And when the outcomes don't improve because money isn't magical, we could double the salaries again! And again!
Seriously, how do you think that will work? Are you suggesting that the teachers could improve outcomes now, but are holding out as some sort of negotiation leverage? Or that there's some secret corps of millions of super-teachers who could educate the nation's children, but who would rather be network technicians and underwater welders because they need that half-median software income?
> Or that there's some secret corps of millions of super-teachers who could educate the nation's children, but who would rather be network technicians and underwater welders because they need that half-median software income?
That basically is the suggestion. The world is not an RPG, where being good at one thing necessitates you being bad at everything else. On the contrary, aptitude in one task is pretty well correlated with being good at any task. When we talk about intellectual tasks, we call this IQ, when we talk about physical feats we call this athleticism, and when we talk about social maneuvering, we call it charisma. And all three of those are positively correlated.
With that in mind, it's not at all unreasonable to believe that somebody who would make a great teacher (or at least a substantially better than average teacher) might have other aptitudes that we choose to reward more, even if they'd be relatively much better at teaching. Right now, you'd have to take a ~$50,000 pay cut to choose to be the highest paid teacher in the median California school district compared to being a median Californian software developer.
It's like any other job. If I'm offering $80,000 a year for software developers in CA, I might find a few talented people overlooked by the rest of the job market, or someone exceptionally stoked to work at my particular company, but I'm far more likely to end up with someone well below mediocrity.
>That basically is the suggestion. The world is not an RPG, where being good at one thing necessitates you being bad at everything else. On the contrary, aptitude in one task is pretty well correlated with being good at any task.
We need, for a nation the size of the United States, millions of teachers. Quite literally. The process that somehow selects not one good (or more literally, very few, just so the pedants don't complain) teacher now, but will select mostly/all good teachers if we were to implement it is 15% raises across the board? 40%? Never mind that doing that could only possibly attract something like 5-10% of personnel change... and I'm supposed to believe this is about increasing the quality of education instead of pandering to a voting bloc that will help you to enact your non-education agenda? No thanks.
>With that in mind, it's not at all unreasonable to believe that somebody who would make a great teacher
Blah blah blah, I've already moved past that. No need to try to make the sale here.
Are people really arguing that there are few good teachers? In my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, most people can list a mix of good and bad teachers they had over their educations. The goal is just to increase the proportion of good teachers, and hopefully raise the floor of the how good the worst teachers are.
Increasing pay probably won't raise the ceiling on how good the best teachers are. If they've got that strong a passion for teaching, they're probably already doing it.
> Are people really arguing that there are few good teachers?
Yes, in general, people from both the left and right argue this, though they quibble over details. And people like you chime in with "we could get better teachers if we paid them more", which strongly implies that you don't think that the current batch are sufficient.
If they're already good, then why do you want to pay them more? I don't see extraordinary outcomes that deserve extraordinary pay. And in any even, even if you do see extraordinary outcomes, the pay they're receiving is sufficient, because they agreed to accept it.
>most people can list a mix of good and bad teachers t
Sure. And one or two truly bad teachers can spoil a child for their entire school career. Hell, here in the United States, they don't have multiple teachers per year until 7th grade, give or take... one bad teacher can truly fuck that kid up. Even later on though, they can do alot of damage. I don't think the "there only one little turd in your soup" defense holds up when it comes to education.
>The goal is just to increase the proportion of good teacher
Let's just double pay to have 0.4% more good teachers, huh?
Nope, it's been tried before and it had 0 affect on student outcomes. I'm not saying that teachers don't "deserve" more, but it is not going to help students one bit.
As someone who earned "passion" money for a long time before ever earning anything remotely close to tech-adjacent money, passion does not pay bills anywhere near as well as money does. And struggling to pay bills, such as paying someone to fix a leaking roof, is not an enjoyable life for very long.
Seriously, how do you think that will work? Are you suggesting that the teachers could improve outcomes now, but are holding out as some sort of negotiation leverage? Or that there's some secret corps of millions of super-teachers who could educate the nation's children, but who would rather be network technicians and underwater welders because they need that half-median software income?