Teachers Should Be Paid More…But Not Because They Deserve It, amirite?

Here's a different take: raise teacher pay and at least some of the current teachers will become better as their quality of life changes.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

I agree with the OP's idea but they need to be able to be fired quickly if they underperform. A great salary should come at a cost of great expectations.

by Large-Flight 6 days ago

The resentment towards having children is oozing with that one. Just a questionable thing to add in, your opinion was valid, but you capped it off with something unnecessarily odd

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Well the people who figure out how to get results will be the ones who survive and the issue solves itself

by Brownmarlee 6 days ago

I do think tenure in some districts is poorly conceived. Teachers should have all the same protections from unjustified terminations that anyone deserves, but tenure was really designed for research professors to create academic freedom, not high school algebra teachers.

by Parking-Seaweed 6 days ago

I make roughly double what a teacher does. If you swapped our salaries, I'd stay in my current role. Being a teacher sucks lol.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Well in today's world with cell phone cameras it seems like they can get fired much easier now.

by aufderharraheem 6 days ago

lol, the expectations already placed on teachers are absolutely insane. Source: am teacher

by EasternCabinet 6 days ago

Not how teaching works.

by streichforest 6 days ago

How would you suppose to measure teacher performance? Because I think children's test scores a good measure.

by Large-Flight 6 days ago

Why do the best and brightest people go into soul-sucking finance jobs?

by Great_Economics_4589 6 days ago

More applicants raises the total number of qualified applicants, no?

by Kindly-Marsupial 6 days ago

I don't think I'm terribly obtuse. Maybe a bit. Markets certainly don't solve everything. But I definitely know plenty of people particularly in math and science who would probably make great teachers who simply can't stomach the pay cut. I have family that has worked in education and they fill a lot of math and science positions with education or history majors because they can't find a stem major who will take the job.

by Parking-Seaweed 6 days ago

It's not unpopular. It's the main argument for raising teacher pay.

by streichforest 6 days ago

Most who teach now actually love something about the job, and do their best to reach the students regardless of salary. People who teach when salaries go up are essentially doing it for the money. They don't last and often aren't good at it. So in reality it's actually the opposite of what op is saying.

by Deshawnconsidin 6 days ago

You're but you're underestimating good teachers that went for different careers because it's not enough to live off of a teacher's salary in many places anymore.

by Magdalen59 6 days ago

How many people are burnt out because there aren't enough teachers to make class sizes more reasonable? How much better would it be for the ratio of teachers to students to go 1 - 30 or 40 to 1 - 20 or 30?

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Teachers in the US are doubling as bodyguards though, so they definitely should have a pay raise.

by Intelligent_Loan 6 days ago

No they aren't.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Many literally are dude

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Really? Every parent in America is expecting the teacher to step between their child and an incoming bullet

by Anonymous 6 days ago

As a teacher, I'm sorry I wouldn't step in front of a bullet for a student, I have my own kid at home I need to be around for.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Yeah. There was a movement to get teachers to carry guns for exactly that reason.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Like you said, there are bad teachers and there are great teacher's. That would be true no matter if you doubled their pay. You might have more competent teachers but you would also have more people in it for the money and doing the bare minimum. I personally don't think teachers are underpaid but I think schools are underfunded. Most teachers spend well over a thousand dollars each year providing supplies for their class rooms and their overtime comes from schools not being able to hire enough aids or teachers.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Did you know that the schools with the most funding get the lowest results and the schools with the lowest funding get the best results? Turns out continuously increasing funding on failing schools doesn't work

by Brownmarlee 6 days ago

The main argument for raising teacher pay is to attract more people to the profession, so this opinion is not unpopular.

by streichforest 6 days ago

Salaries in the 30s and 40s is also another reason why they should be paid more. That kinda salary was barely decent 12 years ago, you're riding the struggle bus now with those numbers.

by Ok_Body_9311 6 days ago

True true

by Anonymous 6 days ago

People forget that there's months in the summer that they aren't getting paid at all. As the daughter of two teachers, we basically had no food left in the house in the last couple weeks leading up to school, which would not have been the case if they were paid adequately enough during the school year to save up enough to last through the summer. It seems to me that the people with the loudest opinions on teacher's pay are the ones who have no experience living on a teacher's wage.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Who is the we? What is the goal?

by cade16 6 days ago

Teachers in Canada make 80-100k and have great pensions. Sad to see.

by Ambitious_Owl 6 days ago

You can say that about any profession tho that's just people some are amazing at their jobs some are ok at their job some are awful at their jobs that's just the reality also just cause you didn't like a teacher or a few teachers doesn't mean they're were bad (not talking or referring to OP that just seems to be a thing when people say they didn't have good teachers) coming from someone who has had objectively bad teachers plenty of times cause the school system I was originally taught in was horrible (I'm originally from NC lol)

by Quiet-Bird 6 days ago

Yeah I mean not all teachers are great but all deserve better pay. The current pay is frankly insulting. For everyone. So I disagree, currently every teacher deserves more. Even the aggressively mediocre ones. But you are of course 100% right that decent pay would mean more and probably also better teachers. Also better pay and more money in education in general could mean that the current teachers do a much better Job. Because there's just no incentive like good money for work well done.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

There's a lot of reasons they should be paid more. Hell, tracking inflation is one of them. If they can't afford to live near where they work then they won't work there. Now you don't have any teachers.

by Electronic_Poetry 6 days ago

Wait, you think you're the first person to have the idea that we should pay teachers more in order to attract more people to the profession?

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Here's one thing I've never quite understood. I can listen to an argument that teachers deserve more pay. But are teachers ever surprised at their incomes? You can (and should!) look up an average income for teachers before pursuing your degree, and it has been this way as long as I have been alive. There must be some "labor of love" that goes into it. People don't go into teaching for the money, right? Seems like there are easier ways to get $50K a year (or whatever it is depending on the location).

by Wendy36 6 days ago

It takes the bare minimum to become a teacher, In my state they're required to have a Master's degree. Not exactly what I would call the bare minimum, seeing as only 14.4% of the US holds an equivalent or higher.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

I mean, there's a massive teacher shortage right now, so the basic laws of the free market say teachers are underpaid.

by Leatha80 6 days ago

I can see your teachers failed you, my apologies.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Doesn't matter what school your child goes to , as long as the parents are involved in their education, they will be fine

by Rahul12 6 days ago

It's this. Teachers should be there to impart knowledge on their students. The best teachers also impart wisdom. True wisdom, however, can only come from the parents and family.

by howefelicity 6 days ago

This is a really important disctinction, I'm glad someone else feels the same way. If we just say "they deserve it" the conversation will often shift towards other low-paying but important jobs

by Anonymous 6 days ago

In FL the average teacher makes more than $54k, with a starting pay of $48k. Considering that teachers are salaried based on 180 instructional days a year, that comes to $267 a day for a starting wage. If they worked 5 days a week 50 days a year their starting pay would be $66.7K per year. Which is about $23k above what the average firefighter makes, and much more above what the starting pay is. While I agree teachers should be paid more, there is also a factor in how they hold citizens hostage with their unions and how much they fail to do their jobs. How about we make their pay increases directly connected to how well the individual teachers succeed at their jobs.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

Basing school funding on test scores with No Child Left Behind is exactly why education has decreased so drastically in the past 2 decades. Obviously there's a difference between overall school funding, and teachers' personal salaries, but I'm really not sure that's a good idea lol. Good in theory, bad in practice.

by Anonymous 6 days ago

I actually dont agree with the myth teachers are underpaid. The lowest pad teachers make around $55k a year . Doubl what a minimum wage worker makes they get all the vacations the students do off/and summer. + benefits and a pension. Its actually a pretty awesome job

by Valuable_List_9437 6 days ago