Why is there a teacher shortage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How can you help kids master knowledge unless you fully grasp the content and can explain it in multiple different ways?

English is subjective. Not grammar but interpretations of literature. One student may argued one way and the other a different perspective. As long as both providing supporting evidence from the text, they are both correct.

This is not true in math and science. There is a correct answer. Either the kid is able to come up with the correct answer and show their work or they can’t. I don’t know about you but I’m not getting on a roller coaster where the engineer gets the calculation close enough.

That’s why the hard sciences are more difficult to teach than liberal arts subjects. There is no room for interpretation and there’s no ability to BS a calculation.

What about strong writing? I don’t understand why we don’t value good writers and, subsequently, the ability to teach writing. I suspect a survey of law offices, medical settings, corporate settings, etc., would show that there is a desperate need for strong writers.

Incidentally, subjectivity is why English is so hard to teach. BS, as you so aptly put it, isn’t the goal of writing. We want people to make a claim and back it up with evidence. If you fail to do that, then you have BS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The average salary in the us is in the 40s

Teacher salaries are know when people choose the career

Teachers love to complain

The average salary for college-educated people? How about master's degree?

Except an M.Ed isn’t equivalent to an M.S. Compare apples to apples. What do you think the average English major makes?

Well? What are the numbers? Not $40k.

How much does an average college grad make right out of school?

Crickets. Guess you aren’t very good with numbers.

Here you go:
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/average-salary-college-graduates/

The average college grad makes $59,600 in 2022.

The average for young teachers is $39,000.

That $20k gap is the issue. In fact, the average college grad even makes MORE than an experienced teacher ($51,000).


We need to pay teachers more to attract and retain good teachers. Period. There may be other contributing factors but it really all comes down to money. You get what you pay for. No money, no teachers.

As long as your union demands pay is based on longevity instead of skill we will remain here. Good teachers should be paid more, average teachers should not and bad ones should not receive step increases.

IDGAF about teacher unions. We need to pay teachers - at all levels - more to attract and retain good teachers. When an average college grad makes more than an experienced teacher then you know it’s not sustainable.

Raise taxes. Pay teachers more. Support our kids’ education.

-STEM parent

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The average salary in the us is in the 40s

Teacher salaries are know when people choose the career

Teachers love to complain

The average salary for college-educated people? How about master's degree?

Except an M.Ed isn’t equivalent to an M.S. Compare apples to apples. What do you think the average English major makes?

Well? What are the numbers? Not $40k.

How much does an average college grad make right out of school?

Crickets. Guess you aren’t very good with numbers.

Here you go:
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/average-salary-college-graduates/

The average college grad makes $59,600 in 2022.

The average for young teachers is $39,000.

That $20k gap is the issue. In fact, the average college grad even makes MORE than an experienced teacher ($51,000).


We need to pay teachers more to attract and retain good teachers. Period. There may be other contributing factors but it really all comes down to money. You get what you pay for. No money, no teachers.

As long as your union demands pay is based on longevity instead of skill we will remain here. Good teachers should be paid more, average teachers should not and bad ones should not receive step increases.

IDGAF about teacher unions. We need to pay teachers - at all levels - more to attract and retain good teachers. When an average college grad makes more than an experienced teacher then you know it’s not sustainable.

Raise taxes. Pay teachers more. Support our kids’ education.

-STEM parent

Average college grads don’t make more than experienced teachers, even when you ignore total compensation and without adjusting for 10 versus 12 month salaries.

[Anonymous]

PP, you keep going after this golden carrot of rewarding the "good" teachers. How do you know if a teacher is good? Research shows that there is no way to determine that quantitively and in an unbiased way.

There is no effective way to evaluate teachers because there is no effective way to equalize the product, which is students.

Research shows that students from high socio-economic families do appreciably better on standardized tests than students from low socio-economic families. Therefore, teachers who teach in high socio-economic schools will always outperform teachers who teach in low socio-economic schools because teachers in high socio-economic schools are working with a population that is already ahead.

Then you must consider other factors that can negatively or positively impact students, and teachers working in low socio-economic schools always come out on the bottom. You can have the greatest teacher in the world but put that teacher in a classroom with students who are worried about where they're going to sleep that night, or who are so hungry they are about to faint, or who slept outside and don't have access to a toilet so they have to poop so badly that they can't concentrate, or ... well, you get the picture.

It is an uphill battle.

Great minds have been working at the teacher evaluation process for decades and have been stymied. Even the Gates foundation attempted to do refine the teacher evaluation process and had to stop in defeat. In fact, the ASA put out a study two or three years ago that shows that teacher quality accounts for only 18% of student performance; the rest of student performance is determined by other factors. That's pretty staggering.

Instead of beating the dead horse with your "we'll only pay the good teachers" bit, you should be more focused on how we improve the whole system. When you open your mind, PP, and look at the research, you'll see that your method won't work. So take some time off, readjust your attitude and come back with you're in a more open frame of mind.

DP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP, you keep going after this golden carrot of rewarding the "good" teachers. How do you know if a teacher is good? Research shows that there is no way to determine that quantitively and in an unbiased way.

There is no effective way to evaluate teachers because there is no effective way to equalize the product, which is students.

Research shows that students from high socio-economic families do appreciably better on standardized tests than students from low socio-economic families. Therefore, teachers who teach in high socio-economic schools will always outperform teachers who teach in low socio-economic schools because teachers in high socio-economic schools are working with a population that is already ahead.

Then you must consider other factors that can negatively or positively impact students, and teachers working in low socio-economic schools always come out on the bottom. You can have the greatest teacher in the world but put that teacher in a classroom with students who are worried about where they're going to sleep that night, or who are so hungry they are about to faint, or who slept outside and don't have access to a toilet so they have to poop so badly that they can't concentrate, or ... well, you get the picture.

It is an uphill battle.

Great minds have been working at the teacher evaluation process for decades and have been stymied. Even the Gates foundation attempted to do refine the teacher evaluation process and had to stop in defeat. In fact, the ASA put out a study two or three years ago that shows that teacher quality accounts for only 18% of student performance; the rest of student performance is determined by other factors. That's pretty staggering.

Instead of beating the dead horse with your "we'll only pay the good teachers" bit, you should be more focused on how we improve the whole system. When you open your mind, PP, and look at the research, you'll see that your method won't work. So take some time off, readjust your attitude and come back with you're in a more open frame of mind.

DP

I'm sorry, I was responding to 19:17 but I took so long to type that a bunch of others came in with responses. I didn't mean you, 19:32.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP, you keep going after this golden carrot of rewarding the "good" teachers. How do you know if a teacher is good? Research shows that there is no way to determine that quantitively and in an unbiased way.

There is no effective way to evaluate teachers because there is no effective way to equalize the product, which is students.

Research shows that students from high socio-economic families do appreciably better on standardized tests than students from low socio-economic families. Therefore, teachers who teach in high socio-economic schools will always outperform teachers who teach in low socio-economic schools because teachers in high socio-economic schools are working with a population that is already ahead.

Then you must consider other factors that can negatively or positively impact students, and teachers working in low socio-economic schools always come out on the bottom. You can have the greatest teacher in the world but put that teacher in a classroom with students who are worried about where they're going to sleep that night, or who are so hungry they are about to faint, or who slept outside and don't have access to a toilet so they have to poop so badly that they can't concentrate, or ... well, you get the picture.

It is an uphill battle.

Great minds have been working at the teacher evaluation process for decades and have been stymied. Even the Gates foundation attempted to do refine the teacher evaluation process and had to stop in defeat. In fact, the ASA put out a study two or three years ago that shows that teacher quality accounts for only 18% of student performance; the rest of student performance is determined by other factors. That's pretty staggering.

Instead of beating the dead horse with your "we'll only pay the good teachers" bit, you should be more focused on how we improve the whole system. When you open your mind, PP, and look at the research, you'll see that your method won't work. So take some time off, readjust your attitude and come back with you're in a more open frame of mind.

DP

how do we evaluate doctors and nurses?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How can you help kids master knowledge unless you fully grasp the content and can explain it in multiple different ways?

English is subjective. Not grammar but interpretations of literature. One student may argued one way and the other a different perspective. As long as both providing supporting evidence from the text, they are both correct.

This is not true in math and science. There is a correct answer. Either the kid is able to come up with the correct answer and show their work or they can’t. I don’t know about you but I’m not getting on a roller coaster where the engineer gets the calculation close enough.

That’s why the hard sciences are more difficult to teach than liberal arts subjects. There is no room for interpretation and there’s no ability to BS a calculation.

What about strong writing? I don’t understand why we don’t value good writers and, subsequently, the ability to teach writing. I suspect a survey of law offices, medical settings, corporate settings, etc., would show that there is a desperate need for strong writers.

Incidentally, subjectivity is why English is so hard to teach. BS, as you so aptly put it, isn’t the goal of writing. We want people to make a claim and back it up with evidence. If you fail to do that, then you have BS.

+1

PP just articulated why it is *more* difficult to teach English. Math has clear answers and you can check your own work. Any monkey can learn how to follow an algorithm, but it takes much more nuance to write well.

- worked with a lot of monkeys

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, you keep going after this golden carrot of rewarding the "good" teachers. How do you know if a teacher is good? Research shows that there is no way to determine that quantitively and in an unbiased way.

There is no effective way to evaluate teachers because there is no effective way to equalize the product, which is students.

Research shows that students from high socio-economic families do appreciably better on standardized tests than students from low socio-economic families. Therefore, teachers who teach in high socio-economic schools will always outperform teachers who teach in low socio-economic schools because teachers in high socio-economic schools are working with a population that is already ahead.

Then you must consider other factors that can negatively or positively impact students, and teachers working in low socio-economic schools always come out on the bottom. You can have the greatest teacher in the world but put that teacher in a classroom with students who are worried about where they're going to sleep that night, or who are so hungry they are about to faint, or who slept outside and don't have access to a toilet so they have to poop so badly that they can't concentrate, or ... well, you get the picture.

It is an uphill battle.

Great minds have been working at the teacher evaluation process for decades and have been stymied. Even the Gates foundation attempted to do refine the teacher evaluation process and had to stop in defeat. In fact, the ASA put out a study two or three years ago that shows that teacher quality accounts for only 18% of student performance; the rest of student performance is determined by other factors. That's pretty staggering.

Instead of beating the dead horse with your "we'll only pay the good teachers" bit, you should be more focused on how we improve the whole system. When you open your mind, PP, and look at the research, you'll see that your method won't work. So take some time off, readjust your attitude and come back with you're in a more open frame of mind.

DP

I'm sorry, I was responding to 19:17 but I took so long to type that a bunch of others came in with responses. I didn't mean you, 19:32.

DP, but teacher quality not significantly affecting student performance isn't exactly a compelling arguement for paying teachers more. It would instead argue for reducing qualifications.

Though, 18% is actually a lot more than I expected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The average salary in the us is in the 40s

Teacher salaries are know when people choose the career

Teachers love to complain

The average salary for college-educated people? How about master's degree?

Except an M.Ed isn’t equivalent to an M.S. Compare apples to apples. What do you think the average English major makes?

Well? What are the numbers? Not $40k.

How much does an average college grad make right out of school?

Crickets. Guess you aren’t very good with numbers.

Here you go:
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/average-salary-college-graduates/

The average college grad makes $59,600 in 2022.

The average for young teachers is $39,000.

That $20k gap is the issue. In fact, the average college grad even makes MORE than an experienced teacher ($51,000).


We need to pay teachers more to attract and retain good teachers. Period. There may be other contributing factors but it really all comes down to money. You get what you pay for. No money, no teachers.

As long as your union demands pay is based on longevity instead of skill we will remain here. Good teachers should be paid more, average teachers should not and bad ones should not receive step increases.

IDGAF about teacher unions. We need to pay teachers - at all levels - more to attract and retain good teachers. When an average college grad makes more than an experienced teacher then you know it’s not sustainable.

Raise taxes. Pay teachers more. Support our kids’ education.

-STEM parent

Average college grads don’t make more than experienced teachers, even when you ignore total compensation and without adjusting for 10 versus 12 month salaries.

According to Forbes data above they do. Please feel free to cite otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, you keep going after this golden carrot of rewarding the "good" teachers. How do you know if a teacher is good? Research shows that there is no way to determine that quantitively and in an unbiased way.

There is no effective way to evaluate teachers because there is no effective way to equalize the product, which is students.

Research shows that students from high socio-economic families do appreciably better on standardized tests than students from low socio-economic families. Therefore, teachers who teach in high socio-economic schools will always outperform teachers who teach in low socio-economic schools because teachers in high socio-economic schools are working with a population that is already ahead.

Then you must consider other factors that can negatively or positively impact students, and teachers working in low socio-economic schools always come out on the bottom. You can have the greatest teacher in the world but put that teacher in a classroom with students who are worried about where they're going to sleep that night, or who are so hungry they are about to faint, or who slept outside and don't have access to a toilet so they have to poop so badly that they can't concentrate, or ... well, you get the picture.

It is an uphill battle.

Great minds have been working at the teacher evaluation process for decades and have been stymied. Even the Gates foundation attempted to do refine the teacher evaluation process and had to stop in defeat. In fact, the ASA put out a study two or three years ago that shows that teacher quality accounts for only 18% of student performance; the rest of student performance is determined by other factors. That's pretty staggering.

Instead of beating the dead horse with your "we'll only pay the good teachers" bit, you should be more focused on how we improve the whole system. When you open your mind, PP, and look at the research, you'll see that your method won't work. So take some time off, readjust your attitude and come back with you're in a more open frame of mind.

DP

I'm sorry, I was responding to 19:17 but I took so long to type that a bunch of others came in with responses. I didn't mean you, 19:32.

DP, but teacher quality not significantly affecting student performance isn't exactly a compelling arguement for paying teachers more. It would instead argue for reducing qualifications.

Though, 18% is actually a lot more than I expected.

I beg to differ. The 18% means to me that we don't have to go after the best and the brightest and divert the great thinkers to working in the classroom where they won't do as much good as if they were in a job that required their great thinking. Instead, we can use the middle-of-the-road teachers to do the work. The trick is that we need enough of them that they can do the job effectively and efficiently. Right now we don't have enough of them.

If you've ever studied economics and market forces, then you know that when you have a scarcity in a workforce, you need to improve pay and work conditions. Ergo, improving pay and work conditions for teachers will help us attract more teachers either into the field or back into the field after they've left it. Nasty parents vilifying teachers, bad administrators mistreating teachers, and poorly run school systems treating teachers like children have contrived to make the problem that we have, not enough teachers, so now we need to do what we can to fix the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, you keep going after this golden carrot of rewarding the "good" teachers. How do you know if a teacher is good? Research shows that there is no way to determine that quantitively and in an unbiased way.

There is no effective way to evaluate teachers because there is no effective way to equalize the product, which is students.

Research shows that students from high socio-economic families do appreciably better on standardized tests than students from low socio-economic families. Therefore, teachers who teach in high socio-economic schools will always outperform teachers who teach in low socio-economic schools because teachers in high socio-economic schools are working with a population that is already ahead.

Then you must consider other factors that can negatively or positively impact students, and teachers working in low socio-economic schools always come out on the bottom. You can have the greatest teacher in the world but put that teacher in a classroom with students who are worried about where they're going to sleep that night, or who are so hungry they are about to faint, or who slept outside and don't have access to a toilet so they have to poop so badly that they can't concentrate, or ... well, you get the picture.

It is an uphill battle.

Great minds have been working at the teacher evaluation process for decades and have been stymied. Even the Gates foundation attempted to do refine the teacher evaluation process and had to stop in defeat. In fact, the ASA put out a study two or three years ago that shows that teacher quality accounts for only 18% of student performance; the rest of student performance is determined by other factors. That's pretty staggering.

Instead of beating the dead horse with your "we'll only pay the good teachers" bit, you should be more focused on how we improve the whole system. When you open your mind, PP, and look at the research, you'll see that your method won't work. So take some time off, readjust your attitude and come back with you're in a more open frame of mind.

DP

how do we evaluate doctors and nurses?

??? We don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, you keep going after this golden carrot of rewarding the "good" teachers. How do you know if a teacher is good? Research shows that there is no way to determine that quantitively and in an unbiased way.

There is no effective way to evaluate teachers because there is no effective way to equalize the product, which is students.

Research shows that students from high socio-economic families do appreciably better on standardized tests than students from low socio-economic families. Therefore, teachers who teach in high socio-economic schools will always outperform teachers who teach in low socio-economic schools because teachers in high socio-economic schools are working with a population that is already ahead.

Then you must consider other factors that can negatively or positively impact students, and teachers working in low socio-economic schools always come out on the bottom. You can have the greatest teacher in the world but put that teacher in a classroom with students who are worried about where they're going to sleep that night, or who are so hungry they are about to faint, or who slept outside and don't have access to a toilet so they have to poop so badly that they can't concentrate, or ... well, you get the picture.

It is an uphill battle.

Great minds have been working at the teacher evaluation process for decades and have been stymied. Even the Gates foundation attempted to do refine the teacher evaluation process and had to stop in defeat. In fact, the ASA put out a study two or three years ago that shows that teacher quality accounts for only 18% of student performance; the rest of student performance is determined by other factors. That's pretty staggering.

Instead of beating the dead horse with your "we'll only pay the good teachers" bit, you should be more focused on how we improve the whole system. When you open your mind, PP, and look at the research, you'll see that your method won't work. So take some time off, readjust your attitude and come back with you're in a more open frame of mind.

DP

I'm sorry, I was responding to 19:17 but I took so long to type that a bunch of others came in with responses. I didn't mean you, 19:32.

DP, but teacher quality not significantly affecting student performance isn't exactly a compelling arguement for paying teachers more. It would instead argue for reducing qualifications.

Though, 18% is actually a lot more than I expected.

I beg to differ. The 18% means to me that we don't have to go after the best and the brightest and divert the great thinkers to working in the classroom where they won't do as much good as if they were in a job that required their great thinking. Instead, we can use the middle-of-the-road teachers to do the work. The trick is that we need enough of them that they can do the job effectively and efficiently. Right now we don't have enough of them.

If you've ever studied economics and market forces, then you know that when you have a scarcity in a workforce, you need to improve pay and work conditions. Ergo, improving pay and work conditions for teachers will help us attract more teachers either into the field or back into the field after they've left it. Nasty parents vilifying teachers, bad administrators mistreating teachers, and poorly run school systems treating teachers like children have contrived to make the problem that we have, not enough teachers, so now we need to do what we can to fix the problem.

Pay has been like this for decades, its the work conditions that have deteriorated and are causing folks to leave and not enter the field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, you keep going after this golden carrot of rewarding the "good" teachers. How do you know if a teacher is good? Research shows that there is no way to determine that quantitively and in an unbiased way.

There is no effective way to evaluate teachers because there is no effective way to equalize the product, which is students.

Research shows that students from high socio-economic families do appreciably better on standardized tests than students from low socio-economic families. Therefore, teachers who teach in high socio-economic schools will always outperform teachers who teach in low socio-economic schools because teachers in high socio-economic schools are working with a population that is already ahead.

Then you must consider other factors that can negatively or positively impact students, and teachers working in low socio-economic schools always come out on the bottom. You can have the greatest teacher in the world but put that teacher in a classroom with students who are worried about where they're going to sleep that night, or who are so hungry they are about to faint, or who slept outside and don't have access to a toilet so they have to poop so badly that they can't concentrate, or ... well, you get the picture.

It is an uphill battle.

Great minds have been working at the teacher evaluation process for decades and have been stymied. Even the Gates foundation attempted to do refine the teacher evaluation process and had to stop in defeat. In fact, the ASA put out a study two or three years ago that shows that teacher quality accounts for only 18% of student performance; the rest of student performance is determined by other factors. That's pretty staggering.

Instead of beating the dead horse with your "we'll only pay the good teachers" bit, you should be more focused on how we improve the whole system. When you open your mind, PP, and look at the research, you'll see that your method won't work. So take some time off, readjust your attitude and come back with you're in a more open frame of mind.

DP

I'm sorry, I was responding to 19:17 but I took so long to type that a bunch of others came in with responses. I didn't mean you, 19:32.

DP, but teacher quality not significantly affecting student performance isn't exactly a compelling arguement for paying teachers more. It would instead argue for reducing qualifications.

Though, 18% is actually a lot more than I expected.

I beg to differ. The 18% means to me that we don't have to go after the best and the brightest and divert the great thinkers to working in the classroom where they won't do as much good as if they were in a job that required their great thinking. Instead, we can use the middle-of-the-road teachers to do the work. The trick is that we need enough of them that they can do the job effectively and efficiently. Right now we don't have enough of them.

If you've ever studied economics and market forces, then you know that when you have a scarcity in a workforce, you need to improve pay and work conditions. Ergo, improving pay and work conditions for teachers will help us attract more teachers either into the field or back into the field after they've left it. Nasty parents vilifying teachers, bad administrators mistreating teachers, and poorly run school systems treating teachers like children have contrived to make the problem that we have, not enough teachers, so now we need to do what we can to fix the problem.

Pay has been like this for decades, its the work conditions that have deteriorated and are causing folks to leave and not enter the field.

For decades teachers have made less year over year? Because that’s where we are now. I make $5k more than I did 9 years ago. But buying power is way, way less. I’m leaving in October for a job that can cover my rent and leave me some wiggle room each month, as well as has the potential for real raises, not 1% colas every 2-3 years when the scale isn’t frozen. Just waiting for the final offer letter to come through and then I’m giving a months notice. I can’t afford this any longer.

Conditions need to improve too, but $$$ is a HUGE driver.

[Anonymous]

Yup. COLA has gone up - significantly in some areas with housing booms. But teacher salaries haven’t kept up.

You get what you pay for. You want to attract and retain quality teachers? Put your money where your mouth is.

[Anonymous]

If money was so important to you why did you pick teaching.

I don't know any other profession that is so unprofessional.