No shit? We thought it was based on your unwavering gratitude for a challenging profession.AZGrizFan wrote:Agreed. And I made the 90% number up. Also the 2nd 90% number was also made up.UNI88 wrote:
I spent 5 years substitute teaching and while I definitely experienced teachers who got into it because they thought it would be easy it was nowhere near 90%. Most teachers want to do a good job but are handcuffed by the system (too rigid of a curriculum, too much testing rather than teaching, too little discipline/consequences, too large of class sizes, etc.).
Teachers in strong union districts can make a really good salary but it's based on longevity not the quality of their teaching. Starting salaries for teachers tend to be low so the profession doesn't always attract the best candidates. The impact of longevity on salary makes moving to a new district a tougher decision which is too bad because teaching can burn you out and a change of scenery could reinvigorate an experienced teacher.
Fiver is right about the varying salaries. History majors don't have as many options as Math and Science majors. From my experience teachers also spend a lot of their own money on their classroom and their students (especially in lower-income districts) and they can spend their evenings grading papers and preparing lessons for the next day or week (I know a lot of other salaried jobs require evening and weekend work). And that $50K might project out to $63K in a full year but a teacher that wants to work over the summer to make extra money is probably looking at a job in the $10-20/hour range depending on where they live.
Education is critical to the long-term success of the US and it's gotten worse over the last few decades so we need to look outside the box on how to fix it. Throwing money at the problem without really changing anything isn't the solution but strategically investing money in the right ways might be. Let's let state and local governments try different things like what Fiver talked about and see what works rather than having the federal government dictate a one-size-fits-all solution.
