I don't think improving teacher pay would solve the problem on its own. However, it is one of several necessary steps to improving the profession. If I'm a smart, capable person, why would I choose to teach when I can earn several times more in the private sector for less exhausting, degrading work? I do it because it's important to me, but I'm not most people. Most smart, capable people go to work in the private sector, and the teacher ranks are filled with everyone else. If you don't like who's teaching, pay enough for someone respectable to do it instead.
The fact that you find this work "degrading" tells me that inadequate compensation is not the problem. Adequate compensation would just make the degradation more bearable. I think you likely are a good teacher. Why is the work degrading?
It's degrading because society does not respect teachers. I would agree that right now, many teachers have not earned society's respect. It's a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem, but fundamentally (at least in a capitalist system), professional respect starts with a decent salary. If you raise the pay, larger numbers of capable, respectable people will choose the profession -- for the pay, but also because of the respect that a higher salary confers. With better people choosing the profession, the profession improves, and eventually *earns* the respect of society.
What he have now is a doom loop: low pay begets low-quality employees begets low levels of respect. You can try the same thing and expect different results if you want, but...
Excuses? No. I'm presenting a realistic view of the problem. I did not say "ignore financial efficiency," I said it cannot be the *top* priority (but rather one of several competing priorities, with a high-quality education at the top).
The problem with treating a school like a business and making efficiency the top priority is that schools are working with variable inputs. If I make tires and my supplier is giving me bad rubber, I find a new supplier. If I make educated children and society is giving me bleary-eyed children who stay up til 3am on social media in broken homes, I can't just find a new "supplier." It is my job to educate these children. They will need different things than children coming from relative privilege and stability.
But prioritizing efficiency results in several counterproductive impulses:
1. Curate your student body so you're only getting "good rubber"
2. Use scalable, one-size-fits-all methodologies that don't work for different populations
3. Limit the definition of your outcome (a good education) to good test scores and teach to the test
I will repeat that efficiency IS an important priority, but it competes with other priorities. It's the same with the electric grid, for one example. In the old days, grid operators optimized for resilience and consistency, and efficiency was an important (but not overriding) concern. After the managerial revolution they started optimizing for efficiency, and the result is a fragile, unreliable grid.
I love markets and efficiency, but history is rather clear that these are not the best solutions to EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM in a complex society made up of complex human beings.
The private sector deals with all these things as well. Cost, price, quality, target markets, all must be considered. I still believe that up until recently, post secondary education could meet various educational needs at a wide range of prices. Anything from community college and tech schools to Ivy League universities. However the more involved government became in education, the more one-size-fits-all it became. K-12 was lost decades ago to an almost complete government monopoly. It is not necessary for education to become prive for-profit, but must become be guided by real-world outcomes and incentives, and divorced from politics and social engineering.
"It is not necessary for education to become for-profit, but must become be guided by real-world outcomes and incentives, and divorced from politics and social engineering."
I basically agree with this, but I have some disagreements with your claim that "the private sector handles these things well." It does, but not necessarily in the context of education.
If a business is getting "low-quality inputs" and therefore has difficulty producing good outputs competitively, it has several options: find new inputs, close locations, allocate resources to higher-performing regions, etc. All of these serve the goal of resource efficiency, yet all of them can be deeply counterproductive if the "inputs" you're talking about are children. Again, that is not to say we abandon efficiency; just that it must be balanced against your true goal: a high-quality, mostly equal education for all.
When efficiency serves that goal, we should be efficient. This is often the case, but it is not ALWAYS the case. When resource efficiency cuts against the goal of a high-quality education, we need to find balance. In other words, schools cannot be run strictly like a business.
I agree that government has made many of these problems worse. That's why I said that I basically agree with your closing thoughts, that education does need to fix real-world outcomes as a north star.
I don't think improving teacher pay would solve the problem on its own. However, it is one of several necessary steps to improving the profession. If I'm a smart, capable person, why would I choose to teach when I can earn several times more in the private sector for less exhausting, degrading work? I do it because it's important to me, but I'm not most people. Most smart, capable people go to work in the private sector, and the teacher ranks are filled with everyone else. If you don't like who's teaching, pay enough for someone respectable to do it instead.
The fact that you find this work "degrading" tells me that inadequate compensation is not the problem. Adequate compensation would just make the degradation more bearable. I think you likely are a good teacher. Why is the work degrading?
It's degrading because society does not respect teachers. I would agree that right now, many teachers have not earned society's respect. It's a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem, but fundamentally (at least in a capitalist system), professional respect starts with a decent salary. If you raise the pay, larger numbers of capable, respectable people will choose the profession -- for the pay, but also because of the respect that a higher salary confers. With better people choosing the profession, the profession improves, and eventually *earns* the respect of society.
What he have now is a doom loop: low pay begets low-quality employees begets low levels of respect. You can try the same thing and expect different results if you want, but...
Then perhaps you should have said "get paid for performance", but that would require a privatized system. No union would accept that.
That's because schools are not a business and financial efficiency cannot be the first priority when your job is to educate children.
Are you making excuses? Universities do it to attract top faculty. Read some von Mises. Economic efficiency is a prerequisite to superior performance.
Excuses? No. I'm presenting a realistic view of the problem. I did not say "ignore financial efficiency," I said it cannot be the *top* priority (but rather one of several competing priorities, with a high-quality education at the top).
The problem with treating a school like a business and making efficiency the top priority is that schools are working with variable inputs. If I make tires and my supplier is giving me bad rubber, I find a new supplier. If I make educated children and society is giving me bleary-eyed children who stay up til 3am on social media in broken homes, I can't just find a new "supplier." It is my job to educate these children. They will need different things than children coming from relative privilege and stability.
But prioritizing efficiency results in several counterproductive impulses:
1. Curate your student body so you're only getting "good rubber"
2. Use scalable, one-size-fits-all methodologies that don't work for different populations
3. Limit the definition of your outcome (a good education) to good test scores and teach to the test
I will repeat that efficiency IS an important priority, but it competes with other priorities. It's the same with the electric grid, for one example. In the old days, grid operators optimized for resilience and consistency, and efficiency was an important (but not overriding) concern. After the managerial revolution they started optimizing for efficiency, and the result is a fragile, unreliable grid.
I love markets and efficiency, but history is rather clear that these are not the best solutions to EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM in a complex society made up of complex human beings.
The private sector deals with all these things as well. Cost, price, quality, target markets, all must be considered. I still believe that up until recently, post secondary education could meet various educational needs at a wide range of prices. Anything from community college and tech schools to Ivy League universities. However the more involved government became in education, the more one-size-fits-all it became. K-12 was lost decades ago to an almost complete government monopoly. It is not necessary for education to become prive for-profit, but must become be guided by real-world outcomes and incentives, and divorced from politics and social engineering.
"It is not necessary for education to become for-profit, but must become be guided by real-world outcomes and incentives, and divorced from politics and social engineering."
I basically agree with this, but I have some disagreements with your claim that "the private sector handles these things well." It does, but not necessarily in the context of education.
If a business is getting "low-quality inputs" and therefore has difficulty producing good outputs competitively, it has several options: find new inputs, close locations, allocate resources to higher-performing regions, etc. All of these serve the goal of resource efficiency, yet all of them can be deeply counterproductive if the "inputs" you're talking about are children. Again, that is not to say we abandon efficiency; just that it must be balanced against your true goal: a high-quality, mostly equal education for all.
When efficiency serves that goal, we should be efficient. This is often the case, but it is not ALWAYS the case. When resource efficiency cuts against the goal of a high-quality education, we need to find balance. In other words, schools cannot be run strictly like a business.
I agree that government has made many of these problems worse. That's why I said that I basically agree with your closing thoughts, that education does need to fix real-world outcomes as a north star.