Besides, why shouldn't teachers make six-figures? Why are teachers treated like this in the US?
Exactly. Compared to what I do, educating 15-20 future citizens and adults seems on par.
And to your broader point, indeed, the average US teacher at this point is 1/5 lesson planning, 3/5 instruction, 1/10 social worker, and 1/10 data entry/report filing.
And it should be very easy to fire bad ones. Basically should be at will employment with school district.
This is thorny, because it gets into the problems tenure was created to combat: school administration's goals aren't always student success.
Especially now, they can be myopically assessment-focused or political.
Subordinating teachers to the whim of administration wouldn't help this. Jury-of-their-peers is slightly better, but has its own issues.
If you want to know how badly otherwise seemingly mature adults can behave, come to a local school board meeting in Florida.
"For the kids" + average parent = asshole with no holds barred
The U.S. has a large contingent of free-market maximalists. These groups are opposed to public services like education and health care across the board. They are allied with right-wing religious groups who oppose public schools on religious grounds (they want a religious curriculum and that’s unconstitutional).
Their tactic is called “starve the beast.” They believe that underfunding and neglect will drive the best teachers out of the public school system and into private schools. Their goal is to bring about the collapse of the public school system and then ultimately convince voters to abolish public schools altogether.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/6f1m76/how_many_h...
I know this is a biased sample.
1. Is it normal for teachers to have alternative income for the days they don't work?
2. Sounds like the term "six figures" has a special meaning other than just being in the range 100.000 - 999.999? It appears like there is a connotation that it is a special things to achieve in your life.
3. Taking inflation into account, shouldn't it soon be normal to earn that amount (when including pensions and benefits like health, which I know is expensive).
Six figures simply refers to a salary with six digits (i.e. in excess of $100,000). This is nearly double the median income so "six figures" is often just used to mean "a lot of money."
"Six figures" appears to be an idiom in American English that should be abandoned.
This idea that teachers work the same hours they are physically inside school and nothing else is laughable.
Though regardless, entry level software developers in the united states get six figures out of the gate, so it seems remarkably reasonable.
But really the folks who have always been antagonistic to teachers showed their cards through the pandemic when they staked out the position that teachers are public enemy #1 for not wanting to literally risk their lives for a public that treats them like a punching bag year in and year out. You know, stupid “Teachers’ Nights” at baseball games aside.
If you want a gradual regression to abysmal education, sure, pay ‘em pennies and then we can instead pay for an uneducated populace via higher crime rates, lower civic participation, lower economic productivity, higher welfare burden, more homelessness, etc etc.
Good trade!
Legitimate question, do you not see the difference?
I'm sure most teachers don't have it so good but if one were trying to improve the current system you might try to create jobs that are complementary with teaching jobs.
Teaching is one of those areas like software development where the social contradictions are intense because it is a labor intensive practice with very little capital spending (think how the final assembly people on a car have a huge "gun" that hangs from the ceiling and looks like something out of Doom that screws all 5 nuts for a wheel with perfect torque in one shot.) Schools are also funded out of property taxes which are rather regressive and limit the ability of schools to be funded by people who have a huge amount of money and instead pits teachers against people who don't make $60,000 a year and who don't get a few months off in the summer.
Some teachers may do the minimum and find the role and their summers relaxing. Yet for the best outcomes and challenging districts it's far from a 'cushy' job.
You could be part of the open data movement and a researcher in your spare time not stocking grocery store shelves.
Yes I’m suggesting your credentials are worthless. Why do we need full time university researcher role play when millions the world over are “researching” software engineering?
There are far fewer teachers. Sounds like a pay rebalancing given market realities is in order. Coders are everywhere. Minimum wage for them!
My wife is a former school teacher and she spent a considerable amount of time planning and working on things for the next school year. If teachers are expected to all work over summer break to make ends meet then their performance will suffer.
I'd argue that a better approach for teachers and education in general would be to move to more year-round schooling.
If you want maths taught by actual maths grads, then you will need six figure salaries to attract them.
60k is extremely low for CS grads in any moderately-sized city but they might be willing to make that trade for two months off in the summer.
The market has externalities, which is a huge flaw in pricing things. This is a known studied problem with markets.
Third, it's one of many optimization processes. If you understand machine learning, you understand that there are different models, different solution spaces, and optimizations (learning) on them requires different techniques. Why should we rely on a highly flawed optimization process like the market to decide these important things in society?
Democratic and consensus building is another way to come to these complex decisions without relying on 'spot trade' and pricing restrictions that the market has.
0: https://www.educationnext.org/education-and-economic-growth/