Raise salaries.

Pay considerably better. Better benefits. More support resources for new teachers. School supplies are compensated by school. Lesson planning on one's own time is compensated. Just to name a few things off the top of my head.

Everyone is gonna say pay more and they're all correct.

Everyone knows teachers get paid dog shit, who would want to do that?

Increase pay, reduce the cost of college and remove unnecessary courses from college requirements, give teachers avenues to push back against problem kids and parents, and do something about the toxic work politics you see within school districts and the unions. Also make it easier to get into teaching without having to be a sub or some other egregiously-underpaid position for years on end.

As long as property taxes are tied to salaries, I think this is very difficult. I’ve been through 4 or 5 contract negotiation cycles, and even a 0.5-2% average raise can receive major pushback and stalls settlement. I know PSEA is pushing for a minimum starting salary of $60,000, which could help. I think Maryland has done this.

1. Have the state pay its share of school funding. PA has reduced its contribution, and it's had the predictable effect of starving poor school districts by sheltering wealth and opportunity in wealthy counties.

Everything else is less important. But we also need federal action to fund teachers themselves like the critical public resource they are.

Much, much better pay. I am going to school to be a teacher in PA. I should not make more as a part-time jewelry salesperson than I would as a full-time teacher, but I do. I made nearly $40K as a part-time worker, and that is more than the starting pay for many schools in southwestern PA.

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Depends on where you live. My district starts at $50k and caps out at $120k in as little as 10 years. We definitely need to increase it in a lot of districts though.

This!!!!

Pay more.

I did my my under grad and grad school in PA and got my licenses in PA. Because PA was also not paying teachers enough we were forced to follow my wife’s career and moved to Wisconsin while I still had my temps or whatever the probationary license was called, and WIDPI wouldn’t give me a general science license without going back to school even though my recent PRAXIS scores were in their exceptional range. So I stopped teaching without ever really getting started.

Now I work in a bicycle shop and make more than teachers in my area. That’s absolutely ridiculous.

Every now and the I think about going back to it, but I’m not willing to go back to the starting pay rate for a new teacher.

More pay more benefits and more protection from unruly parents and students.

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Free Lebanon Bologna.

Enact merit based pay within public teaching.

If you take out student loans to earn a four year degree for a job that pays $50k, more than 25% of your monthly take-home pay would be going to Sallie Mae.

Maybe the answer is substantially discounted tuition for education majors?

The thing is, not only is there school/district variation, but also: compared to what? Median teacher salaries are 56k in PA and typically ranging 47-68k, according to salary.com data. Compare with a BSW social worker’s median salary of 66k in PA and typically ranging 59-74k. Or a newly graduated RN: 67k ranging 60-77k. The low end ranges for these jobs are higher than the median salary for teachers.

Income-based payments and they have the potential for PSLF.

But if they started trimming the fat from college curricula, then we could reduce loan burden for everyone.

Lower tuition costs- Many people want to go into teaching but are unwilling to take out a 100k loan in order to do it.

Raise teacher's salaries- The higher the pay, the more applicants. Pretty simple economics here.

Vote in school board elections (and really all elections) to elect pro-education candidates- Across the State and the country, right wing anti education nut jobs have been running in off year, low turn out school board elections and are winning. Their ridiculous policies are causing teachers to leave in droves. This isn't just isolated to local elections either. In Florida, teachers are quitting in droves due to the disgusting policies of Ron Desantis. It breaks my heart seeing all those photos of bookshelves empty or covered up.

Continue to fight the pandemic/sickness in general/embrace scientific consensus in public health policy/law- Schools (especially elementary and younger) are giant petri dishes, and many teachers have quit due to the fact that they just keep getting sick. If we get vaccination rates up, wear masks during cold and flu season, promote hand washing, avoiding crowds, etc, then teachers will be less likely to call out sick or quit due to illness.

Figure out a more equitable way to fund our public schools- Recently, the PA Supreme Court struck down the current way PA schools are funded, which essentially has been keeping schools from wealthy districts well funded and inner city schools underfunded. This is only half the battle. We need to rebuild the way we fund our public schools in a more equitable way to ensure that inner city schools have the funds they need, considering that these are the schools most desperate for teachers.

I left teaching during that time period after 18 years due to a cheap ass school board in a wealthy school district in one of PA's wealthiest counties. Their cheapness resulted in my not even closely keeping up with the COL.

Shitty administration and unrealistic testing/curriculum standards created by clueless state and federal level legislators and bureaucrats didn't help either.

Ultimately my class sizes grew dramatically, student needs exploded, and virtually zero additional resources were ever provided to assist. You were on your own with hypocritical administrators ever ready to criticize and and everything. Meanwhile, I'd go years without a raise causing financial stress at home as well.

Ironically, I had almost zero problems with students or their parents. They weren't the problem. Our politicians, ed department bureaucrats and administrators who never get out of their offices to understand what current life in the trenches is like. Those are the problems along with bad ed law and shit funding formulas

Fire the glut of useless administrators to free up the cash.

Yeah, property taxes are the worst way to fund schools. It causes extreme disparity between areas. That and I personally believe property tax is the most unjust tax.

Don’t forget about the school boards. They are causing a lot of policies that are leading teachers to leave.

I see a lot of people commenting to increase the pay. Of course that would lead to more people going into teaching, but is it justified?

Teachers get ~3 months off during the summer, a week off for spring break, almost a month off for winter break, almost a week for Thanksgiving, along with all other federal holidays. That's almost 4.5 months off work per year.

So teachers are working less than 2/3 of the time an average white collar worker works. People cite "lesson planning" and claim it's outside of working hours, but teachers only teach ~3-4 classes each day, with the rest of the day preserved for this lesson planning and any miscellaneous tasks such as grading.

To that point, most teachers recycle the same content and lesson plans year after year. There's not some major planning that needs to be done before each year/class, comparable to a company's quarterly planning.

To summarize, if you project out the hourly wage of a teacher for actual time worked and factor in the value of their state-sponsored healthcare and pension benefits, they don't seem to be underpaid.

I'm not sure if raising their salaries to attract a new generation of talent is justified. Maybe there needs to be a campaign focused on highlighting the extreme benefits of time off - especially to a generation that seems to value their time more.

I have my MA and am Elementary certified and haven’t entered a classroom since 2011 because the starting salaries in my area are in the low-mid $30K range. There are several other teachers at my current job who also can’t take a pay cut to enter the classroom again.

I'm not saying pay more. That's the lazy answer.

I'm saying highlight the benefits more, the main one being that you get 4+ months off per year, whereas most Americans get 15 days.

These details are a little exaggerated, at least in my situation. I get 50 minutes of planning a day and a 30-minute lunch. Every other minute is with students. There are things that I reuse from year to year, sure, but there is a LOT of things that need changed or newly created. As an HS ELA teacher, I don’t have a textbook, so everything I use, I create or adapt from an idea I’ve found. But planning is only a tiny part. Grading essays is extremely time-consuming. I work at night and on the weekends. We get a week off at Christmas and long weekends otherwise. I work all summer, but at a different jobs. Lots of teachers have second jobs. We get from second week of June through third week of August. The main stressors are not students and parents; it’s constantly pounding from above for more, more, more and near-constant change to something “better.” Now that I am at the top of our salary scale after 18 years, I will not get more than a tiny .05-2.5% raise each year until I retire. Just some facts from someone active in the job right now.

Were the RWNJs to stop their war on teachers, more college grads would consider teaching as a profession.

>if they started trimming the fat from college curricula

What would this "fat" be?

When many districts start at 42k, 60k is a bit much. I know things stretched out a bit thanks to the trump virus, but let's be real here.

So you think people don't know? They didn't go to school themselves and experience no school during the summer for themselves? The reality is that people know what a teachers schedule looks like, generally speaking, and they still don't want to get into education. Why? It's. Not. Worth. It. It's funny how people don't use the same reasoning when it comes to higher salaries for other occupations. Why do CEOs have to be paid so much? Because we have to pay that much to attract the best and the brightest, we're told. Oh really? But somehow higher salaries for teachers in order to attract people to the profession has to be "justified"? Frankly, your dismissal of the work that teachers do both in and out of the regular school year is insulting. Pay is not the only reason people don't get into teaching, but it's absolutely not helping.

>property taxes are the worst way to fund schools

Folks always focus on property taxes but property taxes only provide some of the revenue stream. Let's also look at the earned income tax. Places where the average household income is above $100k gain quite a bit in collected EIT whereas places where the average household income is 50k or less end up having to do without. Maybe give less state aid to the better off places and give more to those places with more resources?

The town where Lebanon Bologna is made is high in resources and the district does pretty well. But the trumpkins are tying to upset that apple cart with their "no new taxes" pledge.

>Vote in school board elections (and really all elections) to elect pro-education candidates-

A key part of the equation. I know of a district where 5 seats are up for election, but only 4 turned in petitions. 2 of those are pro-education; the other 2 are hand-picked by an anti-public school lobbyist.

Pay them more than burger flippers and ditch diggers.

>Teachers get ~3 months off during the summer, a week off for spring break, almost a month off for winter break, almost a week for Thanksgiving, along with all other federal holidays. That's almost 4.5 months off work per year.

Dogshit comment. Most teachers are not free of their professional responsibilities when school is not in session. Keeping the certification requires continuing education and professional development. A good number of teachers act as club and class advisors, supervise School Play practice, oversee marching band, and coach the athletic teams. The classroom itself requires attention during breaks. Indeed, many teachers are getting classrooms ready for the new school year while you are still in your chaise lounge in your bikini sipping a fresh latte.

Nothing, because nobody wants to do anything about it, and so they won't because the people who are in power are the ones benefiting from the current system

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If the state was actually remotely serious about it?

- combine districts, there is no reason for the insane overhead of multiple districts everywhere.

- eliminate parents and local school boards being responsible for anything because they are NEVER right

- Stop allowing teachers to buy their own school supplies,

- Implement free or massively reduced state school tuition but you must stay in state to teach for X years,

- Eliminate the ongoing education requirements except for in your exact course of study.

- Fix the stupid bullshit Cyber schools getting funding

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Oh and the ones people won't like

- eliminate pensions entirely from the entire state,

- year round school

- all day kindergarten

- fully tax payer funded pre-k programs state wide

- stop adjunct professors from teaching any course over a 101 level unless no suitable prof can be found (WITH PROOF of search), and Adjuncts get paid the same as professors.

- stop underpaying teachers aid, subs, etc

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PA could absolutely do everything... they just won't

I know many teachers who retired early because they were tired of not being able to teach anymore. State has too much involvement. Everything is about money. Yadayada.

I’m a welder with a 4 year degree. I’d have to go back for more college courses to become a welding instructor. The starting salary for vocational teachers in my part of PA is less than half of what I am making as a welder. And none of my co workers make tick toks at work.

Pay them. Make students go through metal detectors. Lock the doors after students arrive in the morning and screen anyone coming after that time.

Courses completely unrelated to your major. I studied physics...I had to take creative writing courses, history of religion, a film studies course, etc. Being a "well-rounded" student isn't worth it for the time and incredible financial commitment.

More charter schools. They do more with less than traditional public schools. Instead of complaining that e very charter school student taxes X dollars from the district, say “wow, with only X dollars they have happier parents and teachers and higher test scores. We should have a charter in our district. And don’t use that tired excuse about cherry picking. I sub in a charter school and there are IEPs in every class.

That easy get the politicians to stop acting like ass hole And pay then and more protect them and the kids

When politicians demonize the profession, HBG regulations hamstring admin from allowing discipline to occur, the lack of quality pay and the helicopter nature of parents, no wonder ppl don't want to teach. I certainly wouldn't.

But look at days off per year. Conservatively, teachers get 20% more.

I’m a teacher in PA with 17 years experience. That brings me to the top of the pay scale, making 90k. I think the pay is fair, although I think starting salaries need to increase. I struggled when I first started. Here are the problems in my opinion:

1. There is no portability in pay. I would like to move districts, to be closer to my aging parents. However, that would mean starting over on no higher then step three of a new district’s pay scale. No district is going to higher me and pay me for my experience. Why would a young person want to be locked into that for 30 years?

2. Better support for newer teachers. I have seen too many young teacher come in, get the worst teaching assignments with the most out of control kids and get no support from admin

3. The burden of standardized testing on math and language arts teachers in particular is ridiculous. The level of rigor is legit hard and developmentally inappropriate. I teach 7th grade, the amount of in-depth analysis required requires background knowledge and life experience that my 12 year olds don’t have.

4. finally this is probably the biggest one for me. I don’t get treated like a professional. Teachers are required to obtain their masters degree in order to move to the instructional to certificate in Pennsylvania, but we are treated like professional people that whole college degrees. Everything we do a second-guessed. First and second-guessed by children in our classroom. I have students that argue with me about everything including other students names in the class. I have students to talk about Andrew Tate, and how awesome he is and I have to sit there and listen to it. And that’s a direct product of their parents. They feel comfortable questioning us disobeying us because their parents feel comfortable questioning everything that we do. No one’s child is ever wrong. No one’s child ever lies. No one’s child could ever possibly need discipline from the teacher. And then this carries over into administration. I spent 90 minutes a day with my students and some of them, the ones that I have in homeroom close to three hours. However, I’m not even given the barest information about struggles with that child might be going through. If somethings happening at home, they don’t tell me they keep it on a need to know basis and apparently hi the adults in the building that spends the most time with that child doesn’t need to know. And I’m talking about serious issues like self harm, suicide ideation, drugs, and alcohol. I should at least know about these things so I can look out for that student while they’re in my care, but instead, I’m treated like an untrustworthy person that can’t be given this information because I might go blab it to the rest of the neighborhood. Honestly, teaching is insulting. Next week I get evaluated by my principal, who has never taught a day in his life-he was a guidance counselor.

That's a masters, plus 45 with 10 years served. Hardly worth it and that's at a better school district.

What metrics would be used to justify wage increases beyond cost of living adjustments?

Wow, why you gotta lie like that? All that shits been proven false

Wow, not one truth in that nonsense

Which is so fucked given that there were teachers making six figures in the school district I grew up in (lower merion)

Writing courses should be part of every field of study. I suspect the other 2 you selected from a menu of courses that included history and maybe a language?

Pay a decent wage, fund the damn schools, resist the policy bullshit other states are forcing into the schools.

I agree writing courses can be useful. But in a field like physics, I should need to take a creative writing course. I also had to take a technical writing course that was much more useful and appropriate.

As far as the others, yes, they were from a menu of elective courses I had to take, but my point was they're not related to the major and I've never needed to know a damn thing from them. I spent a ton of money and wasted a lot of time on courses I didn't need. It's a common practice at universities that has to end as part of a reformation to make education more affordable.

I saw a guy say he’s making 90k, that’s more monthly than senior electrical engineer roles pay in pa if it’s broken done by hours worked per year. They seem to be paid ok, but you’ll just get down voted

Many, maybe most, teachers don't get 4 months off.

They get 4 months to work another job.

Many of the ones who take the summer off have other sources of money, inheritance or a well-off spouse.

Not dismissive. It's important work.

Just contesting that it's underpaid. If you look at the hourly rate, it's up there with many other professions.

Writing courses, in their many forms, are much more useful than the binary view would make them. Same with any number of other courses that not only round you out as a person but also helps you think beyond the binary world of physics/math/engineering.

You selected the courses you now describe as useless but you must have viewed them as worthy when you selected them, non? If anything, you should have used them to help bolster your GPA.

Yeah, and they get paid to take on those extra responsibilities.

Haha and chaise lounge bikini? Don't know where you're getting that from. I'll get 15 days off next year (but probably take 10 or less). That's it. And I largely work when on vacation as necessary.

Work is quite literally my life. What I'm saying is market teaching as a profession where your career isn't so totally all-consuming. That could attract people who are interested in it, not purely driven by the financial upside, and who value their relative freedom and time more.

Stop treating them like they are worthless. Pay them a lot more. Don't blame them for your kid not doing well (it's not just your kid they have to deal with). Teach your kids to not be assholes. Don't expect them to buy supplies for their classes in school, fund the things they need to do their jobs.

Exactly.

They are paid at a reasonable rate for their number of days worked.

Also, increase opportunities for salary increases over time. Due to the school district just deciding to not play nice with the teacher’s union, my mom’s last 5-10 years of teaching was at the same rate, and about half of that was without an active contract.

But don’t worry. They had enough money for a brand new turfed up football stadium

At $60,000 in a low cost of living city (basically any city in PA), teachers should be comfortable. And that's the average teaching salary in Philadelphia.

If someone lives outside of their means and wants to subsidize their income with another job, that's on them.

But there's no reason for taxpayers to subsidize what otherwise would constitute 4-months of PTO and allow teachers to double dip.

Again, if you want to attract the next generation of educators - the original point of this post - the answer isn't more money (because it's unjustified). It's instead more of a marketing issue, where teaching should be framed/sold more in terms of freedom and impact.

Free life insurance and body armor would be a good start and not electing a governor like Ron deathsantis ( no more Corbetts !)

All of the obvious things that others have said. I think you also have to look at around 2011 there was an abundance of teachers and it was impossible to find a job. Even now, I graduated in 2017 and it took me about 5 years to get a contracted position. Teaching in PA is one of the best states thanks to the unions.

The answer is always $$$

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> 4+ months off per year

Bullshit. I'm so tired of this.

You get hair over 2 months of summer break. This time needs to be spent on continued education to keep your certs up to date.

And before you go "Oh but 2 weeks for Christmas, a week for easter, all those days off." Those are almost all spent on prep and catchup work.

Stop talking about things you don't know anything about.

> whereas most Americans get 15 days

This is bullshit too, the rest of the world figured out ages ago that 6 weeks of vacation increases overall productivity, start fighting for workers' rights.

Actually, the marketing for the field already over-performs. Lots of people think they want to be teachers, and go into debt to become them.

A dose of reality leads many to switch careers. I've worked with a lot of them over the years.

Many, many people have a side hustle or second job these days. It's not double-dipping when you use your scheduled time off to make ends meet or try to get ahead a little. That's still your time to sell. You weren't aware?

Treat teachers with respect and back them up against the QAnuts

I’m a ham and live on northern border , talk to Canadians everyday who bitch there teachers are making $80k , I’m like do you want an educated child who grows into a well reasoned adult or do you want the average American ? You can pay your teachers well now or you can pay with idiots later , it’s that simple , I am very proud to be well educated by some amazing teachers , I easily became a life time learner because I had teachers who inspired the best in us , unfortunately within a few years of my graduation many of these teachers were replaced with inferior models who work cheap and the the whole abortion of No child left behind happened and ended all electives in school ( I had wood shop, metal shop, automotive , small engine repair, pottery, photography , year book , home economics , Spanish, French , drivers education , swimming , sculpting , archery among the many that I took ) that sadly don’t exist anymore . I had such a great experience in elementary school that’s also no longer done ,the entire school participated in hunting turkeys ,growing vegetables , picking apples , peeling and chopping apples potatoes and then cooking the meal in fire pits in huge cast iron Dutch ovens , some of my best memories even after more than 50 years . Back in those days your teacher was determined by your last name so I had the same teachers as my older sister and brother , so there was a strong family bond already when I got to school . A good or bad teacher can make or break a child’s future. TYFYS to all the educators on this thread , you don’t feel the love in your paycheck , but there are many who love you and respect your service and sacrifice .

FWIW - All PA teacher salaries are available on line in a fully searchable format

https://www.openpagov.org/payroll/

We're talking America here - and Pennsylvania to be exact.

I'll get 15 days off next year. You're saying that at the low end (just for summer) you get over two full months.

Factor in the spring break (full week off) that you're enjoying now, winter break, thanksgiving break, and all federal holidays...and then add in your own PTO on top of that, it's easily 4 months.

I'm not saying teachers don't work hard when they work. I'm saying they work less and are paid commensurate per hours worked in exchange for a unique and freeing lifestyle. Which is that should be communicated to the next generation of teachers to attract talent.

The Point.

Your head.

Pay them. Stock their classrooms with the supplies they need to do their job. Free the copy machine.

Well if it's your time to sell then salaries don't need to be raised to compensate for that time.

With that argument you're saying that the $60,000 teachers are making working 8 months a year isn't enough? Seems like a stretch.

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They also work a lot more outside of their paid hours.

Nurses and social workers also work outside their paid hours. I work in a nursing home and the typical nurse is there an hour after her shift finishing computer work five days a week. Social workers have more irregular extra hours, but they have them. Also teachers aren’t scheduled for an 8 hour day so their extra hours compared to those other jobs shouldn’t begin being counted until they work more than 8 hours. I know many teachers work far more than 8 hours. But I wonder if you added up the hours worked per year how it would compare.

This thread's refrain of "better pay" is starting to sound like the "not enough time" chorus that I hear from the public (and private) school teachers I've worked with my entire professional career.

Pay is not the heart of the matter.

It's about respect.

Respect for those who choose to teach -- absolutely.

But also respect for those learning.

And the pandemic put the lie to everything that we told our children about schooling.

Pay and other spending that our teachers and students touch and see can be signals of respect.

But as OP began to itemize only at the end of their post, there are many immaterial challenges to our teachers and schools.

No student -- or for that matter, parent -- would ask a teacher why they teach, and feel satisfaction with a response of "For the bucks." Quite the contrary.

And fundamentally, conveying to children that the adults around them "follow the money" does a poisonous disservice to the teachers (especially the Title I teachers I work with -- but the administrators, too) who have kept the faith through the pandemic.

I just came back from visiting half a dozen Title I classrooms in one of the few states larger than Pennsylvania -- and hanging out with those teachers late into the night. I heard them catch up with each other over pizzas and beers, and volunteer their backstories.

Could every single one of them earn much more in other fields? Yes. (Does this also reflect on their particular subject matter expertise? It does.)

But having seen them pouring their hearts into their craft by day, I know a light would extinguish in each if they did leave the profession.

Actually, about 36 lights per, times four or five preps.

(Further evidence that teachers are not in it for $: my current project doesn't compensate them any better than their union-mandated hourly. But still, they engage because they want to become better for their kids.)

To be clear ... our teachers definitely deserve better salary ... safer and more welcoming working conditions ... adequate supplies for which they don't pay out of pocket or resort to fundraising.

But no one has ever gone into education to make bank.

The teachers still teaching our children do so because of our children.

So respect for u/jekomo.

Can we respect OP's colleagues enough to get past/go deeper than "just throw money at it/them"?

'cause all the cheese in the world doesn't stand a chance "amid constant attacks, accusations of indoctrination, less teacher autonomy, etc."

These unpopular opinions brought to you by a proud graduate of this state's public schools who benefitted from its free and reduced lunch and summer programs, stayed in-state for college, holds teacher certification here, pays taxes here, and has worked on several multi-year, multi-million-dollar private and federally-funded educational efforts launched or co-designed by teachers.

P.S. It is not lost on me that PSEA's own "issues & action" tab on this exact subject has gone AWOL.

I'll give you one gue$$...

Find a time machine and go back in time.

Stop expecting schools to be raising kids and get back to actually teaching.

The answer nobody wants to hear is pay them more.

Nurses typically receive overtime for extra work. Teachers do not.

I agree with some of what you said but what are the unnecessary college classes/requirements and the toxic parts of unions?

The need to build up a resume by substitute teaching was from before the shortage when there was too much competition for limited openings.

Benefits and protection in most of PA are ok as long as you're not in a charter or some private schools

Better pay and working conditions. Less interference from politicians,

Everyone doesn’t consider more unpaid time off for lower pay an upside, especially when teachers commonly spend much of that time training or preparing for the next year/ session, and/or have to get creative about a side hustle to make enough money. That’s besides the already cited issues by other commenters about teachers commonly having to use their own money for supplies, and working long hours for various tasks beyond the school day (lesson planning, grading, etc).

Drop the Praxis tests and have other quality control measures other than a standardized test.

I am a social worker and if you think teachers are paid poorly strap in.

Pay increase. I’d say pay incentives but then you’d have teachers passing them along like what happened to me. That’d be bad.

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Honestly, even an 80,000 salary (at least for me) can't compensate for the toxic work environment in a lot of school districts.

While I don't really disagree with you it does play into the whole arguement of "you should be ok with the pay freeze because you're here for the kids and we respect you."

People don't go into education to make bank but a lot of people don't go into it or leave it because pay is inadequate.

Why would teachers want more schools where they make less, have less rights, less protections, and often less support?

In a lot of parts of pa that's a higher than the cap and twice as much as the starting salary.

Going from bartender to educator shouldn't be a pay cut

Aren't praxis tests just a standardized test?

Where are you getting 4+ months off for teachers?

Get rid of the crappy teachers. I’ve seen teachers basically give up and just put in time once they’re tenured. They’re bored, the students are bored . Yet they get the same raise as the great teachers and are almost impossible to fire

Yes. Exactly my point. It is a standardized test and teachers must pass 2 of them outside their classes and majors.

My bad I misread what you wrote.

My issue is knowing how many secondary ed students failed their praxis, and knowing how easy it is, I think they definitely need to keep it but it should be free for students to take. There needs to he some bare minimum requirement.

Vote like the future of your children's education depends on it. Vote in local elections. Vote in all elections. Actually find out what people believe in before you vote for them. Open primaries. Eliminate gerrymandering. Campaign finance reform. Prosecute people who lie and cheat to get into office.

And then do all the other stuff people have listed in this thread.

Reducing college requirements in general is a good idea. Many many many places a bachelor's is only 3 years, and society still functions. This applies to more topics than just teaching though, and it will also never happen.

Where in PA are they starting at 45k? My local sd is 60k.

It's not for me to decide how much people should be paid. Or for you, sorry to let you know.

There's a labor market. The time off teachers get is just one small part of it.

As it stands, competent people who have a desire to be teachers are instead opting for more pragmatic choices. That's what happens in a free society.

The solution is the same as any hiring/retention problem…to pay them competitively. Sorry you don't like it, but that's just the free market answer to this problem.

I’m not an advocate for teachers. I’m an advocate for children and for education in America. Also, charter schools don’t seem to have any difficulty hiring teachers. The one closest to me is growing and growing. Also not included in this discussion is the value of the retirement benefits that teachers get, which is substantial and nurses and social workers don’t have that. They have 401ks.

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Revert to the days when having a masters degree in any field qualified you to teach.

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I was in school to be a teacher and I got a seasonal job with the federal government. I realized quickly that if I went full time, I would make as much there as I would teaching, so I dropped out. That was 27 years ago. After several promotions, I'm making 80k/yr. I could never have dreamed of that was a teacher. I was very passionate about teaching too.

You see, when teachers pay comes directly from taxes they should have a say.

The big problem with raising teachers income is that it also raises local property taxes. This makes it difficult for local teachers to ever catch up. The more they make, the more expensive it is to live in the communities.

From when I was looking at jobs last year schools in delco, monco, and York counties but the average is probably closer to 48-50k. I'd imagine other parts of the state are less competitive.

Starting at 60k has to be close to the top in the state.

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Munnie

This asked how to attract teachers, and people in education know most teachers don't love charter schools. And as an aside children and education benefit from qualified and compensated teachers.

There's exceptions to the rule but every charter school I've worked at or with struggled to keep teachers for more than a couple years. They did do a good job at hiring teachers out of school or those without certifications required for public education. Statistically there hasn't been anything to show that they do more with less. The vast majority of charter schools perform at or below.

That's another good point, charter school teachers don't have access to pensions.

I feel like teachers don’t like charter schools because they offer an alternative to a failing system. I don’t blame the failing system on teachers. I have worked in a public school as an occupational therapist, and I saw how hard the teachers worked. I think the special education teachers have an especially difficult job. I think we as a society need to revise our public education system from the ground up. That isn’t the fault of teachers, but they need to be open to new ideas to make education work better. Charter schools are laboratories to try out different systems.

And don’t forget, when you are complaining about how poorly teachers are compensated, that they have access to à valuable retirement plan which the professions you are comparing them wiith don’t.

Give them better pay. Stop debasing their profession. Provide better support. Keep schools out of politics. Give them an effective budget. Create a good infrastructure for all students.

You know, basically do everything Republicans don’t want for schools.

Do you really think teachers don't like charter school because they're trying to improve public education in America and its not because they promote a system where teachers have less pay, less benefits, less rights, and less protections?

And if you particularly respect special Ed teachers don't look at their compensation at charter schools. Although those schools get to choose if they accept disabled students so that might be fair.

Charter schools began as labratories but very rarely are they doing anything revolutionary. Almost all of them have copied models used in public schools. And why is such a key part of that new system of better education include the devaluation of educators? I am waiting for the solution to our problem with education in the US that doesn't involve the dismantling of public education.

What professions am I comparing teachers to? And I don't think removing pensions is a solution to attracting more people to the profession.

I didn’t say removing pensions is the solution. I said that people in this thread who are complaining that nurses and social workers earn more than teachers need to calculate the value of the retirement benefits that teachers get, where nurses and social workers don’t have anything comparable.

Your numbers are wrong. Most teachers teach 6 or 7 periods a day, with 42 minutes for planning. Above the elementary level, teachers see up to 170 students per day. I teach middle school and see almost every student in the grade, 162 students. There is grading to be done in that 42 minutes as well. If I grade just two assignments per week, and spend only one minute per student’s work (which is laughable), that’s already over five hours of grading a week. I only get 3.5 hours of planning time per week. But we haven’t even gotten to lesson planning or all the other administrative tasks yet.

They’d just need to be performance based metrics not based on tenure or whether one has a master’s degree. Is their no way to determine how well a teacher is doing by trying to gauge or determine what level of learning was attained by students based on test scores and other indicators of increased proficiency, . If a teacher puts together a great impactful lesson plan that results in increased engagement, maybe, or increased production of students with respect to their work in a class.

Do you not think it’s able to be determined whether a teacher failed or helped their students?

I mean I think nurses and social workers are also under compensated and suffer from the same problems that are undermining public education.

I just thought that charter schools are well known for rarely being a top destination for teachers and that more of them are nit going to cause more people to become teachers. I also thought saying teachers don't like charter schools just because they're a better alternative was disingenuous and disrespectful.

Well, it’s not so much teachers I have a quarrel with, its the NEA and the ATF. Both are resistant to change, and, in my opinion, concerned about looking out for teachers when I think all Americans should be able to agree that schools exist to serve students, not to serve teachers. I will repeat: American education needs to be reformed from the ground up. Education exists to serve students. But in order to serve students, they must find the ways to attract and retain effective teachers.

As someone who is not in the field but knows some teachers personally:

1. Increase/ even out pay. Meaning fix pay scales in underfunded schools and re evaluate 'overfunded' school pay.
2. Going hand in hand with pay; create a teacher fund for classroom supplies. My son's teacher pays for her students in class crafts (2nd grade) and we live in a respectable tax bracket district.
3. To combat the 'throw money at it' belief that can creep into education, use evidence-based approaches to addressing educational shortcomings. Make sure they are tailored to the community and student body.
4. Don't allow politics to dictate policy. There is an unfortunate grassroots attempt to restrict education based on religious belief or hyped up fake news. This is spilling over into parents acting like children at board meetings, shouting, and some trying to 'infiltrate' boards in order to enact restrictive and damaging policies. Please stop. No person looking at the teaching profession wants to see this sort of crap spill over into their classroom eventually.
5. Hire actual teachers to lead the department of education, and make sure those in leadership roles actually understand the battles teachers at all levels face.

I am sure actual teachers will be able to speak more to this than I will, but this is some of the stuff I've seen friends in the profession rail against. There is no black and white approach to education.

It is easy for you. My SIL is a brilliant teacher but she had some trouble taking it. Took her 5x before she finally passed. Some people are awful at tests or have test anxiety.

Yes teachers unions and associations exist to protect teachers. Unions are also just collections of teachers, an issue with teachers unions is an issue with unionized teachers. Often what's good for students are usually good for teachers. Teachers unions have been known to fight for smaller classrooms, less of a focus on standardized testing, and greater support from specialists for students.

Teachers ability to organize is one of the few benefits and source of almost all of the benefits that attract people to the profession. Just compare education in states that have teachers unions and ones that don't. They better serve students.

Beyond that, what teachers or union says that schools are for anything but the education of students? What initiatives that would benefit students have unions prevented?

Bring back the paddle.

I have to remind myself that 40k is literally equivalent to 29k when I graduated college after accounting for inflation. The idea that we’re paying teachers that is appalling. No shit no one’s signing up.

I think teachers should be paid six figures. Should be a high compensation high accountability job. Like nursing or being a doctor.

I propose we stop trying to make more teachers and instead focus on making less kids. If we loser the number of kids the amount of teachers we have will be sufficient.

-sarcasm

I've heard of issues with the elementary ed praxis, in that it's more advanced than what teachers need to know. But for the content specific courses there really needs to be some form of baseline to ensure no matter what university a teacher went to, they have a basic understanding of the subject they're teaching. Maybe there can be some accounting for test anxiety beyond accounting for GPA

That makes sense for the secondary ones. I agree. It was the el ed one she couldn't pass.

They need more money, but right wing politicians pitch fits anytime budgets for education get increased. It’s such an easy fix that would benefit everyone, but pigheaded stubbornness prevents it.

First, undo the insane East and West PASSHE consolidation. Then start funding them all closer to the levels of the 1970’s. Then provide student loans at the 1970’s level: 6% state and 3% federal. The 14 PASSHE schools were all originally teacher colleges with a great record of feeding high numbers of new teachers to the PA, and the nation’s, classrooms, until the last 30 years when non-union PSU - with around 25 branch campuses - were converted to 4-year degree granting schools providing more than agricultural higher education to students, and unfair competition to PASSHE schools.

How about perks like student loan forgiveness on top of better pay? Oh and maybe all the school shootings might be influencing the exodus from teaching, maybe doing something about that might help.

😂 knew it, you’re not informed enough in this area.

Teachers unions will never agree to high accountability. You can’t fire teachers.

I may not work in education but I know enough to know that teacher unions are some of the most egregiously functioning bodies of people I’ve ever seen, especially in the way that they manage and allocate their funds.

Is it true teachers need masters degrees?

That seems stupid.

>stop underpaying teachers aid, subs, etc

This one hits home big time. I got my teaching license and took the first job offered to me: In school suspension teacher. My pay maxed out after 2 years at $12.50/hr yet they wanted me to have/maintain a license. That shit wouldn't even cover my loans and I already had a kid at that point.

I thought it would be a foot in the door to a full time position in my actual subject area. Every year I was there a position opened up but they didn't offer it to me because nobody wants the job dealing with the "bad kids" and I was way too good at it. I fuckin quit after 3years. The day I left I could have had an army of those "bad kids" follow me into battle without question because I was the only one to treat any of them like a real person. I don't even teach anymore, not for that kind of bullshit money.

I quit in 2015 because of the saturated market and I wasn't making enough money with 2 kids to keep running the ISS room for $12.50/hr. Fuck that.

You folks get the really short end of the stick.

This is the same mentality that leads Adjuncts to but their asses to run great courses in colleges, hoping for the chance to become full time or tenured...

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that carrot is awful, and needs removed

>Teachers get ~3 months off during the summer, a week off for spring break, almost a month off for winter break, almost a week for Thanksgiving, along with all other federal holidays. That's almost 4.5 months off work per year.

>So teachers are working less than 2/3 of the time an average white collar worker works. People cite "lesson planning" and claim it's outside of working hours, but teachers only teach ~3-4 classes each day, with the rest of the day preserved for this lesson planning and any miscellaneous tasks such as grading.

All of this is absolute horseshit. All the teachers I know and have worked with teach more classes, get almost no time during the working day to get anything done because prep periods get filled with tutoring/makeup work, meetings and bureaucratic paperwork. If they don't do after hour work at home, they'd get called a shitty teacher more than the other names oblivious shitbirds call them already.

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Colleges claim that you need a "well rounded education" and it's their way of adding classes that you don't need as a required part of your degree. For example, I was a journalism major and still had to take multiple math classes, science classes, and a foreign language class - none of which was applicable to being a journalist in the slightest. The first two years of my four year degree were these general education requirements.

There are many degree programs that could be simplified and take two or three years. In Europe, many business school programs are only a year, for example. That way, you spend less money in loans, can enter the workforce earlier and it's less expensive to go back to school for further training.

Yeah I can see an arguement that some career training programs dont need to be a bachelors degree but simple certification. Although I will say everyone really should learn a foreign language, if only to be aware other cultures exist.

I'm just not sure if educators do not need a well rounded education especailly with how k-12 tends to teach all of those subjects and those subjects tend to intersect.

Let them do their jobs.

That's for a level 2 cert and so you can keep teaching. Only a bachelors and a certification are needed to begin teaching.

It's important educators continue their education and most of the time it's paid for.

Pay them more money. And have career paths that don’t end up with just classroom teaching for 25 years. That’s boring.

Pay them what they're worth, make sure they have what they need to do their job, and treat them with decency and respect.

This great experiment known as America is coming to an end. So, soon it will be every man, woman and child for themselves. You can thank the woke crowd for this eventual outcome. There will be no need for teachers in a lawless, dog eat dog world.

Go after people that have degree not in teaching and give them the training and incentives. You have less pension debt because they don’t put in as many years and they are mature and can handle a lot of the stuff teachers have to deal with today.

Stop screwing over the ones that are there for a good beginning.

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I know many teachers with a masters in elementary Ed and a minor in speech development and we're getting paid over 90+ per year. Four of them quit and only in their 30's because of how ridiculous the NYC Ed system became. The dept of Ed needs to seriously look at all the BS . Sorry , but indoctrination is at the top of the list. They will continue to leave and get poor quality teachers. The children are also leaving and going to private or Catholic schools, most aren't even Catholic but it's cheaper than the private schools. I also know two teachers that left and moved to TX and FL and are currently teaching there. We are going to see a major shift in certain states in the upcoming years for many things, but especially education standards in the public school system.

What funds do they manage and allocate?

A bit of an aside, but Ezra Klein recently did a show about issues with men and boys and one of things highlighted was the lack of male teachers. This problem will only snowball as boys are less likely to pursue teaching if there are no men as their teachers.

Pay is a huge one, but also the lack of additional supports for special needs has made teaching terrible. I know several teachers that quit because they struggled with dealing with difficult kids in the classroom that could have been dealt with by having aids or additional options to support those students. Instead, they just put them in the class and expect the teacher to have the normal classwork, plus modified classwork to address special needs, and be able to provide everyone the amount of support they need. Add in frustrated parents and politics and the pay becomes 5x too little.

This is a myth - teachers can be fired. Administrators need detailed records showing why the teacher should be fired. It’s a pain in the butt, but if a teacher is bad and the admin wants to get rid of them, they need to collect evidence.
The Union is there to make sure this happens and it’s not just random. The problem is, many administrators are just as overwhelmed as teachers and simply don’t have the time or energy to do it. It’s a systemic problem…bad teachers slip through cracks just like bad students slip through cracks, just like bad workers in the private sector slip through cracks. It’s usually because someone at the top is too focused on something else to notice or decides it’s not worth the effort.

Locally, a public school teaching job couldn't be had prior to covid and the current curriculum intrusions by nuts. Teachers make full year salaries for nine months of short day work (180 days vs 280 for everyone else), with extensive holiday breaks, sick and vacation days, and medical benefits. Because no one was vacating the positions, fewer students opted to obtain education degrees. That, and the general worker shortage, are to blame.

A simple fix is to install cameras in every classroom that parents, administrators and taxpayers can watch.

Yeah - it would be interesting to see the hoops parents jump through to claim “my child would never do that” while watching it play out. One of the most brilliant moments I ever saw was when a student abused a bus driver with a string of expletives - the administrator marched the student into his office, called the students mother, handed him the phone and said “tell your mother what you just said to that bus driver”. No more plausible deniability when you hear it out of your child’s own mouth.

My daughter is a Freshman on a Music Education track, at a college just across the river in NJ. She’ll earn a license in NJ on completion, but would need to add in some additional coursework to get one here. That’s certainly a hurdle to anyone coming here from elsewhere.

As it stands, given how toxic politics in this state are around schools and teacher pay, I’ve been encouraging her to look in and move to NJ when she’s done. I’m sure they have their issues, but I’ve an overall sense educators are typically treated much better on the other side than here.

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You seriously think it's a simple marketing problem? Like people/potential teachers aren't aware of the fact that you get a few extra months off as teachers?

It's basic supply and demand. It doesn't matter what YOU think is a fair wage for a teacher. If people aren't signing up, they obviously don't think it pays well enough.

Brings to mind the perpetual shortage of truck drivers. And yet companies always seem to find people. How? Simple, lowering standards, immigration, and technology (many trucks are automatics).

Figure the same will happen with teaching. Already is. The last point about tech is one many teachers don't think much of in regard to qualifications. Virtual learning, which many teachers and even unions often advocated for, could also lead to less credentialed teachers replaced by teacher aides acting primarily as monitors watching over the students as they're instructed remotely.

One remote teacher could potentially teach several classrooms at once. Even for instances they can't, they could be located anywhere and hired as a contractor with minimal benefits. Many ways I see could play out.

I don't put much faith in school districts / taxpayers ponying up the considerable extra funds to do what some are suggesting. Instead seeking more shortcuts. They'll be exceptions of course, but in many places, the more well-to-do parents will increasingly seek out chartered schools, parochial schools, and private schools. Leaving the remainder, often including students with special needs, to the public schools to deal at the detriment of teachers, students, and the community.

In short, technology could allow schools to reduce their accredited teaching staff considerably. Combine that with lowered standards and immigration, the shortage of teachers will be mitigated. Not solved, but handled good enough to keep schools running.