The continuing devaluation of education in the US

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly, that's closer to my profile than I'd like to be; I manage but I'm not gonna lie, I'm probably at or somewhat below the median for high school teachers in America, as a teacher. I might have the median teacher beat on some semi-relevant metrics, but correspondingly they have me beat on others.

The thing is, as I said, there isn't a secret army of super-teachers waiting in the wings. On the whole, the teachers we already have are already pushing towards the high end of the bell curve in areas like conscientiousness, communication ability, and ability to project and express caring in the face of a neutral-to-hostile crowd all day long. They're maybe not the best, and we could probably find a few people who'd teach better than most of our existing teachers if we were willing to offer, say, $100,000 a year. But by and large, I think we'd be getting recruits no better than the ones we already have, who showed up specifically because it pays well, as opposed to because "I want to teach."

The average teacher is already a much better teacher than the median member of the population would be, in other words, and the average teacher's salary isn't that far from the median. Which suggests that some other sorting mechanism is in play (i.e. teaching selects for people who regard the act of teaching itself as a 'perk' worth tens of thousands a year, which isn't far from true).

[Bob the Gunslinger]

There are other forces at work, though. The long hours, the class sizes and management issues, the lack of dignity associated with the profession, and the office politics all make the job far more torturous than it needs to be. It's a pretty terrible feeling when you sacrifice everything for the first year or two only to receive criticism from your peers and contempt from the rest of the population.

[Simon_Jester]

My experience hasn't been so much general contempt as that a very specific slice of the population has contempt, while the rest has vague to strong respect.

The problem is, you feel that contempt ten times more than you feel the respect.

[Esquire]

Going back a ways - Simon, yes, of course infinite spending isn't workable; I should have said something along the lines of "net education spending-directly-connected-to-improved-student-outcomes-and-teacher-QoL-measures" hasn't improved anywhere near enough. Got a bit carried away.