[pkdpic]

My wife and I taught for 7 years before we couldn't make it work anymore financially. And that was in higher education which is infinitely less challenging than k-12.

We both agreed that we learned most of what we learned about the job in the first 2-3 years.

Also we saw a lot of teachers hit burnout at around 2-3 years and become infinitely less engaged / less passionate / more toxic.

Two years is a perfect amount of time to put into teaching.

[drunkan]

I am sorry to hear that, it is a great shame of society that education is continually neglected, underfunded and politicised.

I believe it is largely accepted by economists from accross the spectrum that a key driver and indeed one of the only gurantees of long term economic growth is investing in education and yet we routinely do not do so to the point where it is simply not financially viable for teachers to remain in the profession.

As to your argument that 2-3 years is where you learn most, I would argue that is probably the same for ever profession out there, but the experience of time is what adds that extra 10%. Just like we complete 90% of a programming task in the scheduled time, its really that last 10% where most of the difficulty lies.

[jimbokun]

> continually neglected, underfunded

In the US, we pour staggering amounts of money into education. It's certainly not underfunded in raw dollar terms.

Now, the lion's share of that money going to administrators of one kind or another, is a big problem.