We're losing teachers---for good

Paying teachers what they deserve isn't "throwing money at the problem." It's basic justice and equity. We have a very strange hierarchy in this country. We revere and pay big bucks to scumbag lawyers and politicians but treat teachers like glorified day care workers.

In how many professions are people expected to pay for their own office supplies? Teachers, however, routinely pay for classroom materials out of their own pockets. I routinely spend $300 a month for stuff the district SHOULD be supplying.

Teacher shortages are directly caused by poor teacher pay. Consider--you need a college degree PLUS four to six years of postgraduate work in order to get a teaching license. Then, you get paid about as well as a Starbucks barista--while staggering under the burden of all that student debt you acquired during your long journey through the halls of academe. It's a wonder anyone at all wants to teach.

Paying teachers what they deserve isn't "throwing money at the problem." It's basic justice and equity. We have a very strange hierarchy in this country. We revere and pay big bucks to scumbag lawyers and politicians but treat teachers like glorified day care workers.

In how many professions are people expected to pay for their own office supplies? Teachers, however, routinely pay for classroom materials out of their own pockets. I routinely spend $300 a month for stuff the district SHOULD be supplying.

Teacher shortages are directly caused by poor teacher pay. Consider--you need a college degree PLUS four to six years of postgraduate work in order to get a teaching license. Then, you get paid about as well as a Starbucks barista--while staggering under the burden of all that student debt you acquired during your long journey through the halls of academe. It's a wonder anyone at all wants to teach.

Deserve is the key word. I'm sure you know many that don't even deserve minimum wage.

My point being paying them more doesn't make them better teachers. But I think you acknowledged that when you mentioned politicians being paid too much.

You're missing the point. Paying them more makes the profession as a whole more attractive, which means that more young people will choose to become teachers rather than lawyers or politicians, which we all can agree, we have too many of already.

And no, I don't know ANY teachers who only deserve to get paid minimum wage. They are responsible for hundreds of kids. They're professionals.

Paying them more yes makes more want to do the job but it still doesn't make them better at the job. Again look at your example politicians make big bucks but they suck at their job. Paying them more sure didn't make them good but there sure is a lot of people that would love having that cushy "job".

You still get a pension that will pay you after you retire. For some that is more than they made as a teacher but for most it is less, but you still have that and it helps equal out what you didn't get while you were teaching. Most of the rest of us are on our own, and that was our decision in our carrer choices.

Their pensions are something that they have paid into and hopefully the schools and states have kept them and will keep them solvent! Nothing worse than putting in your 30 years to find out that your local or state got sold a bill of goods by some fast-talking financial planner! 

Teachers in our state (Nebraska) are not over paid, like every job not all put in the same time and effort. Hopefully they eventually sort the poor out like most jobs. We do not hold them in the importance of our countries future as we should.

You continue to miss the point. There's a shortage of teachers, in no small part because we don't incentivize teaching by paying teachers adequately. I'm not talking about making the existing teachers "better," by whatever metric you happen to think is correct.

I don't know of any other profession that requires a degree + extensive training, yet pays so little.

Public school principals lose their jobs when their schools don't achieve certain test scores or achieve other merits. So yes, ineffective public school teachers do get fired. And you know where they then have to find jobs?

At private schools and charter schools. Typically, they have much lower standards.

A principal loses their job is wrong. They are not the one doing the teaching. The principal should give guideance to the teaching staff to help make them better but he can't do their job for them, that is when the principal should make a recomendation/review to the school board about the teacher and let them decide who goes.