5 ms·

due to lack of pay, resources, and support our public education system is filled with the bottom of the barrel teachers

yCombLinks 3y ago
My sister and brother in law are both teachers. Good ones. I make more than double their combined income, and their jobs sound way more stressful. The bil is actively working to switch careers because of it
- chung8123 3y ago
  Is it the stress of the class room or the lack of pay? If all the kids behaved and the admins were great bosses would he be thinking about changing careers? I think there is more than money at play with school test scores.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  It's crazy how little society values kids despite the constant drumbeat of "won't somebody pleaaasee think of the children" when it comes to safety or censorship.
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    It's important to vote for people locally and federally who support things like the child tax credit, free meals at school, maternity leave, etc. This is especially important since the repeal of Roe V Wade if you live in a place with forced birth.
- johnea 3y ago
  And let me guess, you live somewhere in the midwest or south?
  - the_doctah 3y ago
    Hopefully not in CA where they want to make mathematics "equitable". Trying to slam on the south isn't helping anyone.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago
  Your brother-in-law will go from working 8.5 months a year to 11.5 months a year, so it makes sense he would earn more He will never be able to match a teachers pension with 401k though...he might regret it when he is still working and his teacher friends have retired With expected lifespan, a teacher pension can be worth over a million dollars...zero chance a 401k will deliver half that for most salaries
  - wetmore 3y ago
    Teachers work (on and off the clock) >40 hours a week during those 8.5 months though, worth taking into account.
  - jplona 3y ago
    Summer breaks for teachers are much shorter than for students, especially when you take into account required continuing education and professional development.
    - brightlancer 3y ago
      IME, government teachers have at most 2 weeks of required work days during the summers: one right after school ends, one right before school begins. Depending on the state/ district, that leaves 6-8 weeks of summer break. They also get more than a month of vacation during the school year: 1 week in fall, 2 weeks in winter, 1 week in spring, plus state holidays. Even with mandatory continuing education (which many jobs require), government teachers are still getting a few months of vacation. It's not comparable to folks who have to work 11+ months every year.
  - Jtsummers 3y ago
    Only 2 weeks of vacation a year and no holidays? Any professional who is currently employed and not in dire need of a significant pay raise can afford to be more discriminating than to get such a raw deal.
- giantg2 3y ago
  It sounds like you make more than double most people's income then. Which I guess is not uncommon given the forum.
  - yCombLinks 3y ago
    They're teachers in Mississippi =/
    - giantg2 3y ago
      So at least $85k combined, which is about $35k over the state median household. So you're making about $170k, which is still about double the national median household?
      - yCombLinks 3y ago
        Pretty close numbers
- willcipriano 3y ago
  Have you asked them how much more we have to pay them in order to get them to do a decent job?
antisthenes 3y ago
And struggling parents, presumably. Education and learning is a skill that's transferred in a very large part from parents.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  there is also the trend in parenting from respecting and working with the teacher, to belittling them.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    The stories you hear coming from teachers are nuts. My parents basically deferred to the teacher's opinion in almost all matters at school. Meanwhile, enough modern parents go to war for their little monsters that I think teachers feel limited in how firmly they can give negative feedback.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >Education and learning is a skill that's transferred in a very large part from parents. No it isn't. Being able to impregnate a woman or give birth does NOT magically make you a great teacher! My mother has an innate gift for teaching, and she STILL benefited from 4-6 years of college courses and continual training and improvement over the 30 years she taught and is still teaching. Meanwhile, the entire time she has taught, parents have done everything they can to shift blame from bad home life and kids that don't value education to "you aren't doing enough" even as she literally buys her students winter coats, from her own pocketbook, as the school doesn't even buy her new markers for her whiteboard or new material so she can stop using 25 year old VHS tapes that are literally losing their contents from normal wear, even as she is one of the favorite teachers in the entire school system because of her immense empathy, even as "bad kids" do very well in her class because of how sincere she is, how much she cares, and how good she is at her job. People say "We've increased so much what money we give to schools" completely ignoring that the money has NOT been distributed in any sort of even way, and even in my state which has largely good outcomes for education, the vast majority of the funding goes to a couple prestige schools in the south that were already rich because they are in rich towns, and the little money that trickles to the impoverished schools in the rest of the state largely goes to paying administrators led by superintendents that are just whoever the "Good old boys" were twenty years ago. Actual teacher pay has not kept up with inflation. I'm so sick of all this teacher blaming bullshit around education. Actually trained teachers have been shouting about what they need to improve things for decades, and none of the managerial class has given them even a shred of what they actually need, while everyone continues to blame them, and have even claimed public education is just indoctrination. It's infuriating. Education is a skill, a professional and knowledge based skill. Teachers aren't baby sitters, and if you decide you only need a high school degree to teach, don't be surprised when it goes poorly.
tarboreus 3y ago
There's also a kind of giving up that's happened. You can't take kids seriously, no matter how bad they behave or how little they do they don't face any consequences. There's no getting kicked out or left back, some classes are just a social club and the teacher has no choice to stand by. I just had a relative leave after sticking it out in some really challenging schools for ten years. People would really like it to be underfunding. Teachers are somewhat underpaid, but where I live they get a pretty good salary. The real issue is that teachers have no autonomy to teach, they spend their time filling out forms and checking boxes and they can be told what's what by administrators. They also have no tools for classroom control, even in situations where students are doing things that would be crimes if done by adults. It's impossible to perform well in those circumstances, and most self-respecting people wouldn't work under those conditions. And this is reflected in abysmal teacher retention. Where I live, schools spend $38,000 per year per student. It's not underfunding that's the issue, it's some really bad ideas and a kind of willfully ignorant utopianism.
- orangepurple 3y ago
  Completely agree. Baltimore City Schools received 29 federal Covid grants totaling $799M to fight learning loss. Yet, in 2023, just 9.1% of all 3rd-8th graders tested proficient in math. MEANING, taxpayers gave an additional $799M and 91% of Baltimore students are NOT math proficient. New test scores, known as MCAP (Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program), obtained by Project Baltimore, revealed that 23 schools, including elementary, middle, and high schools, had not one student that could do math at grade level. Calverton school (https://www.niche.com/k12/calverton-elementary-middle-school-baltimore-md/ https://www.niche.com/k12/calverton-elementary-middle-school...) A Calverton educator, who reached out to Fox45, claims to have received that text. “[It instructed me to] go into my grade book, make sure no students are failing, and essentially change the grade if they are failing so they will pass with a 60 percent,” said the teacher, whose identity we are concealing upon request. “I was frustrated as a teacher. We’re public servants. And when we see things like grade changing, that’s self-serving. That’s not helping the kids.” After watching Fox45’s recent investigations into allegations of grade changing at Calverton, the City Schools employee contacted Project Baltimore to say a couple things. First, according to the teacher, grade changing at Calverton is “very common.” Second, the educator told Fox45, changing grades is the easiest and fastest way to pass more students, which makes the school and its administrators look better. But, it does a huge disservice to not just the kids, but our entire community. “Teaching a whole generation of kids that they don’t have to be accountable for their actions, or that hard work isn’t valued or valuable when they are in school, is so discouraging and damaging.” Adding insult to injury, the same teacher said that he even passed kids who had been on his roster all year but didn’t bother to show up for a single day of class. But this teacher says grade changing at Calverton goes much further than just taking a failing grade and making it a 60. Some students who pass, according to this educator, don’t even have grades because they’ve never showed up to class. “There were students on my roster all year that I had never met, had never seen. On paper they passed my class and passed onto the next year.” “I love my job and I love my students,” concluded the teacher. “I want to see the students at Calverton and other schools across the city, get a fresh start. And it’s going to be hard because the students are used to this now. But the students deserve better and our city deserve better.”

My sister and brother in law are both teachers. Good ones. I make more than double their combined income, and their jobs sound way more stressful. The bil is actively working to switch careers because of it

chung8123 3y ago
Is it the stress of the class room or the lack of pay? If all the kids behaved and the admins were great bosses would he be thinking about changing careers? I think there is more than money at play with school test scores.
AlexandrB 3y ago
It's crazy how little society values kids despite the constant drumbeat of "won't somebody pleaaasee think of the children" when it comes to safety or censorship.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  It's important to vote for people locally and federally who support things like the child tax credit, free meals at school, maternity leave, etc. This is especially important since the repeal of Roe V Wade if you live in a place with forced birth.
johnea 3y ago
And let me guess, you live somewhere in the midwest or south?
- the_doctah 3y ago
  Hopefully not in CA where they want to make mathematics "equitable". Trying to slam on the south isn't helping anyone.
oldpersonintx 3y ago
Your brother-in-law will go from working 8.5 months a year to 11.5 months a year, so it makes sense he would earn more He will never be able to match a teachers pension with 401k though...he might regret it when he is still working and his teacher friends have retired With expected lifespan, a teacher pension can be worth over a million dollars...zero chance a 401k will deliver half that for most salaries
- wetmore 3y ago
  Teachers work (on and off the clock) >40 hours a week during those 8.5 months though, worth taking into account.
- jplona 3y ago
  Summer breaks for teachers are much shorter than for students, especially when you take into account required continuing education and professional development.
  - brightlancer 3y ago
    IME, government teachers have at most 2 weeks of required work days during the summers: one right after school ends, one right before school begins. Depending on the state/ district, that leaves 6-8 weeks of summer break. They also get more than a month of vacation during the school year: 1 week in fall, 2 weeks in winter, 1 week in spring, plus state holidays. Even with mandatory continuing education (which many jobs require), government teachers are still getting a few months of vacation. It's not comparable to folks who have to work 11+ months every year.
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  Only 2 weeks of vacation a year and no holidays? Any professional who is currently employed and not in dire need of a significant pay raise can afford to be more discriminating than to get such a raw deal.
giantg2 3y ago
It sounds like you make more than double most people's income then. Which I guess is not uncommon given the forum.
- yCombLinks 3y ago
  They're teachers in Mississippi =/
  - giantg2 3y ago
    So at least $85k combined, which is about $35k over the state median household. So you're making about $170k, which is still about double the national median household?
    - yCombLinks 3y ago
      Pretty close numbers
willcipriano 3y ago
Have you asked them how much more we have to pay them in order to get them to do a decent job?

antisthenes 3y ago

And struggling parents, presumably. Education and learning is a skill that's transferred in a very large part from parents.

bobthepanda 3y ago
there is also the trend in parenting from respecting and working with the teacher, to belittling them.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  The stories you hear coming from teachers are nuts. My parents basically deferred to the teacher's opinion in almost all matters at school. Meanwhile, enough modern parents go to war for their little monsters that I think teachers feel limited in how firmly they can give negative feedback.
mrguyorama 3y ago
>Education and learning is a skill that's transferred in a very large part from parents. No it isn't. Being able to impregnate a woman or give birth does NOT magically make you a great teacher! My mother has an innate gift for teaching, and she STILL benefited from 4-6 years of college courses and continual training and improvement over the 30 years she taught and is still teaching. Meanwhile, the entire time she has taught, parents have done everything they can to shift blame from bad home life and kids that don't value education to "you aren't doing enough" even as she literally buys her students winter coats, from her own pocketbook, as the school doesn't even buy her new markers for her whiteboard or new material so she can stop using 25 year old VHS tapes that are literally losing their contents from normal wear, even as she is one of the favorite teachers in the entire school system because of her immense empathy, even as "bad kids" do very well in her class because of how sincere she is, how much she cares, and how good she is at her job. People say "We've increased so much what money we give to schools" completely ignoring that the money has NOT been distributed in any sort of even way, and even in my state which has largely good outcomes for education, the vast majority of the funding goes to a couple prestige schools in the south that were already rich because they are in rich towns, and the little money that trickles to the impoverished schools in the rest of the state largely goes to paying administrators led by superintendents that are just whoever the "Good old boys" were twenty years ago. Actual teacher pay has not kept up with inflation. I'm so sick of all this teacher blaming bullshit around education. Actually trained teachers have been shouting about what they need to improve things for decades, and none of the managerial class has given them even a shred of what they actually need, while everyone continues to blame them, and have even claimed public education is just indoctrination. It's infuriating. Education is a skill, a professional and knowledge based skill. Teachers aren't baby sitters, and if you decide you only need a high school degree to teach, don't be surprised when it goes poorly.

tarboreus 3y ago

There's also a kind of giving up that's happened. You can't take kids seriously, no matter how bad they behave or how little they do they don't face any consequences. There's no getting kicked out or left back, some classes are just a social club and the teacher has no choice to stand by. I just had a relative leave after sticking it out in some really challenging schools for ten years. People would really like it to be underfunding. Teachers are somewhat underpaid, but where I live they get a pretty good salary. The real issue is that teachers have no autonomy to teach, they spend their time filling out forms and checking boxes and they can be told what's what by administrators. They also have no tools for classroom control, even in situations where students are doing things that would be crimes if done by adults. It's impossible to perform well in those circumstances, and most self-respecting people wouldn't work under those conditions. And this is reflected in abysmal teacher retention. Where I live, schools spend $38,000 per year per student. It's not underfunding that's the issue, it's some really bad ideas and a kind of willfully ignorant utopianism.

orangepurple 3y ago
Completely agree. Baltimore City Schools received 29 federal Covid grants totaling $799M to fight learning loss. Yet, in 2023, just 9.1% of all 3rd-8th graders tested proficient in math. MEANING, taxpayers gave an additional $799M and 91% of Baltimore students are NOT math proficient. New test scores, known as MCAP (Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program), obtained by Project Baltimore, revealed that 23 schools, including elementary, middle, and high schools, had not one student that could do math at grade level. Calverton school (https://www.niche.com/k12/calverton-elementary-middle-school-baltimore-md/ https://www.niche.com/k12/calverton-elementary-middle-school...) A Calverton educator, who reached out to Fox45, claims to have received that text. “[It instructed me to] go into my grade book, make sure no students are failing, and essentially change the grade if they are failing so they will pass with a 60 percent,” said the teacher, whose identity we are concealing upon request. “I was frustrated as a teacher. We’re public servants. And when we see things like grade changing, that’s self-serving. That’s not helping the kids.” After watching Fox45’s recent investigations into allegations of grade changing at Calverton, the City Schools employee contacted Project Baltimore to say a couple things. First, according to the teacher, grade changing at Calverton is “very common.” Second, the educator told Fox45, changing grades is the easiest and fastest way to pass more students, which makes the school and its administrators look better. But, it does a huge disservice to not just the kids, but our entire community. “Teaching a whole generation of kids that they don’t have to be accountable for their actions, or that hard work isn’t valued or valuable when they are in school, is so discouraging and damaging.” Adding insult to injury, the same teacher said that he even passed kids who had been on his roster all year but didn’t bother to show up for a single day of class. But this teacher says grade changing at Calverton goes much further than just taking a failing grade and making it a 60. Some students who pass, according to this educator, don’t even have grades because they’ve never showed up to class. “There were students on my roster all year that I had never met, had never seen. On paper they passed my class and passed onto the next year.” “I love my job and I love my students,” concluded the teacher. “I want to see the students at Calverton and other schools across the city, get a fresh start. And it’s going to be hard because the students are used to this now. But the students deserve better and our city deserve better.”