Teachers: paid too much, or too little?

Do you have any hard data to suggest that students at catholic schools are, on average, significantly wealthier? I know they are at secular private schools (have to be when they charge tuition comparable to a private college - in many cases more after accounting for scholarship at private colleges), but I haven't seen anything to suggest a substantial difference in the wealth of families sending students to catholic vs public high schools.

Now if you don't think SATs are a good measure, what do you think is a better measure?

Students have been expelled from public schools for pretty light reasons, and these "troublesome" students can be permanently expelled from an entire state's school system (so a 12yo expelled couldn't go to high school in that state).

 

Once again, under free market capitalism schools compete for teachers on the basis of compensation and job description.

Private schools have different compensation formulas and they also have different job descriptions.

I know private school science teachers who don't like the idiots in the state legislature telling them how to teach science. I'm sure there are parochial school science teachers who are glad they can teach religion in biology and physics class. They like that they have a career path. They like that they have a better opportunity to work with other teachers to provide a more interdisciplinary approach. They like a multi-lingual classroom. Or, whatever.

There is a competition for teaching talent, and the schools approach that competition in different ways, with the privates having more flexibility - especially in job definition.

Suggesting that that means teachers are paid too much isn't a sensible approach - it doesn't suggest what improvements can be made. It also proposes that we are attracting the teachers we need - and I don't believe we are. (Let's remember that salary offers need to be based on who we want, not the capabilities of who we already have.)

Trying to hire public school STEM teachers is essentially impossible in many areas, because of the significant opportunities outside education for those who excel in STEM subjects. If we were to offer less, individuals would be even more likely to accept jobs in some other profession or some other school.

 

There are other divides, too. Private schools select their students, and the applicants are those coming from homes where education is a priority (or they wouldn't have applied - regardless of wealth or tuition).

Those are serious selectors.

 

Lol, no I've said this over and over again and I don't know how else to say it, so I'll just try once more - whether teachers are over or underpaid is a FAIRNESS claim, what you're speaking of is a public policy issue. When teachers complain "we don't get paid enough", they don't mean, "as a matter of public policy, we should raise teacher salaries to attract better teachers (than us)." I don't know how anyone can think that's what they're saying.

The OP, I think quite clearly, is addressing the FAIRNESS claim. By jumping straight to the public policy matter you're creating a straw man - I didn't say "we should lower teacher compensation".

yeah, i already mentioned exactly that issue - how STEM teachers are harder to find because there is private market alternatives that offer better compensation for less work. But for English teachers? Not really.

I mean, I did mention science and math teachers as a caveat, but you're using them as a reason why English teachers aren't over-compensated. It doesn't make sense.

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yeah ok... so can you tell me why you think parent's who place a priority on their child's education are far less likely to send them to public school? Are they all just silly and misguided parents? Because it sounds to me like you're suggesting public vs. private makes no real difference.

 

Well, at least locally, the public schools are at over 50% free/reduced lunch.

Table 8 of http://www.census.gov/hhes/school/data/cps/2012/tables.html has information.

15% of public school only families make less than $20k a year. 40.7% make between $20k and $75k a year. 26% make $76k and over.
7.5% of private school only familes make less than $20k a year. 27% make between $20k and $75k a year. 50.5% make $76k and over.

So yes, there is a significant difference.

That's for private schools as a whole, but since catholic schools make up over 40% of private school students, and the non-sectarian schools (the extremely rich ones) only about 11%, that seems pretty typical.

There really isn't one. I can just tell you the limitations of SATs, due to those kinds of things. Private schools, IMHO, are afraid to use the same standardized tests the public schools use. I say this having been involved in both. The main difference is the quality of families, IMHO.

Not as light as the Catholic schools, per experience. My wife was an assistant principal at Public schools for 7 years, principal at Catholic School for 2 years. She was involved in almost as many expulsions in the Catholic schools in 2 years, as the public for 7 years (less than 200 student private school, more than 500 student public school).

 

What illiterate parents are you talking about? The ones who are a product of the USA public education system?

For centuries people learned to read and write without the government. For 1,000's of years, all Jews rich and poor learned to read and write in the synagogue and demonstrated their ability at age 13 at the bar Mitzvah (for boys) and bat Mitzvah (for girls) - yes, boys and girls were expected to be able to read and write.

 

Sure. And public teacher pensions are funded separately and so excluded from the figures.

 

One problem is defining what a teacher's job actually is. Is it to introduce material to students in a comprehensive manner? Or is it to obtain results? If it is to obtain results, we'd do better outsourcing the job to the Chinese.

I guess the biggest problem is that we really do expect results. Teach the damn carpet munchers so that they can compete with the rest of the world. They aren't doing that in many districts so for those teachers, they are getting paid far too much.

 

Elementary-High school underpaid. Professors are overpaid.

 

Some teachers are overrated. The teaching profession is underrated. Every child "needs" a good education. Very few of them will ever need a brain surgeon.

 

It depends on the teacher, but generally speaking, teachers in the "public" sector tend to be overcompensated. And they tacitly acknowledge this through their manipulation of the political process. In other words, they use the political system to insulate themselves from competition, which is why they are so vehemently opposed to things like the school choice movement. They know they are benefiting from unearned privileges.

 

this is also true of other countries, they pick who gets educate, we educate everyone, so our averages will be lower even though out society is better educated on a whole

 

I don't know what you mean by "fairness". I did read the OP before I replied to any post on this thread.

I think many teachers are saying that their compensation is low enough that they are considering leaving. Public school teachers have a high rate of leaving the profession, as they have other options - as you point out, that is especially true for STEM, but "other options" can include continuing at a university or whatever. Those who study English aren't somehow damned to an English-only future. It takes a LOT more than engineers to create an iPhone, for example. These corporations need people who understand communication - which is what teachers are serious about.

Remember that one must consider both compensation and job definition. So, one can even consider the salary for staying home ($0), which still may wipe out the cost of child care and certainly has other benefits in the job description.



I didn't say that parents who care about education are less likely to send them to public school.

I DID say that a parent who steps out of the default position of public education IS a parent who cares about education.

Those may sound similar, but the point is that every private school has ZERO students where the parent didn't care about education. Every one of them had to take action, often costing significant dollars. That makes a very different school environment. It also concentrates those whose parents don't care, making teaching more of a challenge in the public sector.

 

1. Wait, they means test a public benefit? At public schools? That's messed up. So the parents who are well-off and pay the bulk of the school's budget have to then pay even more so their kids can eat at school? That's just messed up. Have free lunches or don't.
1.a) this is part of the problem I've noticed with the data before. It's readily obvious to me that students at non-religious private schools come from wealthy families - when the tuition is commonly around 30k/yr, you HAVE to be. But Catholic schools are a different matter. I'm not sure about your locale, but I think using specific locales is problematic because they vary so widely. Like I said before, my high school took all students (special ed too), had a great athletics program (at the time more than 30 state football championships), the best music program in the state, SAT scores more than a 100 pts higher than the neighboring high school - but the tuition per pupil was barely over half what the neighboring town's public school got per pupil.
2. Every measure I've seen suggests private schools do better. My home state has it's own testing standards and the private schools did better there on the standards (which everyone high school, public or not, was required by state law to administer)
3. Well again, that's anecdotal - and while I recognize your wife has more experience in the system than I, it is still an anecdote.

 

This is the exact point. You can NOT compare schools that draw from different populations. By definition if a school is something other than a public school the parents have expressed an overt interest in their child's education by making a CHOICE to make the EFFORT to get their kid in there. The only way to compare is to have a public school compared to a private school that must take every kid they are zoned for and the zones between the two schools are similiar.

 

Alright, let me explain the fairness bit. I know a lot of teachers, and they often complain about not getting paid enough - for reference, none of them ever consider leaving the profession for lack of pay (from what I've heard from them), but they feel that they deserve more. They think it is unfair how much they get paid (that is, they think what would be fair is for them to get paid more). I'm responding to that, and I'm saying that teachers are, in fact, as a matter of fairness, overpaid. This can be judged quite simply by looking at their compensation vs private sector - and compensation is FAR more than just salary.

What you're talking about is public policy. Now I'm saying they're overpaid - you're responding as if I had said, "we should reduce teacher salaries". That isn't what I'm talking about, at all. You're welcome to continue arguing against that straw man, but that isn't my point.

k.

 

True, but I don't know of any industrialized nation that doesn't provide a general education through high school as a minimum.

Russia has concentrated on getting its population through college.

 

That's only if you value a teacher's worth according to results. But that's the gig! Whether it's in a private or public school, the gig is to grab students by the ear and pull them towards the trough of learnin'.

If you can't do that, then you're not a teacher. It doesn't matter what happens at home. The job is in the classroom.

 

I actually had such a situation when I was young - but I readily accept that anecdotes shouldn't be factored in. But, just for consideration, my high school was a private high school that had a contract with the town to take all of it's high school age students. It charged far less than the neighboring town's public school did (and the centers [as in "downtown"] of each town were right on the same river). It was also far better.

Though, again, it's an anecdote, and I don't put forward my alma mater as a typical high school. It was and remains exceptional.

 

For some numbers, a 2015 article for worldwide math and science scores is linked below.

I would like to see a lot more apprentices for real jobs, with tax money giving the companies a modest incentive to use apprentices.
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http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...nd-science-but-still-lagging-internationally/
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Its an interesting example. I'm not saying its not possible that your claim is correct I just think the data is not in on a large enough scale yet to make the claim.

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And I do not see the evidence that the job will be better done for less money in a private school vs public school

 

I do not underestimate the use of computers in medicine, far from it, Robotics in Surgery is great advantage and upcoming technology as well as linking far away Countries, checking prescriptions as far as contraindications and medical records and for research purposes is another avenue, you need humans and computers together, not computers replacing humans especially in diagnosing and prescriptions, human oversight is still very important.

 

Yeah, it doesn't matter what's going on at home, it's the teacher's responsibility to make something of these kids. From homes with no books, lousy junk food, and 1-3 televisions playing all day and most of the night. Parents working 1-2 jobs each. Yeah, that's A student fertile ground, there. Darn teachers driving their '95 Hondas, thinking they all fancy....

 

I think some teachers are overpaid and some underpaid. I would like to see teacher salaries based on how well the pupils score on tests and in life.

 

I don't believe your argument is any better than theirs. There can be significant differences in the job definitions for private and public schools. The same goes for "computer programmer". Some get paid more than others. If you don't like it, then try switching. As an employer, if you have an easy or especially exciting task you may be able to pay less for a programmer. If you have a serious task, then you may need to improve the job description and/or improve the compensation.

Some private schools are able to pay less, because the students are all stars and they can be part of creating something to their liking (such as mixing religion and science or mixing economics and history, or whatever) - job description.

Public schools CAN do this stuff, too, if the powers that be can be won over. There is a public middle school in Hood River, OR that bases its science/math around their greenhouse where the kids have to qualify in math and geometry and then get to start doing carefully measured and analyzed science. The teacher had the kids working with the school and the architectural firm for the greenhouse throughout the design process and through many of the political meetings with education higher-ups. The architectural firm was resistant at first, but the kids made some key modifications including the positioning of the building and its systems based on aspects such as sun movement during the school year. They run a store (with economics included) where you can buy the freshest vegetables in the state (they harvest what you order while they ring up your bill). They operate a small bakery. Every step includes economics, biology, employment law, history, chemistry, math, health, etc. They pass the state tests more as an afterthought.

I'm not saying we should raise teacher salaries. I'm saying we need to grow a world class education system. I'll admit that I do believe we will need to increase compensation to be successful at hiring the people we need in order to do that. But, the objective has to be a world class education system for all. And, that has to include college for ALL who can and have any desire and it has to include vocational tracking for those who want that direction. If Russia can do it, we should be able to do it, too.