Why? It is perfectly fair for a taxpayer to question public spending, including for salaries. It is when we stop questioning, or start making statements that we should not question something, that we end up with a situation that spending go out of whack since there is no oversight. BTW, that is exactly what happens in the case of CEO compensations also.
Secondly, regarding $150K+ salaries for teachers, how do these salaries compare to the salaries of fresh Asst. and Associate Profs at Universities. Many of them are paid lower I believe, for example Assistant Prof. at UC Berkeley seems to make about $100K [0]. So, there needs to be some oversight around teacher salaries also to make sure that the salaries are actually going to well educated competent teachers and not the ones with some random degree from the University of Phoenix or similar. Education and experience in teachers should be rewarded and the salaries should not be flattened.
EDIT: To add, there are student evaluations for Profs at all Universities. Where are the student/parent evaluations of public school teachers? How are they graded? How are they promoted? Assessment results? If so that is not the correct method, since IMHO it depends more on the parents than it does on teachers. I'll hypothesize, put a bad teacher from a crappy school district in a currently great school district and I guarantee the scores will not change much, if at all.
[0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/uc-berkeley-associate-pro...
Per that logic FAANGs should be paying the least to their software engineers, since prestige..
Sorry, but while I’ll agree there may be something to it when comparing one university to another, it doesn’t add up when comparing a K-12 school teacher to a PhD faculty.
Moreover that was just an example, other universities’ salaries are similar..
FAANG high salaries are due to the low supply of engineers skilled enough. Otherwise, FAANG would not compete on pay. As high as FAANG pays, supply is still not high enough to lower pay significantly.
OP is arguing that teachers should not be compared to professors because supply may still not be high relative to demand. Additionally, the job is still essential enough to keep demand high despite lack of prestige.
In a university setting a problematic and disruptive student just gets kicked out. Nowhere near as much drama.
If you’re comparing entry level professorship at UC Berkeley, then the highest paid position for a first-year teacher with the maximum number of extended education credits (since I assume you need a higher degree for professorship) is 69k.
[0] https://www.sfusd.edu/information-employees/labor-relations/...
It's also a good way for a country to fall behind.
I’m merely objecting to the fact that the salaries can’t be questioned by tax payers, and am questioning what is the metrics used in their promotion, since I’ve never seen any input ever being solicited from students/parents unlike in universities. I want the same standards employed.
Ideally I want the salaries to be high enough to attract highly qualified people who are subject matter experts and not random barebones online degree holders.
In addition, I’m saying that the university faculty salaries are low. So in fact I’m advocating for those to be higher.
When it's almost 19,000 public employee's being paid over $150,000 in SF, that kind of does sound excessive especially in the context of a budget deficit.
> These public workers are in charge of essential duties. Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.
It-least in [3] they never use the word Teacher. They do claim the average Firefighter Comp is 191,000 in SF. Maybe it's not 191K but isn't there some number where people in charge essential duties can be "overpaid" ?
I don't know about you, but I'd have to compare it to cost of living references and public employee's per capita to begin to have an understanding. Even if I had that, there are many other factors I'd want to explore: what's the impact of CoL and commuting? What's the impact of employees not living in the jurisdictional area? What are the structural systems which function to determine salaries, both as an interaction with labor markets and those that have been institutionalized? If I was hired as a consultant to make judgements on SF public spending, in short, I'd do my due diligence.
This is not to say that firefighters are not essential workers, of course they are. We can make an argument that every firefighter should be paid 500k or 1 million. Heck, they save lives, so why not 10 million?
Ultimately, the vast majority of people not in public sector work doesn't get to make these kinds of arguments, and are simply forced to take market rates.
If it’s the latter then that’s an argument that compensation is too high if anything. It should be rebalanced such that some of it is used for training.
If the former then that’s just alien to me. Here in Australia firefighting is a prestigious job with a lot of competition. People volunteer to do it for free or do it part time while working another primary job, for years, in the hopes of being able to become a full time firey.
For any employer, private or public, slashing salaries and benefits is a great way to start trending towards 100% turnover, which is a pretty negative outcome if you want to maintain any semblance of operation.
Don't equate that with arguing for Austerity.
https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-... [1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia [2]
Are teachers overpaid, or are people in SF underpaid relative to the value of a house?
Afford to live in the community is significantly more important but In general I think it is better if they can do both. However home's are assets & assets can have bubbles. I don't think the public should necessarily be paying wages such that someone can buy a home at any cost.
I can't afford to purchase these radically inflated assets myself... but if you want to call me scrooge because I don't think owning a multi-million dollar house is a fundamental human right, go ahead.
But I can still simultaneously believe teachers are underpaid and at the same think they aren't entitled to multi-million dollar homes.
[1] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-...
[2] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/public-scho...
If the argument is that teacher salaries should be a linear function of average home values and that a $1M/yr salary doesn't make sense and a $3.8k/yr salary doesn't either, I'm not sure where you want to go from there.
1. https://www.credible.com/blog/data-insights/county-in-every-...
It’s not necessarily normal to live in a house. It certainly shouldn’t be normal in cities.
If public housing is more attractive than private then property price problem solves itself.
What you can know is that in expensive areas, they will need to pay a premium, but does the premium need to be as high to allow teachers to buy houses there instead of commuting in? And if you did pay them that much, many would prefer to keep the money and commute a bit longer because they may not value housing as much as the people living in the community. So people have different values and we should let them make their own trade offs. If a community can't hire enough teachers because cost of living is high, then they will need to raise wages. Once they can hire enough, then let people chose for themselves where they want to work and live.
I am changing. I might be voting for Republican (local) representatives for the very first time if they're not too crazy and have rational mediated approach, or centrist Democrats for that matter. Most Republicans I've talked to including my college friends reject Trumpism, but also reject toxic Berkeley's wokeness. So, I am in the same boat it feels despite of different labels. It was actually eye-opening talking to some old friends with whom I used to disagree in college, but now we're more mature and in our late 30's - and far more rational about things.
Looking at how things are today, I know I made the right decision.
Saying that one should never consider a firefighter or teacher overpayed sets a dangerous precedent. Sure most of them are not, maybe even all of them, but if a situation is found where some _are_ overpayed, then it should not be bad to discuss it.
Also, I don't see why it's unfair to call a teacher or firefighter overpaid. If you work for a private business, nobody else knows or cares about your salary. But when you work for government, every taxpayer has a right to complain. Especially for taxpayers who make less than the government position.
Education should be extremely well compensated. There's a host of reasons why it's a good idea to pay teachers the way doctors, lawyers and engineers are paid; but it all comes down to wanting the best and brightest working in education, because kids getting a shitty education decreases the country's ability to produce bright people, whereas kids getting a good education increases the country's overall intelligence.
Instead, those people work on ads. Idiocracy thought it'd be the cosmetics industry. Turns out…
We can have a discussion about increasing the minimum training for teachers to be additional years + a PhD. I'm sure this would naturally increase the quality of teaching and also increase the market rate for teachers since there are less people who are qualified.
We can also discuss raising salaries if the school simply cannot find enough teachers.
It doesn't make as much sense to say we should simply increase the pay of teachers if there is a huge backlog of qualified applicants.
I believe SF is having a teacher shortage, so for that reason, it makes sense to increase teacher pay. But I think too often people make moralistic arguments for government pay but free market arguments for everyone else.
Or, someone might reasonably think that teachers play only one part in educational outcomes, and that investing more in teaching quality isn't an efficient use of resources.
Or maybe both those people are wrong. But it's hardly dangerous to entertain the complaints of the people paying the bills.
They simply want the high salaries with no responsibly to produce results.
Why?
paying less taxes doesn't imply that the gov't ceases to exist. The gov't has no competition, so every entity within the gov't has every incentive to increase their own revenue by maximally expending tax dollars.
It is up to the people paying taxes to reduce it, as a counter-balancing force, and hold the spending efficiency to a good standard.
It’s a revenue stream for governments, sure, but how much revenue a government needs is determined by what policies a government has in place, their obligations to pay employees and officers, and what additional services the government offers. The politics is all around that stuff, but a tax is still a taking of the money that someone else earned to pay for all that, including to pay public employees.
That’s also irrelevant because that doesn’t address what a tax is, or how it ended up in a government’s treasury, or why it is there in the first place.
These people are underpaid. We have every right to expect the best in these positions, why are we not paying for it?
> Suggesting [x], is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.
The root parent shared a values-based opinion with no objective support.
Your parent asked for an explanation of the circular conclusion.
Since that isn't accurate (lobbying can be dangerous) there wasn't anything substantial to respond to.
- Lobbying can be dangerous
Those two things are orthogonal. Lobbying is not "an opinion". Lobbying is an attempt to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials. An opinion is just what someone thinks about someone. It is possible to lobby your government official to get them to support your position, but that doesn't make them the same thing.
At face value, it really sounds like you're accusing people of thought-crimes for having an opinion (e.g. firefighters are overpaid/underpaid/fairly-paid).
> (lobbying can be dangerous)
And if you think that firefighters are underpaid, then couldn't lobbying (i.e. firefighter unions) possibly produce "good" outcomes? Can someone call that outcome dangerous? This really boils down to you making a value judgment AGAINST lowering firefighter pay. That's what the grandparent comment said and other commenters asked for the reasoning.
Now, for a person to have an opinion is fine. But this is a partisan organization, devoted to pushing an agenda and spread it to the public opinion. If they were to succeed, teachers would see their salaries effectively cut.
Why would someone with a math background take $40k to teach a bunch of kids math when they can learn a bit of python and make $140k doing data science? Some do, but outside of rare exceptions, you aren't going to get the best talent.
You also end up with teachers who can't be bothered to learn how the subject is used in the real world. I barely put effort into learning matrices or complex numbers in high school.
"You just have to learn it, There aren't any practical uses for it" said my highschool algebra teacher told me when I asked what these are used for.
Do they actually have different qualifications? Each of them has to be trained for a teaching job and, er, remember most of their school program?
In the same vein instructor at the bootcamp is someone who's good at motivational shouting and in all likelihood isn't missing opportunities to serve as a commando.
The fact that all teachers are trained the same is a big problem. Personally I am fan of not having "trained teachers" for anything beyond grade school
After that we should be using subject matter experts
No we should be using teachers, people trained to effectively communicate and teach concepts of a subject.
A subject matter expert can be an expert in a subject but terrible at communicating and teaching that concept. Knowing that concept is not equivalent to effective communication. This is analogous to Great Software engineers becoming mangers with no managing talent whatsoever.
I hope even the dumbest 20% of people can understand that $40k per year is not sufficient pay for almost everywhere in the country, much less Baltimore.
But it is possible for firefighters or teachers or anyone to be overpaid. I have even seen it where the firefighters union (and police unions) have captured local government, and captured DB pensions worth millions of dollars where they walk away at age 45 with a $100k+ per year annuity for the rest of their life.
When I read a comment like this, I'm reminded of how much of a bubble HN is. $40k a year is higher than the median personal income of the US, which is higher than the median personal income of Baltimore.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
https://datacommons.org/place/geoId/2404000?utm_medium=explo...
Also, a better comparison would be to median income of people of working age working in roles with the work and responsibilities of teachers, or the type of work that our ideal teachers are doing instead of teaching, because the pay is so meager.
Rent, auto insurance, food, mobile, retirement savings, clothing, healthcare, taxes, emergency savings. There is no way to fit that all in $40k.
Which I assume must be evident to anyone that has had to pay bills.
Anecdotally, it is eminently possible to live a modest life on $40k. I know several people that do, and would have no trouble doing so myself if I needed to based on my actual expenses. The idea that Americans can't live on $40k is out of touch with reality; in many parts of the US that is considered a pretty good wage.
You'll live in a small house or suitable apartment, you'll cook at home almost all the time using inexpensive ingredients, and you'll take inexpensive vacations. You won't have any fancy stuff, aside from one or two special "nice" things, and the stuff you do have you'll use for as long as it is feasible to do so. The most challenging expense will be transportation, because you'll rely on your car and cars are prone to significant random and variable expenses.
Savings won't be enough to cover retirement but you will have a modest amount, you'll mostly be relying on Social Security. Even poor people often have a very modest amount of savings. I know a single mother who amassed $20k savings on a $30k income just by saving for many years.
The ugly part, and one of the main reasons I would not recommend raising a family this way even though I know how, is the social consequences because it comes with a lot of class signals. People in this class are often treated quite shabbily by people that live in the expensive coastal cities, which will impact your kids.
>insufficient pay for a full time career, much less one that requires working far more than 40 hours per week, and take on huge liability working with kids which likely do not have supportive home lives.
There are plenty of other $40k jobs that let you be a desk jockey and browse HN while you work 4 hours per day.
I flirted with a transparency org. Washington Citizens for Open Government.
The libertarian minded (Discovery Institute, Toby Nixon, Paul Guppy, so many others) used these nonpartisan good govt orgs to advocate their religion. It was maddening.
For instance, simultaneously advocating transparency AND privatization, without irony. Corporations are not subject to public records requests. Many an agency outsourced work to keep the activities away from public scrutiny. Anyone with a sincere desire for good govt advocates for less outsourcing, less privatization.
By all means, advocate for better stuff. Just know the opponents of democratic civil society will always highjack, subvert, project, argue in bad faith. The paradox of tolerance, on endless repeat.
I have no ideas how to avoid that trap. A large part of my burn out as an activist.
"Just know the opponents of democratic civil society will always highjack, subvert, project, argue in bad faith."
The only bad faith displayed here is yours.
Aside. I think public services, which are not subject to market forces, should be required to be easily auditable. The tradeoff you make for being a government monopoly is that any citizen should have the right to inspect it.
The motive behind information should be irrelevant in terms of its veracity but your implied premise here is interesting: advocating to reduce public spending is wrong. Obviously no government can support indefinitely high public spending, so at some point there needs to be a reduction of public spending in the public’s favor lest the government institution go bankrupt. In that case advocating for reduced public spending would obviously be right, not wrong, at least by your apparent moral standards.
At what point would you consider it right to reduce public spending? Or rather, what factors would you consider when making a determination as to whether public spending is too high?
When public spending inevitably degenerates into nepotism and corruption, that is just cutting the problem at its root. What alternative do you propose?
"CALIFORNIA SPENT $20 MILLION ON PAPERCLIPS LAST YEAR, THAT IS TOO MUCH" > No we did not. "SHOWS US THE BOOKS. HOW MANY PAPERCLIPS DID YOU BUY AND FROM WHOM" > No that is secret. "IT CANT BE YOU ARE REQUIRED TO SHOW US HOW MANY PAPERCLIPS" > Well we can, but it is too much work, so no.
Governments should strive for transparency and be able to admit errors if any are made.
They might spin their findings into something you dislike, but consider that other journalists and researchers could have access to these records to bring other useful insights to the public. Isn't this the whole point of maintaining a healthy democracy (i.e. the fourth estate)?
Edit: Also the Teacher Retirement System is basically a massive investment firm. The more money it makes for the teacher pension, the less the public has to kick in to make up for any pension shortfalls. You would presumably want to hire the best of the best. Now if that actually happens is debatable, but you absolutely would not want to cut those salaries to the bone.
And who among us are performing non-essential duties? What does "essential duties" even mean? Should all so called essential duties be publicly funded? If so, by who? by the remaining of us who are providing non-essential duties?
Holy shit. IF its anything like when i lived there 5 years ago, thats JUST enough to not be on the poverty line if you're supporting a family
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia
Honestly this comes off pretty elitist. "Well, George, if you're not earning 400K then you're dreadfully poor!"
For example, a fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco area is considered to be $3,121 (£2,340) per month - nearly twice the 2008 figure of $1,592 (£1,190). In Cincinnati, Ohio, the figure is $845 (£632). This difference (270%) is much larger than the difference in median family incomes (50%).
The income thresholds for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development[1] (HUD) seem to be the best location-adjusted standards for poverty (the federal poverty thresholds[2] are the same for all mainland states). HUD's 2021 numbers for households of 3-5 people in San Francisco:
| | 3 PERSON | 4 PERSON | 5 PERSON |
|-----------------+----------+----------+----------|
| EXTR LOW INCOME | 49,350 | 54,800 | 59,200 |
| VERY LOW INCOME | 82,250 | 91,350 | 98,700 |
| LOW-INCOME | 131,750 | 146,350 | 158,100 |
[1]: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il/il21/Section8-Inc...
[2]: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-ser...
-- lukeshu (some guy who has never even been to California)
The people I worked with lived in fairly small apartments, shared with up to eight co-tenets. It was all they could reasonably afford, and they were well payed tech employees.
I bought a new house in the Central Valley for the same pay.
But even in SF, 112K is sufficient for 50% of households, and the median household does not live in a small apartment with eight cotenants. That's also absurd.
What's wrong with that? That's how markets work, and they work well.
Most of the classes at Caltech were just that - blackboard and chalk. Often there wasn't even a textbook.
They're never expected to worry about year-end donation drive to manage the school band's budget, finding out who vandalized all the bathrooms, or how to talk to Sally's parents after she missed school for three days. And they get to teach some of the best, brightest, most motivated students America produces.
Yeah, all they needed was a blackboard and chalk. Who needs more resources?
Heck, hands-down the best calculus lesson I ever had was a one-on-one with a prof and a blackboard.
I suppose it's like running. No technology can make you a better runner than a good coach and a desire to run.
P.S. note that colleges compete on "resources" all the time. But that simply isn't what matters. It's the prof, the blackboard, and the student. Facilities don't matter. Sports programs don't matter. Landscaping doesn't matter. Luxury dorms don't matter.
If you can’t see or understand the incredible amount of _hidden_ infrastructure in place at a place at Caltech so that you could sit down and think about nothing but Calculus with a world class professor then you are extremely privileged.
Secondly, there is a federal school lunch program for all the students that need it. This program is not underfunded, and is not what I am talking about when discussing educational "resources".
> Buy their own chalk.
Oh please.
> incredible amount of _hidden_ infrastructure in place at a place at Caltech
There were many opportunities to join research activities. This was not necessary for the education, though. I didn't partake of that, as research did not interest me.
> so that you could sit down and think about nothing but Calculus
Sorry, but that does not require incredible infrastructure. It just doesn't.
> world class professor
Being a researcher is not the same thing as being an effective teacher, not at all. They weren't hired for their teaching ability. I doubt any had any training whatsoever as teachers.
I'm amazed at the notion that teaching with a blackboard and chalk requires incredible infrastructure.
Freshman physics was taught by Prof Goodstein, who is a world class physicist. I had no personal interaction with him at all. The homework was graded and administered and coached by grad students (in "recitation" sessions). A couple years after I graduated, his lectures were recorded and made available as "The Mechanical Universe" series of videos. Lots of fancy animations and stuff were added, but in my not-so-humble opinion added entertainment but little value.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8_xPU5epJddRABXqJ5h5...
In the worst case, teachers at inner city schools who have the hardest jobs get paid the least since their students do the worst.
It will be a system that has to work across the board everywhere and easy to administer. So no looking intelligently at the individual cases, instead there will be some numeric targets - and as usual the "searching under the lantern" a.k.a. streetlight effect appears, meaning the system will measure what can be measured instead of what would be needed (which likely cannot even be measured).
Next, a lot of intelligent and at the beginning motivated people will be measured by an unfeeling bureaucracy against insane targets. The system will also fail to do what it is supposed to do and remove the "bad" teachers. Case in point: Measuring all kinds of "performance" has already been happening in education for a long time. What did it achieve apart from increasing frustration? Are teachers in the US doing "free form", whatever they like, right now? They already follow strict protocol.
The link is kind of random, soooo many articles have been written about this in a lot of countries all facing similar issues, so I don't really think I can find some "definitive" source to link to.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/to-fix-...
.
> That's how markets work, and they work well.
Uh... I don't really want to go there right now.
Not if the parents decide how well they're doing. After all, if the parents buy the kid guitar lessons, and the kid fails to learn, are they going to continue paying that teacher? Nope.
Markets fail when they are government by bureaucratic rules instead of free choice.
But it would be inexpensive to try a simple experiment. Pick a school, any school. Offer teachers a fat bonus for every student they bring up to grade-level reading.
I bet a miracle will be observed.
You haven't been paying much attention to markets lately, then.
Also, there are things that shouldn't be treated as a market. Education is one of them, unless the goal is to exacerbate inequality.
One article in their website suggests tying education spending to performance, and that teachers in Baltimore are overpaid [1]. Another says that a $100,000 salary is "too high" for Texas public workers [2]. I think my favorite would be this one [3], where they assert that a $150,000 salary in San Francisco is excessive.
These public workers are in charge of essential duties. Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent.
[1] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-baltimore-city-public-sc...
[2] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-texas-is-in-trouble-...
[3] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-...