[tptacek]

If the claim is "nurses and teachers are poorly paid in the US", that claim is broadly false. K-12 teachers in major metro areas in the US have surprisingly generous comp packages: well above area median take-home salary with predictable ladders, very good benefits, and defined-benefit pension plans.

There are school districts where teachers are poorly compensated, but they aren't the norm over the population as a whole. Teachers are generally well-compensated.

Nursing, I don't know where to start.

[djoldman]

Folks may talk past each other on this.

Some people may say that nurses and teachers ARE NOT well-paid because those workers deserve to be paid more than they are.

Some people may say that nurses and teachers ARE well-paid because they are generally paid more than median wage.

As for some dry facts, median wages:

  Registered Nurse $93,600

  Public School Teacher $64,000

  Private School Teacher $57,600

  All U.S. Occupations $49,500

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/occupation-finder.htm

[tptacek]

Complexifiers for teaching: K12 cash comp in major population centers (CPS, SFUSD, Philly, MSP, &c) is sharply higher than that median, and, more importantly, teachers get a huge amount of non-cash comp. Can't say enough how valuable a defined-benefit pension is. All-in comp for a lot of rank-and-file K12 teachers in major metros is competitive with software development (in those regions; obviously excluding SFUSD).

[djoldman]

Oh for sure. Many people are surprised to learn how much more public teachers make than private teachers :)

A ton of details that medians aren't showing.

I was just mentioning why folks may be on different sides here. We should at least be talking about the same thing.

If it's a "they deserve" conversation, that's very different than others.

[tptacek]

I think people can reasonably go back and forth about whether they should be more compensated, but I don't think there's a reasonable conversation to have about teaching not being a well-compensated career path. I know this surprises a lot of people.

(My mom is a retired CPS teacher.)

[djoldman]

I assume the CTU came up a lot at the dinner table, haha.

Shrug clearly teachers are paid more than the median wage. There isn't much to argue there.

Modeling wage/salary is pretty straightforward for the majority of jobs (weighted by number of people working the job). There really aren't too many surprises.

Monopoly/Oligopoly union power, licensing, labor supply, regulatory/compliance restrictions/barriers, and product/service output value are pretty much most of it?

[tptacek]

Hell if I know. This thread is based on a claim that people go into nursing and teaching out of altruism, and not for compensation. I'm pretty sure that's not true. Both are well-compensated, safe paths to a comfortable lifestyle and, especially for teaching, to a secure retirement.

No teacher is going to tell you they're not altruistic, and that they're in it for the money. They see themselves as doing good, and I agree that they are. But that's not what drives entrance into those fields.

[hoppyhoppy2]

Many teachers need a masters degree, which is much less true of the average worker.

[tptacek]

Nah, that argument isn't going to get us anywhere: big school districts actually have incentive plans to get teachers masters degrees. New teachers don't need them, the district will reimburse some amount of tuition, and set you up with tuition discounts at partner universities. Once you have the masters, you get a significant pay bump. The masters situation with K12 education is a benefit more than it is a cost.

[mold_aid]

>that claim is broadly false.

No, sorry, no, it is not "broadly false." K-12 salaries enter at average 40k often with a requirement to enter a graduate program within five years. I don't see that teachers in most states have received substantial increases in salary over any considerable period. They are underpaid.

Compensation rates are not "surprisingly good" (surprisingly?). Both groups merit much higher compensation. Your subjective consideration of "well-compensated" may differ from mine and fair enough, but I find generally one's position is more an index of their political beliefs (or sentiments towards unions in general) than any objective standard of what is "surprising" ("a retirement plan? In this economy?).

[tptacek]

You can just pick a city and Google median/mean salary for their school district to see that this isn't true. For what it's worth, the median cash compensation salary in my own high school district is six figures.

The smirking "a retirement plan" comment you made leaves out the important bit: it's a defined-benefit plan. The point isn't that teachers shouldn't have defined-benefit pensions. The point is that those pensions are extremely valuable, and not at all a market-rate perk in the broader economy.

It's easy to win an argument with a straw man saying "teachers are overcompensated". It'll be harder for you to contend with the argument I'm actually making.

[mold_aid]

I'm not sure what argument you are making, but the opinion you expressed initially was:

>Nursing and teaching are surprisingly well-compensated fields

To which somebody else said:

Not in the US!

And no, they aren't. And they're not "valorized." If salaries are surprising ito you, and if you say that doesn't mean "teachers are overcompensated," ok!, but I'm not sure where the argument with this straw man occurred. I know what the median salaries and general entry salaries for teachers are for my city, because I work with them (though not a k-12 teacher myself), I understand the debt calculations they have to make to continue, and I do not think they are well-paid.

But I did take your advice to google it and now I would say that teachers' incomes are described as "comparatively low" or "lagging behind cost increases" or "not keeping up with the rate of inflation" because in the results I see phrases like that quite a bit. So I wouldn't say that "surprisingly well-compensated" is actually true, and that "poorly paid" is "broadly false." In one relavant case I read "the 'benefits advantage' is not sufficiently large to offset the growing wage penalty for teachers."

[tptacek]

"People enter the profession of teaching for reasons other than altruism".

In a given metro, you can simply look up the median income, then look up the median teacher's income --- it'll be higher, and that's before benefits.

I think it's good we compensate teachers well. I think it's bad that people don't understand how valuable defined-benefit pensions are, because they are an enormous component of state income taxes and, especially, property taxes --- property taxes are regressive, and promote a cycle of housing exclusion in areas of opportunity. If you think a defined-benefit pension is akin to a 401K, or that a private sector employee could reasonably expect to get one, I'd suggest you maybe read up a bit.

[gopher_space]

> well above area median take-home salary

For someone with masters-level education and years of experience?

[tptacek]

No.