Public School Teachers Aren't Underpaid (WSJ)

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

The problem for teachers is that when you calculate pay hour for hour, it ends up being a significantly lower rate. When doing the job well, most teachers do not finish the work within the paid work hours. There is a lot of extra time required.

Not to nitpick as your post was very informative, but this is currently common among many (private sector) engineering jobs as well.

[RogerR]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Not to nitpick as your post was very informative, but this is currently common among many (private sector) engineering jobs as well.

Most teachers stay past their scheduled time every day. There's simply not enough time within the scheduled 8-hour day (including a planning period) to finish everything that needs to be done. When I worked as an engineer, I stayed frequently (I'd estimate once a week on average), but not everyday.

*I say "most" because I don't like absolutes, though the above statement has held true for every teacher I've known

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by ebarker

The 'credentialing' machine. Should pay be based on their sheepskin? Does having a PhD in education really help a third grade classroom when a BA brings the exact same experience to the 3rd grade art room.

I definitely agree with you on this; even as a student it's something about which I've heard. There is a fine line between more education and better education, where many teachers tend toward the former. In my last post I tried to stick with "better-educated." It's really just a more general term, referring to either more education or improving the current education for teachers.

A recent CNN special on Education (you can read about it and, I believe, watch it here) noted the high valuation, both societally and monetarily, of teachers in countries with high-achieving students such as Finland and South Korea. This valuation is justified to those adhering to the OP's article in that their schools of education are very selective; I imagine this allows those schools to have a more rigorous and therefore more effective curriculum (I'm not entirely sure that follows; comments?).

The end-result: teachers who are not more educated but are better-educated, with likely benefits for public schooling. Does that mean more selective schools of education in America would improve schooling? Not necessarily, but probably!

Originally Posted by JesseK

For example, investment bankers create no organic economic growth (they shift money around ... that's all they do ...)

This isn't related to education, but I have an issue with this statement. You seem to suggest that investment bankers are valueless, which is untrue. While they do not create growth, they position money where it will create the most growth. The difference will sometimes be minute, but with large sums of money invested, even small differences are substantial.

[EricVanWyk]

I met someone who told me they started voting to reduce the budget for local education the moment their youngest child graduated high school, because it wasn't their problem anymore.

I am not going to suggest that I know a way to fix the problems that mind-set generates, but in Eric's Perfect World (TM) there are fewer levels of indirection between education policy and those receiving education.