[asark]

> Ask any teacher. Rich suburb jobs are coveted because they pay well but the customers are very demanding.

In my mid-sized midwestern city, the notoriously-bad inner city schools pay the best, by far. The pay's not why most teachers prefer to work in the better suburban schools.

[logfromblammo]

Lack of heartbreaking stories and hopeless cases is one reason. Everybody likes to feel like their job makes a difference, and in some places it just feels like nothing you could possibly do will ever matter, because the meat grinder never stops making the same old sausages.

Also, the suburban schools likely have more opportunities for extra pay, such as by coaching an athletic team or being faculty sponsor for a student club.

[wil421]

Not sure if it’s still the case but in Metro Atlanta some inner city districts would pay off student loans if they worked for 5 years or something.

[moate]

That's common practice everywhere.

[verall]

Yea and in the south it is not like that at all.

[dsfyu404ed]

That doesn't square with my understanding but my knowledge is totally limited to New England and some of New York. Here the rich suburbs are where you go when you just want to teach the subject and only the subject in exchange for your check (which can get quite big if you put in many years).

Anecdotal data point: The "upscale but not quite Belmont/Lexington/etc" town in MA in which my parents live had a little bit of drama over the number of teachers (some of whom had been teaching there 30+yr) who were drawing salaries on par with software developers in the Boston area. Having been educated in that town years earlier that squares with my expectations. Sure the teachers taught but the overwhelming majority were older and just looking to teach what they needed to to cash checks until retirement.