summer and rehired in the fall. They do this because the schoolboard budget can be changed at any moment. If they need to layoff a lot of teachers the formal paperwork is already done. You can imagine this can be extremely stressful, especially for new teachers.
> I’ve always had to spend $500-2000/year on supplies and equipment.
That is supplies bought to use for you by you. It would be different if you bought supplies for someone else.
That’s not just supplies for me. It’s supplies for my team, for office activities, for user events, etc.
My point is that many people buy supplies for their work, it’s not unique to teaching. It’s surprising that it’s brought up as it it’s some unique factor.
There's been some surface coverage of the US shortage of teachers for a while, yet we haven't seen much movement in terms of compensation. Maybe there has been a push to get people into the field but I haven't seen it.
IMHO, it's worth keeping in mind that this about more than the stress of the pandemic. The increasing costs of student loans (and the cost of servicing them after graduation) may also make teaching positions less attractive and, perhaps, unsustainable.
Here is a random article from before the pandemic.
You have the greater forces of an industry that conspires to exclude one gender and all but one ideology. The shortage is self-inflicted. Exceedingly few people are being allowed to do the job.
Edit: downvote away but the numbers don't lie. Male elementary school teachers hasn't passed 18% in decades (it's even worse in K-3 where we're talking low single digits) and there are multiple news stories covering the reasons. If you don't think men aren't being chased out of that profession then you don't know any teachers.
I don't really think it's a conspiracy or ideology (lol). Teachers pay extremely poor in the vast majority of states in the US. I mean a scrum expert makes more than an elementary school teacher.
Wages absolutely have everything to do with it, why deny it and try to make it a political issue (lol)?
Few people do the job because it's an extremely bad deal. You will make more as a bartender than you will as a teacher, with the added bonus of a restaurant manager willing to kick out unruly guests whereas a school admin will likely side with the parents.
Typically the jobs that are most useful to society pay extremely bad (janitors, garbage collection, teachers, nursing assistants, dock workers, delivery people, etc). I'd checkout bullshit jobs manifesto if you haven't"
Teachers often have to do teaching work over the holidays or attend continuing education. Or they have to work their 2nd job because teaching doesn't pay enough.
So why don't you? Your employer would almost certainly be willing (source: I have successfully gone through this kind of negotiation myself). If they're not, there are probably other employers looking for the same skills. Or was your claim merely convenient rather than true?
Because despite the low salary men still want to teach.
The reaction to that desire to teach is suspicion.
Men are literally demonized in this profession.
This isn't "making it political", it's the accepted reality of the profession.
in new zealand men are practically not allowed to work as teachers for that reason.
this is a shame really. teaching is the one profession where gender parity should be enforced by law because kids need the rolemodels.
i spent a year in a US highschool, and the teachers i had there were fantastic. my teacher in US history was most enthusiastic, and i enjoyed the class despite failing it.
that was a few decades ago. and already then it was known that teachers don't get paid well. my conclusion then was that the one good thing that comes from low pay is that in order to become a teacher you have to really love it.
> my conclusion then was that the one good thing that comes from low pay is that in order to become a teacher you have to really love it.
I wonder if the people cooking at fast food restaurants or janitors cleaning bathrooms or people stocking shelves at wal mart really love it. And does loving a job necessarily correlate with being able to do the job?
the difference of those jobs to being a teacher is how much education it takes to get there.
you don't spend years in college to become a janitor.
and as for love correlating with ability. it's up to the teacher-training programs to weed out those incapable of teaching. i don't know how it's done in the US but elsewhere teachers have to spend many hours in classrooms under supervision before they get their own classes. a big part of teaching is classroom management and there, love and enthusiasm make a big impact.
Teachers make 13% more than the average salary across the U.S., yet public perception is that they are horribly underpaid. No one is getting rich being a teacher, but they are certainly paid a decent wage. It's a hard job but most jobs are hard. I know a ton of school teachers. It's true they put in extra work each night but every single one of them has the summer off to relax and recharge. They are also free to work another job in the summer to supplement their salary.
To say nothing about the differential between someone in their first year and their 30th year of teaching. (At least, I hope there's a differential! I haven't looked.)
Right, but knowing how much someone gets at starting vs how much they get at 10, 20, 30 years is helpful too.
Is there a bulge of experienced teachers getting 100k/year that pulls the average up? Does the pay range max out at 80k no matter how long you are there?
Shouldn't demand for teachers be roughly correlated with where everyone else is located? It's not like with tech where the employment is concentrated in particular areas.
My partner works at a private school where the students pay more than a typical university to attend - lots of business and celebrity parents. I was surprised to find out that some of the teachers are indeed paid less than they would be if they worked at a public school. If they've worked there a long time, then their pay is significantly better, so there is incentive to stick with it at one location.
However, the perks are better. For one, if they have children, they can attend the school for free. They also get very sophisticated lunches that only cost them $5/day.
Teachers may make 13% more than the average salary across the US, but the job also requires a graduate degree, which often requires a year of student teaching that is unpaid.
If we use your argument about wages, teaching "should" only require ~2 years of college (~63rd percentile education level).
> every single one of them has the summer off to relax and recharge
Tell me you don't know anything about teachers without telling me, etc.
"Relax and recharge" is hardly the story for most teachers. Those salary averages you cite obscure the reality that teacher pay is often determined by degrees and certifications. When do teachers pursue those, so they can advance past the lowest band? That's right: summer. Many have to make up professional-development days just to stay at their current level. (How much mandatory structured professional development has anyone here had to do since they started their careers?) A lot of curriculum development happens as unpaid summer work. Then there are summer jobs to make up budget shortfalls (exacerbated by having to pay for their own supplies during the year), reconnecting with families they hardly got to see during the year, and so on.
There are other highly demanding and poorly paid jobs, to be sure. One could make a reasonable argument that teaching is not uniquely bad. On the other hand, trying to argue that teachers are doing great because some get 13% above average for all those extra college years and they all get summers off is counterfactual to the point of dishonesty.
"Everything" is too far. My male friend abandoned teaching after doing his student teaching and earning his license. It had nothing to do with pay. He took a lower paying job in a more expensive area. He said the school policies were terrible and the too many kids were misbehaved and most were uninteresting in learning.
He didn't say anything about gender issues, so I assume he didn't experience any, or that they weren't noteworthy.
If you're in the US then you have a slam dunk case in regards to sex based discrimination. This is why title 8 has been codified into law for over 50 years (with even more protections added to it).
What do you win by bringing such a case? They still aren't going to give you the job.
You're going to be spending years in the courtroom rather than engaged in your career. It's lose-lose.
Also you're a non-working teacher with no money versus the complete resources of the State. LOL good luck with that.
Don't be so foolish to think that going to court is an easy answer to problems. Court battles last a long time, especially if one party has vast resources AND/OR is an unreasonable person.
My family has been in court suing each other since 1989 without end. Appeals are not completely exhausted yet. Tens of millions have been thrown away at chasing a couple of million. Lawyers have gotten rich off us. Newspaper articles have been written about our family fued. Don't be stupid.
Morality is about community relations and disgust on any side of the equation tends to make people leave. An attitude as strong as community-wide disgust may render one morally ineffective in promoting community progression.
I'm trying to point out what I think is the most important demographic of stakeholders that is responsible for perpetuating the gender imbalance in the industry.
>Morality is about community relations and disgust on any side of the equation tends to make people leave.
something tells me that if similar discrimination was applied in the opposite direction (eg. "the community trusts male police more", or "shareholders trusts male CEOs more"), there would be government interventions to fix that "attitude".
I'm a man working towards a masters in childhood education (elementary school) in New York. I have gotten some surprised looks, and people who assumed the teacher must be someone else, but nothing I would class as hostility. I suspect most female software developers experience much worse.
Speaking of, if you think the skewed gender ratio in teaching is evidence of a conspiracy, what do you make of the gender ratio in software development and other engineering fields?
Women are more represented in software engineering than man are in elementary education. This was even more true when I started working in IT nearly 25 years ago.
I don't know any women who have been automatically assumed to be a child molestor just because they're a software engineer.
As for software engineering itself, it's mostly a crappy thankless job that is only offset by the pay. The hardest part of the job is not quitting. I do it because I don't want to do anything else.
Anyway, you're still just studying to be the thing that we're talking about here. Let's talk after you've been on your own and working for 2-3 years. That's about how long my cousin lasted as a first grade teacher before he gave it up for construction. Also in the NYC area.
Some rural districts near me are offering houses and cars in lieu of actual dollars. These districts are chronically understaffed and quite poor. So other forms of value have to be transferred in order to attract teachers.
Not that it does any good really. The houses and cars tend to be in bad condition/s, and then there's a fun little federal tax burden you get for being gifted such items. That and the rural districts tend to the end of the road for a teaching career. Since the pay is so bad, you can't save up to move back to a city district, or get more professional credentials, or advance your career in any real way. That and you have to live in a really small town as an outsider that doesn't really 'belong' there.
I feel for those districts, but the math is the math. It's not worth it to become a rural teacher if you have other options.
The pay issue is state specific. In my state, I know a secondary Ed biology teacher making about as much as I do as a software dev. Both about 10 years experience and a masters degree. My state is in the top 10 for teacher pay though.
niche.com have public data, for example NY suburbs public school teachers' pay are pretty high[1], though I still doubt it will be the same as sr swe, then again those are totally different type of jobs, with the former being much more stable and has a pension.
Note that teachers in New York also need masters degrees. (You can get an "initial certification" for a limited number of years, but you eventually need to go back and get a masters.)
Plus many get a summer long vacation every year, freeing them up to take a summer job or just rest. Not to mention all the holidays during the school year. It's a benefit that that should be factored in for comparison.
This mirrors my personal experience pretty well, literally every teacher I know has gotten out of education in the last two years or planning to quit. Most of them because it’s killing them.
* Friend’s husband is quitting this upcoming year and is going into grad school to reboot his career in an unrelated maths field.
* Woman I graduated with went back to work at my HS, super cute story, but left two years ago after only a few years teaching and is a mother / housewife now.
* Another woman, close friend, just up and quit with no notice no plan because the stress put her on medical leave and her school offered no accommodation. She moved to Colorado and works in a dispensary now.
* Another woman I’ve known since kindergarten who’s life dream was to be an elementary school teacher quit this year with no plan other than moving to Atlanta and looking at grad schools.
* Yet another friend who taught elementary school English quit this year and now works two part time jobs as a copy editor and cheese maker. He’s way less stressed now and I actually get to hang out with him.
* I can keep going, an older family friend who’s been teaching for 20 years quit last year because she was so burnt out and demoralized. She now does 3D modeling remotely and does woodworking as a side hustle.
* Bosses wife, also older, taught around 10 years I think also quit this year for an IT admin job.
Look I work in a quaint little tech shop completely unrelated to education. There’s no way I somehow self-selected for teachers who are exiting the field. Maybe this is somehow the normal level of turnover but damn.
Interesting to note that in your examples, the teachers left for something less stressful rather than higher paying.
Most people bring up higher pay as a panacea. Surely, huge salaries would attract more people to the profession. But even software developers making $300k+ per year get burned out and leave for a easier career. And I'm willing to bet that teaching is significantly more stressful as writing software.
We need to make being a teacher suck less, not just more lucrative.
> the teachers left for something less stressful rather than higher paying.
My statistical assumption would be that this is because you can't just switch professions and stay at the level that you were at before. You can't go from being a teacher with 10 years of experience to being an accountant with 10 years of experience in 1 year. They're leaving to start over again. Of course the jobs pay less (or the same because teachers are underpaid); if they were also equally stressful, there'd have been no reason to leave teaching.
The majority are women. Perhaps they won't work and their families will accept a lower cost of living. Perhaps into service jobs. A decent chunk are close to retirement age anyway.
If you have kids, not paying for childcare can save you tens of thousands of dollars per year.
Or perhaps you now have the option of moving to a cheaper city, or further from your former workplace. That could easily be a double-digit percentage savings from your budget.
EDIT: And, uh...there are tons of service jobs in my city. Haven't you heard the endless whining from business owners that "nobody wants to work anymore"? They're struggling to fill openings.
They all aren't leaving. If only 10% decide to call it quits, it can feel like an exodus. Hence the exagerated headlines. It's still enough to inflict pressure.
There are 11 million open jobs in the US at the moment, and that’s just the US if these people don’t decide to expatriate to better countries who are desperately seeking skilled/educated workers.
Edit: Due to demographic shifts, about a million people dropped out of the labor force during COVID (death, retirement, etc) and there’s a 300k worker shortage predicted every year (slowly increasing YoY) until 2034 (when we’ll have a 900k workers shortage).
High level, population pyramids are incompatible with dysfunctional economic systems that rely on perpetual growth.
In our district we had a parent punch a teacher in the face at a school council meeting over mask mandates. There have been numerous verbal assaults too. Couldn’t pay me enough to be the recipient of that level of vitriol
This is not a bad thing though, because enrollment is declining.
For example, my <1 year old daughter's generation is only 80% of what it should be due to COVID. Thus, we'd have to fire 20% of teachers.
My home district of Portland, OR is already starting to see enrollment cuts as people have already started their kids in the always-open private schools or opted for homeschooling as well.
So you have the combined forces of people choosing non-public options and simply having less kids. We won't need as many teachers.
Why does Oregon have to fire 20% of the teachers? I know a lot of teachers quit due to covid stress, and I have interviewed some wanting to switch to IT. Maybe there's enough natural attrition or retirement they simply just don't need to hire.
Are schools overcrowded and teachers overworked? Here in Georgia they are and I'm not aware of many places that are. Maybe having a lower teacher/student ratio closer to normal can help with the issues that current students are seeing due to 1-2 years of remote learning.
Then also - how are we not sure that there would not be an uptick in population in 2022 and beyond to compensate for those who delayed kids due to covid uncertainty? Is Oregon going to then ramp up hiring, and have an oversupply of inexperienced teachers teaching kids?
At first glance, it seems like simply 1-2 years of lower birthrate, and thus we need to fire 20% of teachers, may be a knee jerk reaction.
Because my youngest daughter's generation, who will be entering schools in 4-5 years is 20% smaller than the year before her. COVID has done a number on people's decisions to have children.
Why wouldn't you have to fire 20% of teachers. If you have 100 kids and 4 teachers and now only have 75 kids the next year... one has to go? I'm not some public school polemicist. I'm just pointing out reality.
What makes you think it's 1-2 years of lower birthrate. The US birthrate is trending down as is. COVID likely just accelerated it. This is not about what I want; but a description of what is.
> Then also - how are we not sure that there would not be an uptick in population in 2022 and beyond to compensate for those who delayed kids due to covid uncertainty
That is not what the data show. COVID + a looming recession and people have not been having children.
So I did some reading to examine the idea that there would be an uptick. While it's true there was an uptick, of sorts. It didn't meet the downward trend, and as the article I read points out, economics is really what dicctates it. With rampant inflation that some predict will last several years, and high volatility, I don't see how we're going to get some magic baby boom. Perhaps by the time by youngest is in high school. The last inflationary period of the 70s lasted almost a decade.
Public school funding depends on enrollment. I don’t see how someone can see public schools being depleted of resources, students, and facing an exodus of teachers due to poor working conditions and think that it’s a good thing.
We should be lamenting the weakening of public services like schools, libraries and the USPS, not cheering when people opt for their private more expensive counterparts.
If there are no kids to teach... exactly what should public schools be doing? The Pandemic baby bust was not evenly distributed. Portland had an especially large baby bust.
I'm not sure what exactly is to be lamented. Am I sad people aren't having kids? Sure. But I can't make someone have a kid. I'm not going to begrudge someone choosing to send their kid to an actual school which stayed open during the pandemic, despite the better funded public schools shutting down. The 'expensive' counterparts (which again, spend less per kid) stayed open.
This is not some game where you get to moralize over people. People had to make real decisions and the schools simply weren't a viable option. Sometimes mothers and fathers both have to work and both are essential (healthcare workers, store employees, etc). Portland shut down a lot of daycares. There was no option. Either put out the money for private school that stayed open and educated your kid, or quit your job, and likely have to move away because you can't afford rent/mortgage. But sure... let's moralize over those parents who had to make tough decisions and now don't want to take their kids out of the classes they've spent two years embedding themselves in.
If the schools can't stay open... that's really on them. But nevertheless, if there's no kids, there's no one to teach, so obviously funding should be cut out of prudence.
I think much of the issue comes down to how school boards are being ran across America. They keep upping property taxes in my area and demanding more money yet they give students the crappiest Chromebooks and it seems the majority of money is to fund programs that only already wealthy families can benefit from, and the school board members to be able the afford their Tesla's and million dollar mansions.
I think teacher's would do more to evaluate how much money the school is getting and where that money is actually going.
What? Is it immigrants who are choosing to pay teachers such low wages relative to the education and other professional requirements we put on them? In my opinion, one of the key things that made this nation great was our high quality public education system, and we (native born citizens) are the ones dismantling it. Maybe I'm wrong though, can you point to anything showing how immigration is contributing to the problems in schools?
According to this, citizenship is not a requirement to be a teacher.
"""In the United States, citizenship is not a prerequisite for employment as a teacher. In fact, many areas that have a shortage of qualified teachers will recruit internationally to ensure their schools remain adequately staffed. For non-citizens, proper employment authorization is required to work in the United States."""
> Immigrants take from the system but don't contribute to the system.
Unless you have proof they are committing tax fraud at a rate greater than non immigrants or are otherwise in leadership political positions directing allocation of resources in an unfair manner, I have no idea what could substantiate your claim.
As the child of immigrants, I would easily say the situation is the opposite. My parents always earned too much to qualify for subsidies, but did not have the white collar job to take advantage of tax advantaged benefits like healthcare and retirement savings that people fluent in English and usually non immigrants get to take advantage of.
This sort of flamewar comment is off topic for HN. We've had to warn you about this before. We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, so please don't do it again.
As a father of homeschooling children who was homeschooled myself, it's sort of surreal to read about a system I've never benefited from as if it's a totally vital thing whose collapse would be disastrous.
I realize my perspective is probably warped by never having sat in a public school classroom, but from where I sit, it seems like the main thing the public school system really does from an economic perspective is provide childcare so both parents can work.
I had to be taught how to read, and the basics of mathematics, but from that point on I mostly taught myself and asked my parents (or siblings) for occasional help with things I got stuck on. Make no mistake, they put tons of time and effort into teaching us, but it wasn't anything close to eight hours a day per kid, especially by the time I reached high school.
I wonder if a high school system where teachers were more like room monitors / advisors might work better.
We admit that they're mostly there to keep teens out of trouble, and relieve them of the crippling responsibility for educating thirty humans every year.
Instead, they give advice and help to the students who ask for it, manage fights and interpersonal conflicts, and at the end of the year give each student up to a day to convince them they actually learned the material. So May's finals month, I guess.
That, I think, puts responsibility for the education where it belongs - in the student's hands.
It might even allow for a more distributed approach that works - if a student's parents trust the student to not be in class every day, they can give the teacher (mentor might be a better title) the schedule they approve, and the student can do their work where and when they like.
Decreasing student density would decrease the damage a shooter can do, presumably also decreasing desirability as a target. That's a debatable fringe benefit, though, not the main point.
...I guess I'm describing something closer to the college model, but with a bit more parental oversight than college usually involves.
I do think that puberty is the time to start having kids take ownership of their own lives, education included.
It may be my outsider perspective being completely wrong about what happens in a public school, but it seems to me the current US system really doesn't do that.
Good. It’s time the education system in the USA is razed down and rebuilt from scratch. There are at least half a dozen better alternatives to what is now currently woefully inadequate and obsolete.
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[ 1104 ms ] story [ 3409 ms ] thread> remain passionate about their vocation
Important choice of words. This is a universe away from "satisfied about their job remuneration".
The motivational psychology around some professions like nursing, teaching and policing is utterly different from, and incompatible with, the dominant commercial ideology.
In most industries you can pay people enough to suck up more of your stress and bullshit. Vocations don't work like that. You actually have to treat people with respect and listen to what they say. You, as a servant manager, are there to support them. And they in turn are there to serve their charges (patients, students, citizens). The power structure is upside down.
For example, my friend thought it was BS that if you put your name on the test you can't get under a 50%. Even with this policy, there were kids who would not put their names on the blank test, even if you tried to work with them. Another teacher I know had kids hit/kick/etc her.
This sort of stuff is demoralizing. What's the point of teaching if the kids don't care, you're assaulted, and the school policies are geared to passing kids off to the next grade without learning much? I think I would enjoy being a teacher as a retirement job, if it wasn't for all the horror storied I hear about behavior and misguided policies.
Somewhere in my post history is a link to a school district in Georgia who had dozens of faculty/staff die from covid over a few short weeks last summer. The median age of deceased faculty was 40 something. Teachers live this reality, but if they request PPE and vaccination standards they are called satanist traitors to America and get death threats.
This doesn’t even touch upon the moral panic currently sweeping certain parts of the country, where they are looking to criminalize teachers if they say the wrong thing to the wrong student. Literally they are calling teachers “groomers”. Do you have that straight? We teachers are unpatriotic, satanist, groomers who should simultaneously be armed to protect ourselves from gunmen, while our words are policed by the state. Oh and we are also expected to die for our classroom in case of a shooting.
Teachers are looking over their shoulders from every direction, so it really won’t surprise me if this exodus comes.
edit to the dead comment: my perspective comes from my own experience and that of my fellow teachers. And also that link I mentioned that I can't be bothered to dig up right now.
edit2: here's that link I mentioned: https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/60-georgia-teachers...
This kind of event went basically unnoticed in the larger scheme of things. But this kind of situation happened all across the country, without any time to grieve or even reflect on what was happening. Teachers were expected to be back to work, and worse we were told that it was perfectly fine and safe. Meanwhile many school districts were running short on substitute teachers to fill in for the covid deaths and hospitalizations within their ranks. GA had it worse than most -- average age of dead faculty that summer was just 46.
> Boy you must be fun at parties.
Not really, but "you're no fun" is hardly a rebuttal.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/25/harden-s...
[2] https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/lawma...
"passing laws to arm teachers" is hyperbolic and meant to rile up emotions and this effect couldn't be more obvious on GP.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
> "arm the teachers"
> a bill that would allow local school districts, if they so chose, to designate armed staff for school security and safety
No one is forcing teachers to become armed.
Reading this, my first thought was 'This must be a joke, surely'. But, sadly, it isn't.
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/police-investigating-report...
sounds like a reflection of how few kids were ever engaged with education. even if their bodies had been shoved into a classroom.
The professions are related in that both nurses and teachers tend to be overworked and exposed to health risks (especially during the pandemic).
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180646
[2] - https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/report-90-nurses-consi...
I mean, yes, a lot of "low status" jobs are dominated by women, and this is an unfortunate pattern, but I don't think the gender is driving the status, or the attrition problems?
Yeah, it's perhaps a decent way to measure sentiment but not at all likely to be reliable to predict actions. You can "consider leaving" your profession in the next year for 30 years straight. If there are no attractive alternatives, you're just not gonna do it.
I had some great teachers (and horrible ones) and I remember one explaining how he liked his job because it had a built-in two month sabbatical each year and it allowed him and his family to have a pretty unique travel plan. He had an option to be paid over 10 months while he taught (annual/10) or spread over the whole year (annual/12) and he got insurance either way. So he had a very regimented plan where he taught for 35 years, did cool travel each summer and retired at 55 or something with 75-100% income.
There aren’t many other jobs that offer that structure.
Of course the job is demanding, but most jobs are. I’m not sure how to reconcile the job difficulty Olympics so I usually just nod and agree when people go on about their job is hard.
For comparison, I’ve always had to spend $500-2000/year on supplies and equipment. It’s not right and my employer should, but they never had in 30 years. And I work in programming. So it seems like all employers are lame about not paying for all supplies so I don’t quite think this is a unique negative factor. For comparison, my six grader had a list of supplies that cost $200 for the year and included 25% going to a common pool. So the school system not paying for supplies dings parents in addition to teachers.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were approximately 10.6 million educators working in public education in January 2020; today there are just 10.0 million, a net loss of around 600,000.
The BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey found that the ratio of hires to job openings in the education sector reached new lows as the 2021-22 school year started. It currently stands at 0.59 hires for every open position, a large decrease from 1.54 in 2010 and 1.06 in 2016.
Regardless, IMO it’s less likely a teacher stays because of wanting a summer break, and more that there aren’t alternative jobs for them.
Personally I know a lot of teachers who hate it, but are stuck.
The US pays teachers pretty well compared to other countries [0] but that doesn’t mean that all areas pay well.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-country-...
Most teachers have extremely high anxiety and are stressed to the max. Neverending paperwork, admin that won't help, and parents that don't care and/or are extremely overbearing. It's a grind and it really takes a special kind of person to do that job yet we pay them so little.
I don't doubt all of your points, and can imagine the frustration, but regarding the summer off being interrupted by planning work, what's to plan? If you're teaching mostly the same thing year after year, wouldn't you have an established plan that doesn't require significant modification? What does "get ready for the next school year" entail?
I’m bookmarking this as a delightful example of “begging the question,” wherein the question is actually begged. You correctly identified and ran past the fundamental underlying assumption: teachers teach virtually the same thing each year.
In reality, curriculum changes can happen as a result of (1) changes in the underlying textbook and course material, precipitated by publishers (2) changes in student and teacher KPIs precipitated by school administration, (3) changes in technological education-delivery platforms, precipitated by school IT, (4) personal changes, precipitated by experience and personal/professional motivation, and (5) changes in professional best-practices, precipitated by scholarship and professional organizations; to name a few.
These things happen regularly, and often simultaneously.
If you're a teacher, I'm sure you're tired of hearing people wonder whether teachers are working all summer, but the fact is it's a great fucking question and you shouldn't be offended when someone asks it. It beggars belief, and it's a question that should be asked over and over again until the answer is "no".
1. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/...
Your link attempts to quantify the hours teachers work during a work week.
Your statement is unrelated to mine, did you mean to reply elsewhere?
> Teachers are still required to plan and get ready for the next school year over the summer. . .
I thought this was more or less the entire topic of interest. That, and how much teachers work. What do you think the conversation is about? Pretty confused how you could think it's not relevant. You were needlessly combative earlier, so I guess I could chalk it up to that.
Yes, I think my assumption is common. Thanks for the list. The entire thing consists of events I would have expected to happen very infrequently.
"KPIs precipitated by school administration" - sounds horrific. Way too easy to screw up.
Edit: also wasn’t a huge number of changes made recently on state levels to target schools that teach anything a parent might deem CRT/LGBTQ shit? I’d expect lots of teachers to need to change their lesson plans regularly because of wild political environment nonsense…
I know many teachers nowadays too. They are friends and neighbors.
In my county, teachers get 10 weeks off and they go back a week early to prepare for school. They also have a few days at the end of the year to wrap up. So it’s actually only 8-9 weeks off where they don’t have to think about school. Of course many do. Just like I think about work on my vacation.
Pay in my state is $53k/year, slightly over the average salary of $51k. So teachers aren’t paid “so little” in my state. It’s not an amazing salary, but it’s ok.
It doesn’t take a “special kind of person” any more than countless other jobs. People fit into jobs and don’t fit into jobs.
I don’t doubt that teachers are stressed out, but I don’t know how much more stressed than other professions. Most jobs are stressful. At least teachers don’t have to worry about layoffs and they have a pension and they have summers off. So there’s pros and cons.
(1) Average salary of teachers is approximately 40% less than the average salary of any STEM-related-field worker).[1]
(2) Schools are a unique legal environment with respect to torts and the criminal law in that actions against teachers which would in other contexts constitute unlawful acts appropriate for remedy in courts is instead most often investigated, adjudicated, and penalty rendered by a combination of the school’s head, administration, and resource officers.
There is also the non-emergent but nevertheless constantly renewed concern about the viability and mortality of teachers and students with respect to mass violence as well.[2]
[1]https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf
[2]https://www.chds.us/ssdb/
By contrast, the BLS [1] says the median pay is $60k, and the bottom 10% earns at most $45k.
This doesn't seem to square with "most teachers make less than $37k".
Perhaps the BLS data is skewed? I'm Canadian, so don't know how they collect it. But my intuition is that they are likely to have access to much better data than ZipRecruiter. The fact that ZipRecruiter thinks no teacher earns between $55k and $70k is also a little dubious.
[1]: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/high-...
I’d just note that the statistics you cite relate to high school teachers, who are compensated most highly among K-12 teachers, while the discussion in the thread and the ZipRecruiter data relates to teachers broadly, including K-8.
I put my comment together based on a quick google search and an appreciation for graphics; BUT, I’d take the BLS survey’s response bias over ZipRecruiter’s sample bias any day (the data is derived from ZR’s own job listings).
I’ll make edits to reflect your information. I think the underlying observation that teachers are compensated much less than tech workers is unchallenged (average salary of a teachers is approximately 40% less than the average salary of any STEM-related-field worker).[1]
[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf
This makes sense as teachers are basically median pay and STEM is much above median. Also, I think STEM has a very different skill set and higher risk. People get fired all the time in STEM while teacher is a very low risk job.
Not happening anymore.
To save money they technically get laid off every summer and rehired in the fall. They do this because the schoolboard budget can be changed at any moment. If they need to layoff a lot of teachers the formal paperwork is already done. You can imagine this can be extremely stressful, especially for new teachers.
> I’ve always had to spend $500-2000/year on supplies and equipment.
That is supplies bought to use for you by you. It would be different if you bought supplies for someone else.
My point is that many people buy supplies for their work, it’s not unique to teaching. It’s surprising that it’s brought up as it it’s some unique factor.
Sure, with the money their work budgets for those supplies. Teachers are having to spend part of their own paychecks to buy supplies.
If your job requires you to pay for supplies out of your own paycheck then that's obviously a raw deal, just a sneaky way to pay lower wages.
I agree that it sucks that we aren’t reimbursed by our employers.
At least teachers get a small tax credit. Better than nothing, but still not enough.
Passion for teaching only takes you so far when you can't afford anything.
IMHO, it's worth keeping in mind that this about more than the stress of the pandemic. The increasing costs of student loans (and the cost of servicing them after graduation) may also make teaching positions less attractive and, perhaps, unsustainable.
Here is a random article from before the pandemic.
+ 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/06/teacher-shor...
And one that is more recent.
+ 2022: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/05/us/teacher-prep-student-short...
You have the greater forces of an industry that conspires to exclude one gender and all but one ideology. The shortage is self-inflicted. Exceedingly few people are being allowed to do the job.
Edit: downvote away but the numbers don't lie. Male elementary school teachers hasn't passed 18% in decades (it's even worse in K-3 where we're talking low single digits) and there are multiple news stories covering the reasons. If you don't think men aren't being chased out of that profession then you don't know any teachers.
Wages absolutely have everything to do with it, why deny it and try to make it a political issue (lol)?
Few people do the job because it's an extremely bad deal. You will make more as a bartender than you will as a teacher, with the added bonus of a restaurant manager willing to kick out unruly guests whereas a school admin will likely side with the parents.
Typically the jobs that are most useful to society pay extremely bad (janitors, garbage collection, teachers, nursing assistants, dock workers, delivery people, etc). I'd checkout bullshit jobs manifesto if you haven't"
https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/
You hear this over and over and nobody ever provides numbers, they just assure you it's horrible.
I would gladly take a 20% pay cut to get the same perks.
I could probably negotiate that if I left for a bigger company. This would also likely require a move.
this is a shame really. teaching is the one profession where gender parity should be enforced by law because kids need the rolemodels.
i spent a year in a US highschool, and the teachers i had there were fantastic. my teacher in US history was most enthusiastic, and i enjoyed the class despite failing it.
that was a few decades ago. and already then it was known that teachers don't get paid well. my conclusion then was that the one good thing that comes from low pay is that in order to become a teacher you have to really love it.
I wonder if the people cooking at fast food restaurants or janitors cleaning bathrooms or people stocking shelves at wal mart really love it. And does loving a job necessarily correlate with being able to do the job?
you don't spend years in college to become a janitor.
and as for love correlating with ability. it's up to the teacher-training programs to weed out those incapable of teaching. i don't know how it's done in the US but elsewhere teachers have to spend many hours in classrooms under supervision before they get their own classes. a big part of teaching is classroom management and there, love and enthusiasm make a big impact.
https://www.business.org/hr/workforce-management/best-us-sta...
Is there a bulge of experienced teachers getting 100k/year that pulls the average up? Does the pay range max out at 80k no matter how long you are there?
This data is more useful than the average.
However, the perks are better. For one, if they have children, they can attend the school for free. They also get very sophisticated lunches that only cost them $5/day.
If we use your argument about wages, teaching "should" only require ~2 years of college (~63rd percentile education level).
Tell me you don't know anything about teachers without telling me, etc.
"Relax and recharge" is hardly the story for most teachers. Those salary averages you cite obscure the reality that teacher pay is often determined by degrees and certifications. When do teachers pursue those, so they can advance past the lowest band? That's right: summer. Many have to make up professional-development days just to stay at their current level. (How much mandatory structured professional development has anyone here had to do since they started their careers?) A lot of curriculum development happens as unpaid summer work. Then there are summer jobs to make up budget shortfalls (exacerbated by having to pay for their own supplies during the year), reconnecting with families they hardly got to see during the year, and so on.
There are other highly demanding and poorly paid jobs, to be sure. One could make a reasonable argument that teaching is not uniquely bad. On the other hand, trying to argue that teachers are doing great because some get 13% above average for all those extra college years and they all get summers off is counterfactual to the point of dishonesty.
"Everything" is too far. My male friend abandoned teaching after doing his student teaching and earning his license. It had nothing to do with pay. He took a lower paying job in a more expensive area. He said the school policies were terrible and the too many kids were misbehaved and most were uninteresting in learning.
He didn't say anything about gender issues, so I assume he didn't experience any, or that they weren't noteworthy.
https://www.eeoc.gov/sex-based-discrimination
Please contact a local attorney as this is a slam dunk case if they are truly discriminating based on sex.
You're going to be spending years in the courtroom rather than engaged in your career. It's lose-lose.
Also you're a non-working teacher with no money versus the complete resources of the State. LOL good luck with that.
Don't be so foolish to think that going to court is an easy answer to problems. Court battles last a long time, especially if one party has vast resources AND/OR is an unreasonable person.
My family has been in court suing each other since 1989 without end. Appeals are not completely exhausted yet. Tens of millions have been thrown away at chasing a couple of million. Lawyers have gotten rich off us. Newspaper articles have been written about our family fued. Don't be stupid.
Reframe your statement around race instead of gender and it should be obvious what a disgusting opinion that would be to hold.
I'm trying to point out what I think is the most important demographic of stakeholders that is responsible for perpetuating the gender imbalance in the industry.
something tells me that if similar discrimination was applied in the opposite direction (eg. "the community trusts male police more", or "shareholders trusts male CEOs more"), there would be government interventions to fix that "attitude".
Speaking of, if you think the skewed gender ratio in teaching is evidence of a conspiracy, what do you make of the gender ratio in software development and other engineering fields?
As for software engineering itself, it's mostly a crappy thankless job that is only offset by the pay. The hardest part of the job is not quitting. I do it because I don't want to do anything else.
Anyway, you're still just studying to be the thing that we're talking about here. Let's talk after you've been on your own and working for 2-3 years. That's about how long my cousin lasted as a first grade teacher before he gave it up for construction. Also in the NYC area.
The "conspiracy" or "ideology", if any, was that until recently only men could get all the other jobs.
FWIW, I know someone who works at a local elementary school and there are male teachers there, none of whom are being "chased out".
Some rural districts near me are offering houses and cars in lieu of actual dollars. These districts are chronically understaffed and quite poor. So other forms of value have to be transferred in order to attract teachers.
Not that it does any good really. The houses and cars tend to be in bad condition/s, and then there's a fun little federal tax burden you get for being gifted such items. That and the rural districts tend to the end of the road for a teaching career. Since the pay is so bad, you can't save up to move back to a city district, or get more professional credentials, or advance your career in any real way. That and you have to live in a really small town as an outsider that doesn't really 'belong' there.
I feel for those districts, but the math is the math. It's not worth it to become a rural teacher if you have other options.
[1] https://www.niche.com/k12/berry-hill-elementary-school-syoss...
* Friend’s husband is quitting this upcoming year and is going into grad school to reboot his career in an unrelated maths field.
* Woman I graduated with went back to work at my HS, super cute story, but left two years ago after only a few years teaching and is a mother / housewife now.
* Another woman, close friend, just up and quit with no notice no plan because the stress put her on medical leave and her school offered no accommodation. She moved to Colorado and works in a dispensary now.
* Another woman I’ve known since kindergarten who’s life dream was to be an elementary school teacher quit this year with no plan other than moving to Atlanta and looking at grad schools.
* Yet another friend who taught elementary school English quit this year and now works two part time jobs as a copy editor and cheese maker. He’s way less stressed now and I actually get to hang out with him.
* I can keep going, an older family friend who’s been teaching for 20 years quit last year because she was so burnt out and demoralized. She now does 3D modeling remotely and does woodworking as a side hustle.
* Bosses wife, also older, taught around 10 years I think also quit this year for an IT admin job.
Look I work in a quaint little tech shop completely unrelated to education. There’s no way I somehow self-selected for teachers who are exiting the field. Maybe this is somehow the normal level of turnover but damn.
Most people bring up higher pay as a panacea. Surely, huge salaries would attract more people to the profession. But even software developers making $300k+ per year get burned out and leave for a easier career. And I'm willing to bet that teaching is significantly more stressful as writing software.
We need to make being a teacher suck less, not just more lucrative.
My statistical assumption would be that this is because you can't just switch professions and stay at the level that you were at before. You can't go from being a teacher with 10 years of experience to being an accountant with 10 years of experience in 1 year. They're leaving to start over again. Of course the jobs pay less (or the same because teachers are underpaid); if they were also equally stressful, there'd have been no reason to leave teaching.
Where are they going to all go?
Or perhaps you now have the option of moving to a cheaper city, or further from your former workplace. That could easily be a double-digit percentage savings from your budget.
EDIT: And, uh...there are tons of service jobs in my city. Haven't you heard the endless whining from business owners that "nobody wants to work anymore"? They're struggling to fill openings.
Edit: Due to demographic shifts, about a million people dropped out of the labor force during COVID (death, retirement, etc) and there’s a 300k worker shortage predicted every year (slowly increasing YoY) until 2034 (when we’ll have a 900k workers shortage).
High level, population pyramids are incompatible with dysfunctional economic systems that rely on perpetual growth.
For example, my <1 year old daughter's generation is only 80% of what it should be due to COVID. Thus, we'd have to fire 20% of teachers.
My home district of Portland, OR is already starting to see enrollment cuts as people have already started their kids in the always-open private schools or opted for homeschooling as well.
So you have the combined forces of people choosing non-public options and simply having less kids. We won't need as many teachers.
Source: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/02/16/portland-public-schoo...
Which Portland seems to be in line with: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/04/27/portland-public-schoo...
Are schools overcrowded and teachers overworked? Here in Georgia they are and I'm not aware of many places that are. Maybe having a lower teacher/student ratio closer to normal can help with the issues that current students are seeing due to 1-2 years of remote learning.
Then also - how are we not sure that there would not be an uptick in population in 2022 and beyond to compensate for those who delayed kids due to covid uncertainty? Is Oregon going to then ramp up hiring, and have an oversupply of inexperienced teachers teaching kids?
At first glance, it seems like simply 1-2 years of lower birthrate, and thus we need to fire 20% of teachers, may be a knee jerk reaction.
Why wouldn't you have to fire 20% of teachers. If you have 100 kids and 4 teachers and now only have 75 kids the next year... one has to go? I'm not some public school polemicist. I'm just pointing out reality.
What makes you think it's 1-2 years of lower birthrate. The US birthrate is trending down as is. COVID likely just accelerated it. This is not about what I want; but a description of what is.
> Then also - how are we not sure that there would not be an uptick in population in 2022 and beyond to compensate for those who delayed kids due to covid uncertainty
That is not what the data show. COVID + a looming recession and people have not been having children.
So I did some reading to examine the idea that there would be an uptick. While it's true there was an uptick, of sorts. It didn't meet the downward trend, and as the article I read points out, economics is really what dicctates it. With rampant inflation that some predict will last several years, and high volatility, I don't see how we're going to get some magic baby boom. Perhaps by the time by youngest is in high school. The last inflationary period of the 70s lasted almost a decade.
Where I'm sourcing data: https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2022/06/the-pandemic-...
So again, are we to keep teachers around without need for potentially a decade? Why?
We should be lamenting the weakening of public services like schools, libraries and the USPS, not cheering when people opt for their private more expensive counterparts.
I'm not sure what exactly is to be lamented. Am I sad people aren't having kids? Sure. But I can't make someone have a kid. I'm not going to begrudge someone choosing to send their kid to an actual school which stayed open during the pandemic, despite the better funded public schools shutting down. The 'expensive' counterparts (which again, spend less per kid) stayed open.
This is not some game where you get to moralize over people. People had to make real decisions and the schools simply weren't a viable option. Sometimes mothers and fathers both have to work and both are essential (healthcare workers, store employees, etc). Portland shut down a lot of daycares. There was no option. Either put out the money for private school that stayed open and educated your kid, or quit your job, and likely have to move away because you can't afford rent/mortgage. But sure... let's moralize over those parents who had to make tough decisions and now don't want to take their kids out of the classes they've spent two years embedding themselves in.
If the schools can't stay open... that's really on them. But nevertheless, if there's no kids, there's no one to teach, so obviously funding should be cut out of prudence.
I think teacher's would do more to evaluate how much money the school is getting and where that money is actually going.
Immigrants take from the system but don't contribute to the system.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/10/americas-pu...
According to this, citizenship is not a requirement to be a teacher.
"""In the United States, citizenship is not a prerequisite for employment as a teacher. In fact, many areas that have a shortage of qualified teachers will recruit internationally to ensure their schools remain adequately staffed. For non-citizens, proper employment authorization is required to work in the United States."""
Unless you have proof they are committing tax fraud at a rate greater than non immigrants or are otherwise in leadership political positions directing allocation of resources in an unfair manner, I have no idea what could substantiate your claim.
As the child of immigrants, I would easily say the situation is the opposite. My parents always earned too much to qualify for subsidies, but did not have the white collar job to take advantage of tax advantaged benefits like healthcare and retirement savings that people fluent in English and usually non immigrants get to take advantage of.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I realize my perspective is probably warped by never having sat in a public school classroom, but from where I sit, it seems like the main thing the public school system really does from an economic perspective is provide childcare so both parents can work.
I had to be taught how to read, and the basics of mathematics, but from that point on I mostly taught myself and asked my parents (or siblings) for occasional help with things I got stuck on. Make no mistake, they put tons of time and effort into teaching us, but it wasn't anything close to eight hours a day per kid, especially by the time I reached high school.
I wonder if a high school system where teachers were more like room monitors / advisors might work better.
We admit that they're mostly there to keep teens out of trouble, and relieve them of the crippling responsibility for educating thirty humans every year.
Instead, they give advice and help to the students who ask for it, manage fights and interpersonal conflicts, and at the end of the year give each student up to a day to convince them they actually learned the material. So May's finals month, I guess.
That, I think, puts responsibility for the education where it belongs - in the student's hands.
It might even allow for a more distributed approach that works - if a student's parents trust the student to not be in class every day, they can give the teacher (mentor might be a better title) the schedule they approve, and the student can do their work where and when they like.
Decreasing student density would decrease the damage a shooter can do, presumably also decreasing desirability as a target. That's a debatable fringe benefit, though, not the main point.
...I guess I'm describing something closer to the college model, but with a bit more parental oversight than college usually involves.
I do think that puberty is the time to start having kids take ownership of their own lives, education included.
It may be my outsider perspective being completely wrong about what happens in a public school, but it seems to me the current US system really doesn't do that.