Are the teachers bad teachers, and more pay will recruit better teachers? I'm not sure how many teachers enter the profession for the money to be honest. I'm sure they would like pay, but I'm not really of the mind that the curre nt crop of teachers are on average bad.
Do kids not have a suitable learning environment? Are they distracted by rodents, roaches, noisy equipment, uncomfortable temperatures, lack of seating or desks?
Do the kids not have educational material? Books, marker boards and markers for them, paper, etc?
If any of those things were lacking I would totally agree that learning could be impacted and change was needed. And I would be really curious how at current funding levels, which are not low compared to other countries, those deficits are occuring.
Quality of the teachers aside, there are insufficient teachers. The number of teachers required to effectively teach K-12 would benefit from increasing between 50-75% of current levels before reaching diminishing returns according to test studies. So more pay will recruit more teachers, which, makes them better.
Since you wanted to compare us to other countries, the US has the worst average classroom size in the western world. A decade ago we were closer to the middle of the pack. And it was the US classroom size that primarily changed, not a sudden drive in other countries.
> Do kids not have a suitable learning environment? Are they distracted by rodents, roaches, noisy equipment, uncomfortable temperatures, lack of seating or desks?
Beyond that, you should concern yourself with things like asbestos in the walls.
Certainly, a lot of US schools use trailers. Those are noisier and have less comfortable temperatures, require going outside to change classes, etc. Half of the classrooms in some areas are trailers. Moving those to a real building seems obviously better.
> Do the kids not have educational material? Books, marker boards and markers for them, paper, etc?
What about chem labs, frogs to dissect, computers to program, etc? Not everyone is a kindergartner. But a surprising number of schoolchildren have trouble with internet access, which I would argue is a basic requirement for education.
Further, the number of teachers required to spend their meager salaries on classroom supplies and the number of different nonprofits that popup if you search for "donate school supplies" indicates that even at a base level they lack educational material.
My public high school installed a competition diving pool. Did that improve education there? Not a whit. It was nice for the diving team, though, which was 6 girls.
Few enter for money, but many leave because of it.
Money isn’t the reason I will be transitioning into a different career after this school year, but I have friends and contacts floating opportunities that would offer me an immediate 50-80 percent bump.
My wife and I have been saving aggressively to allow for a patient, intentional transition. I don’t expect my next career to feed my values to the same extent, but I am excited to open a new door.
Edit: if you work in Product and would be willing to do a brief informational interview, please reach out. My email is in profile.
Are you referring to when the state finally complied with court orders that they were illegally and unconstitutionally underfunding public schools? (A lawsuit started over a decade before and decided over a half a decade before action was taken). Where the governor announced victory as "Today’s Supreme Court decision affirms that, at long last, our Legislature is providing the funding necessary to cover the basic costs of our K-12 schools. Reversing decades of underfunding..."
That basic level of funding? Or has something happened more recently.
> There's been zero change in results.
You mean the funding that impacted one year before COVID? Education funding isn't like spinning up a new instance in AWS. It takes time. And, given that educational results have slipped nationwide since COVID, I would say that "zero changes" should be interpreted as a victory.