Why is there a teacher shortage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:If there was really a teacher shortage, teachers should trade tenure protections for higher pay. No district is going to needlessly fire a good teacher if there's a shortage, and Republicans would probably get behind it, particularly if it included a pay-for-performance element.

How would that work? Extra hours? Stipends for extra duties? How would performance be measured for pay?

The main things that come to mind are standardized tests and principal/peer evaluations.

Only a few subjects have standardized tests. Using standardized tests would punish teachers working in lower achieving schools. Principal and peer evaluations are too subjective and personal. It it also a huge amount of work for those staff.

You do realize almost every other job has similar challenges, right? Pay raises are almost always primarily determined by subjective performance evaluations by your supervisors and sometimes peers.

Most people get pay raises by changing jobs, companies don't have much incentive to give raises unless they have to. Teachers can't easily change school districs to get pay raises without losing some part of their tenure, salary scale or even pension.

Of course companies give raises to employees they want to retain. Yes, big raises are hard to come by after your first couple years, unless you get promoted into a different position. But they absolutely give raises.

I've never understood why people like pensions. Your post just illustrated a problem- that you can get stuck in a job. Teachers should drop pensions for a 401k with a generous match.

Fairfax County and the state of Virginia haven’t had pensions for new hires since at least 2004. I was hired in 2004, and I got a 403 b. The match was not generous ( I think 3%?) , and didn’t vest until 5 years. By comparison, my husband gets a 6% match. It’s hilarious that you think we have that kind of power.

The problem that you have is that the older teachers are happy to sacrifice the younger/future teachers in negotiations. That's a common theme with unions.

In Virginia? In Fairfax? No. There is no bargaining by public employees such as teachers in VA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If there was really a teacher shortage, teachers should trade tenure protections for higher pay. No district is going to needlessly fire a good teacher if there's a shortage, and Republicans would probably get behind it, particularly if it included a pay-for-performance element.

How would that work? Extra hours? Stipends for extra duties? How would performance be measured for pay?

The main things that come to mind are standardized tests and principal/peer evaluations.

Only a few subjects have standardized tests. Using standardized tests would punish teachers working in lower achieving schools. Principal and peer evaluations are too subjective and personal. It it also a huge amount of work for those staff.

You do realize almost every other job has similar challenges, right? Pay raises are almost always primarily determined by subjective performance evaluations by your supervisors and sometimes peers.

Most people get pay raises by changing jobs, companies don't have much incentive to give raises unless they have to. Teachers can't easily change school districs to get pay raises without losing some part of their tenure, salary scale or even pension.

Of course companies give raises to employees they want to retain. Yes, big raises are hard to come by after your first couple years, unless you get promoted into a different position. But they absolutely give raises.

I've never understood why people like pensions. Your post just illustrated a problem- that you can get stuck in a job. Teachers should drop pensions for a 401k with a generous match.

Fairfax County and the state of Virginia haven’t had pensions for new hires since at least 2004. I was hired in 2004, and I got a 403 b. The match was not generous ( I think 3%?) , and didn’t vest until 5 years. By comparison, my husband gets a 6% match. It’s hilarious that you think we have that kind of power.

The problem that you have is that the older teachers are happy to sacrifice the younger/future teachers in negotiations. That's a common theme with unions.

In Virginia? In Fairfax? No. There is no bargaining by public employees such as teachers in VA.

But they're stuck roughly following the pay scales that everyone else has negotiated.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:"Darling-Hammond recommended increased pay, compensation packages that could include housing and child care, and forgivable loans as some of the ways to improve teacher retention."


hahahaha

Yeah don't hold your breath

I think free before/after SACC for teachers kids is reasonable.

Public loans are forgiven after 10 years, for teachers. I believe this is a pretty recent change.

Five years if you teach at a Title 1 school or in a high needs area like ESE.

The loan forgiveness is basically a scam. There are so many requirements to get loan forgiveness that only a small percent were able to get loans cancelled. Another unpaid promise started in the Bush years. Total insult to teachers who were counting on loan forgiveness especially teachers who live in low salary high need areas.

[Anonymous]

In MCPS par is the tool to fire if you tenured teachers start getting paid too high. It might put a black mark on their record but they dates to dream.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In MCPS par is the tool to fire if you tenured teachers start getting paid too high. It might put a black mark on their record but they dates to dream.

Can anyone translate this?

[Anonymous]

I left the profession because I was able to replace my income with a career that required much less of my time, enabling me to devote more time to raising my children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In MCPS par is the tool to fire if you tenured teachers start getting paid too high. It might put a black mark on their record but they dates to dream.

Can anyone translate this?

well, i tried translating it into Japanese, Amharic and then Samoan, but all I got was "At MCPS Par, teachers are fired when they start earning higher salaries. Their records may be blacked out, but their dreams come true."

hope that helps!

[Anonymous]

weirdly that almost seems to make more sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In MCPS par is the tool to fire if you tenured teachers start getting paid too high. It might put a black mark on their record but they dates to dream.

Can anyone translate this?

well, i tried translating it into Japanese, Amharic and then Samoan, but all I got was "At MCPS Par, teachers are fired when they start earning higher salaries. Their records may be blacked out, but their dreams come true."

hope that helps!

That's true if you are 40 or under. Not so if you are over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Darling-Hammond recommended increased pay, compensation packages that could include housing and child care, and forgivable loans as some of the ways to improve teacher retention."


hahahaha

Yeah don't hold your breath

I think free before/after SACC for teachers kids is reasonable.

Public loans are forgiven after 10 years, for teachers. I believe this is a pretty recent change.

Five years if you teach at a Title 1 school or in a high needs area like ESE.

The loan forgiveness is basically a scam. There are so many requirements to get loan forgiveness that only a small percent were able to get loans cancelled. Another unpaid promise started in the Bush years. Total insult to teachers who were counting on loan forgiveness especially teachers who live in low salary high need areas.

That was because of DeVos. She’s gone now so the program will be back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I taught for three years. Couldn't hack it. Now I have a desk job and make over $100K.

Now that charter schools are everywhere, teachers are seeing reduced benefits - no more pensions, no more substitutes - plus longer hours.

Teachers need to be paid more and respected more, especially excellent teachers. Teacher programs should be competitive and there should be apprenticeship programs set up in which excellent teachers team teach with new graduates.

If you sign up to teach for 10 years, perhaps your loans should be forgiven and you receive a substantial bonus ($50K?).

I could go on.

The federal government does have a program like this where teachers work in low-income schools for a certain number of years and then have their student loans forgiven. I forget what the program is called at the moment, but I read and article it and what struck me from that article was that out of all the educators who applied to the program and met the qualifications, 97% were denied and given no explanation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I always find the people who champion the market-side economics in the public sector choose to not see why there's a teacher shortage. It's because we, as a society, do not value the job enough either through pay or through support (i.e. administrative support for teachers). I'm married to a teacher and it's pretty clear teaching would be a ton better if teachers could have administrative support, i.e. someone to handle things like scheduling, correspondence, copying, etc. Or else pay way, way more.

Nope, the solution is to throw 22 year olds with a summer camp's worth of teaching training into the classroom. And you think that's going to save education in this country. Sigh.

Do you have a teaching degree? My daughter was in the classroom with kids from her very first semester of college. Every semester for four years involved some kind of practical classroom work. Her entire senior year was an internship. The first semester of her senior year she had a mentor in the classroom with her. The second semester, the class was all hers.

I assume this poster was referring to Teach for America, where a summer camp worth of training gets you thrown into some of the worst schools in the worst areas and the claim that it is going to be some grand savior of inner city schools. Actual teaching programs are not TFA.

+1

But more and more public schools are relying on TFA and similar programs to provide them with teachers, which is concerning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have nothing but the utmost regard for teachers. Nevertheless, 100K+ may not be cushy for 8 months of actual work but with regular hours and a pension it doesn't seem that shabby.

Where are teachers working 8 months and making $100k?

Teachers who have been in the profession for 20years and probably hate their lives

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have nothing but the utmost regard for teachers. Nevertheless, 100K+ may not be cushy for 8 months of actual work but with regular hours and a pension it doesn't seem that shabby.

Where are teachers working 8 months and making $100k?

Teachers who have been in the profession for 20years and probably hate their lives

The school year is not 8 months long, it’s 10 months FYI. I guess you’re trying to say the week we get off between Christmas and New Years etc. are subtracted from the year? My husband gets 6 weeks paid vacation (plus sick, personal, and paid family leave much more generous than what is offered to me) from the hospital he works at, so I guess we should start getting angry that doctors think they have any right to complain about COVID since they only work 10 months a year. The difference is that he can take that time whenever he wants, whereas I have to bring a note to take a single day off during the year. He also makes a lot more money and his benefits are much more generous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I taught for three years. Couldn't hack it. Now I have a desk job and make over $100K.

Now that charter schools are everywhere, teachers are seeing reduced benefits - no more pensions, no more substitutes - plus longer hours.

Teachers need to be paid more and respected more, especially excellent teachers. Teacher programs should be competitive and there should be apprenticeship programs set up in which excellent teachers team teach with new graduates.

If you sign up to teach for 10 years, perhaps your loans should be forgiven and you receive a substantial bonus ($50K?).

I could go on.

The federal government does have a program like this where teachers work in low-income schools for a certain number of years and then have their student loans forgiven. I forget what the program is called at the moment, but I read and article it and what struck me from that article was that out of all the educators who applied to the program and met the qualifications, 97% were denied and given no explanation.

Again, that was explicitly Betsy DeVos's choice. She is gone now. Miguel Cardona is for debt forgiveness, so this program will be revived.