Why Paying Teachers More Would Help to fix our Educational System

Bottom line at the top:

Money won't cure all of the ills in education, but it will bring back a lot of the lost talent, and that will go a long way towards fixing things.

Now, the details:

A recent post on Reddit's r/Teachers subgroup postulated that the reason for the decay in education is "slack parenting and scared administrations." (Please note: this is copy-and-pasted. Errors are the original poster's errors, not mine.)

My take: Society doesn't realize that in just a very few years there will be almost no teachers who will put up with the abusive students, the parents who refuse to parent and the slack administrations who cow to obnoxious parents, for fear of a lawsuit.

They have no idea the crap that is going to hit, and the dramatic affect its going to have on society. Or maybe they do but don't have the bleep's to state it and act on it.

All administration's everywhere will continue to blame Covid and income disparity and socio- emotional in learning lacks, because no one would dare speak what needs spoken. It's so much more PC to blame nebulous, ambiguous, non-actionable entities than it is to hold the only parties that CAN make a difference accountable. 

The poster hit the nail square on the proverbial head. Bulls-eyed it. Aced it. Got it in one. But there's more.

Here's my response:

That's a big part of it. I think that we need to keep the focus on teacher pay, as well.

As long as would-be teachers can make more money for less work (and stress) (and no bullshit from the aforementioned admins and parents) elsewhere, those would-be teachers will continue to take jobs elsewhere. And current teachers will quit and leave the profession and go elsewhere, for the same reasons.

We have lost a lot of really good teaching talent to corporate America, because we're not willing to fight for them, to compete for them -- to attract them back to teaching. Teaching right now is a singularly unattractive profession. If you listen, you can hear the departing teachers muttering, "They don't pay me enough to put up with this shit," as they walk out the door.

Simply giving more money to the school districts is not the way to fix this. Most of the "more money" that we give to the districts gets siphoned off for capital improvements, mandates, pet projects, and back-office salaries. Very little of it ends up in the teachers' pockets. We have to find a way to get the money directly to the teachers.

Money won't cure all of the ills in education, but it will bring back a lot of the lost talent, and that will go a long way towards fixing things.

p.s. I'm convinced that those teachers who are still teaching have angel wings hidden under their jackets. Y'all are awesome. These comments are not intended to diminish you in any way.