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United States44286 Posts
On November 11 2021 07:25 LegalLord wrote:
Trump really gon' get it this time. I mean the past several years worth of InvestiGate revealed plenty of behavior that, while unethical and problematic, always stopped short of actually being a crime he could be convicted of. But this time is different, I'm sure.
I agree that this time won’t be different but I would like to point out that it isn’t that he never committed crimes, it’s that the DoJ was instructed to not charge a sitting President. The lack of conviction does not mean a lack of crime.
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On November 11 2021 07:25 LegalLord wrote:
Trump really gon' get it this time. I mean the past several years worth of InvestiGate revealed plenty of behavior that, while unethical and problematic, always stopped short of actually being a crime he could be convicted of. But this time is different, I'm sure.
Trump might end up being the most favored person in political "leadership" this time. He's got everyone beat but Biden who is 0.2% more favorable than Trump in the RCP avg, for now.
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On November 11 2021 07:46 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2021 07:03 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On November 11 2021 06:16 cLutZ wrote:On November 11 2021 05:58 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
I'm not talking about comparing public and private/religious schools and their funding (which you can't do anyway, for a million different reasons). I'm referring to the idea that you sat down and looked at a public school budget, and found 30%, 40%, or 50% of bloat in there that you could Thanos-snap out of existence without the school being significantly negatively affected. If a public school spends $13,000 per student (the median), with 1,000 students in the school, their budget is $13,000,000. What do you slash to drop that down to $10M or $7M? I'm extremely skeptical that you found millions of dollars in any particular public school budget that were redundant. Of course not. Its across the board bloat, not individual departments. Schools and athletic facilities have been replaced at accelerated rates, teacher salaries have increased faster than inflation, and lots of extra administrative staff has been added in various places. It all could be pared back, IMO, with little to no loss. Across the board bloat means that you want to cut 30-50% of everything to get the 30-50% decrease. And that's certainly one way to mathematically get there, but that also means dismantling most of the school. You specifically mentioned teacher salaries increasing faster than inflation. Keep in mind that the "across the board bloat" argument would remove 30-50% of a teacher's entire salary, compared to the 1-2% salary increase you're actually proposing when you talk about setting the salary increase equal to inflation. The problem is that you're not actually using a real budget with actual numbers; you're making a lot of assertions without working out the math. Let's work out the math, specifically for your teacher's salary suggestion. Here are some numbers we could work with, since you haven't cited a specific school budget you've looked at: Let's talk about an elementary school in New Jersey (K-5 or K-6, whatever). Let's say there are 1,000 students in the school. The average class size is between 19.9 and 21.9 students, depending on the class structure, so let's just round it to 20 students per class ( https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_2009324_t1s_08.asp ). Median teacher salary in New Jersey is around $72,000 (I think elementary school teachers make a little less than high school teachers, perhaps closer to $68,000, but again we'll see why this doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things ( https://www.nj.gov/education/doedata/fact.shtml ). If there are 1,000 students in the school, split evenly across enough classes to have 20 students per class, then we have 50 classes, right? All running at the same time? Which means we need 50 teachers, right? 50 teachers * $72,000 = $3,600,000 spent on teachers. The average amount of money spent, per pupil, in New Jersey was around $22,000 ( https://www.nj.com/education/2019/08/heres-what-every-nj-district-spends-per-student.html ). $22,000 * 1,000 students = $22,000,000. Roughly 1/6 of this school's budget is being spent on teachers ($3,600,000 / $22,000,000), so not cutting a significant percentage from this 1/6 means we'll have to cut way more than 30-50% somewhere else... The average NJ teacher enjoyed a 1.46% salary increase from two years ago to last year, so we'll use that ( https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teacher-salaries-are-increasing-see-how-your-state-compares/2021/04#:~:text=The NEA also found that the average starting,increased their minimum and starting pay for teachers. ). So this is an increase from $72,000 to $73,000 per teacher, or a total increase from spending $3,600,000 in a year to 3,650,000. That's a $50,000 increase... total. So even if we froze teacher salaries (not simply lowering to match inflation, which I'm pretty sure is above 1.46% at the moment, anyway...), we would save $50,000, out of a budget of $22,000,000. How close are we to slashing 30-50% of our total budget? Well, we saved 0.22% by screwing over teachers. If you want to slash a full 1%, then you can cut an administrator or two also. Grabbing back 1% here and 1% there can be possible if you're willing to make impractical sacrifices, but until you can get to even 10% reduction from an actual budget, there's no way 30-50% can even be considered. If you think you can get to 30-50%, please show an actual line-by-line school budget and tell me what can be so heavily reduced without negatively impacting educational outcomes. I think its true most government employees are getting hosed this year due to the high inflation. But teacher salaries (in my state) were going up about 2-3% faster than inflation pre-pandemic. Compound that over 30 years and its an effective 80% pay increase, which maths out to 40% of your total teacher salary budget. Using a classic compound interest calc, to get to the 72k number you'd have started at 40k 30 years ago. That is simply the power of compounding pay raises that exceed the rate of inflation.
What state are you referring to? I would like to look at the actual numbers, because I'm skeptical that teachers are consistently being paid 2-3% above inflation percentages for 30 straight years (or that such a thing could ever happen). I've never heard of that happening before, and I don't think it's reasonable to project it now. Maybe your state happens to be an interesting exception, but everything I'm seeing seems to show that teacher salaries are barely keeping up with inflation, at best:
(This source is pre-covid, to control for your suggestion that the pandemic is creating an exception)
From 2000 to 2018:
"In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept pace with inflation
... On the whole, salaries in 19 places increased while salaries in 32 places (including DC) decreased."
https://usafacts.org/articles/32-states-teacher-salaries-have-not-kept-pace-inflation/#:~:text=In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept,from 2000 to 2018 More than 10% decrease
The average rate of inflation over the past 10 years seems to be around 1-3%, and the salary increases of most teachers are not 2-3% more than that. That would suggest that teachers are generally making a 4-5% salary increase every year, and that would be incredibly rare. Salary guides for public schools (as well as teachers' actual salaries) are available for public record, and my annual salary increases have been 1-2%, keeping steady with (or slightly less than) these inflation numbers: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi -> 10YR on the map.
As an aside, keep in mind that your 30-year hypothetical compounding is to get to 40% of this year's budget, not the budget 30 years from now. That's a problem. You said that you can cut 30-50% of current budgets, not that in 30 years you think that schools would be able to cut 30-50% of their budgets (and keep in mind that the teachers' salaries only accounted for 1/6 of the hypothetical budget, so it's actually cutting 40% of 16%, not 40% of 100%). And on top of that, you can't assume that the costs of everything else (the other 5/6 of the budget: school maintenance, food, resources, etc.) over the next 30 years can be cut back the same way salaries can, and compound to get you a 40% reduction for the remaining 5/6 of the budget. It's unrealistic to think that all goods and services that are upcharged can be haggled down to merely the price of inflation. I really don't think any of this is working out, mathematically 
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On November 11 2021 08:12 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2021 07:25 LegalLord wrote:
Trump really gon' get it this time. I mean the past several years worth of InvestiGate revealed plenty of behavior that, while unethical and problematic, always stopped short of actually being a crime he could be convicted of. But this time is different, I'm sure. I agree that this time won’t be different but I would like to point out that it isn’t that he never committed crimes, it’s that the DoJ was instructed to not charge a sitting President. The lack of conviction does not mean a lack of crime.
I definitely agree that "lack of conviction does not mean lack of crime." But I think that deep down, we all know that the conviction ain't coming, crime or not.
On November 11 2021 08:27 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2021 07:25 LegalLord wrote:
Trump really gon' get it this time. I mean the past several years worth of InvestiGate revealed plenty of behavior that, while unethical and problematic, always stopped short of actually being a crime he could be convicted of. But this time is different, I'm sure. Trump might end up being the most favored person in political "leadership" this time. He's got everyone beat but Biden who is 0.2% more favorable than Trump in the RCP avg, for now.
He certainly seems to be pretty popular in the position of "former president."
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He always had a loud mouth, and that's all they ever do.
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Northern Ireland27346 Posts
On November 11 2021 08:27 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2021 07:25 LegalLord wrote:
Trump really gon' get it this time. I mean the past several years worth of InvestiGate revealed plenty of behavior that, while unethical and problematic, always stopped short of actually being a crime he could be convicted of. But this time is different, I'm sure. Trump might end up being the most favored person in political "leadership" this time. He's got everyone beat but Biden who is 0.2% more favorable than Trump in the RCP avg, for now.
Which is borderline unfathomably crazy.
But fathom it we must. I’m unsure what one does with such, ridiculous information but hey it’s there.
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On November 11 2021 08:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:What state are you referring to? I would like to look at the actual numbers, because I'm skeptical that teachers are consistently being paid 2-3% above inflation percentages for 30 straight years (or that such a thing could ever happen). I've never heard of that happening before, and I don't think it's reasonable to project it now. Maybe your state happens to be an interesting exception, but everything I'm seeing seems to show that teacher salaries are barely keeping up with inflation, at best: (This source is pre-covid, to control for your suggestion that the pandemic is creating an exception) From 2000 to 2018: "In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept pace with inflation ... On the whole, salaries in 19 places increased while salaries in 32 places (including DC) decreased." https://usafacts.org/articles/32-states-teacher-salaries-have-not-kept-pace-inflation/#:~:text=In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept,from 2000 to 2018 More than 10% decrease The average rate of inflation over the past 10 years seems to be around 1-3%, and the salary increases of most teachers are not 2-3% more than that. That would suggest that teachers are generally making a 4-5% salary increase every year, and that would be incredibly rare. Salary guides for public schools (as well as teachers' actual salaries) are available for public record, and my annual salary increases have been 1-2%, keeping steady with (or slightly less than) these inflation numbers: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi -> 10YR on the map. As an aside, keep in mind that your 30-year hypothetical compounding is to get to 40% of this year's budget, not the budget 30 years from now. That's a problem. You said that you can cut 30-50% of current budgets, not that in 30 years you think that schools would be able to cut 30-50% of their budgets (and keep in mind that the teachers' salaries only accounted for 1/6 of the hypothetical budget, so it's actually cutting 40% of 16%, not 40% of 100%). And on top of that, you can't assume that the costs of everything else (the other 5/6 of the budget: school maintenance, food, resources, etc.) over the next 30 years can be cut back the same way salaries can, and compound to get you a 40% reduction for the remaining 5/6 of the budget. It's unrealistic to think that all goods and services that are upcharged can be haggled down to merely the price of inflation. I really don't think any of this is working out, mathematically
CA 2000-2015. Obviously I don't know if that truly extrapolates either nationwide of for a full 30 years. But who knows.
Also, I will note that prof salaries is not the answer vis a vis college tuition AFAIK. Its admin bloat + new facilities.
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United States24799 Posts
On November 11 2021 09:16 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2021 08:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:What state are you referring to? I would like to look at the actual numbers, because I'm skeptical that teachers are consistently being paid 2-3% above inflation percentages for 30 straight years (or that such a thing could ever happen). I've never heard of that happening before, and I don't think it's reasonable to project it now. Maybe your state happens to be an interesting exception, but everything I'm seeing seems to show that teacher salaries are barely keeping up with inflation, at best: (This source is pre-covid, to control for your suggestion that the pandemic is creating an exception) From 2000 to 2018: "In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept pace with inflation ... On the whole, salaries in 19 places increased while salaries in 32 places (including DC) decreased." https://usafacts.org/articles/32-states-teacher-salaries-have-not-kept-pace-inflation/#:~:text=In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept,from 2000 to 2018 More than 10% decrease The average rate of inflation over the past 10 years seems to be around 1-3%, and the salary increases of most teachers are not 2-3% more than that. That would suggest that teachers are generally making a 4-5% salary increase every year, and that would be incredibly rare. Salary guides for public schools (as well as teachers' actual salaries) are available for public record, and my annual salary increases have been 1-2%, keeping steady with (or slightly less than) these inflation numbers: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi -> 10YR on the map. As an aside, keep in mind that your 30-year hypothetical compounding is to get to 40% of this year's budget, not the budget 30 years from now. That's a problem. You said that you can cut 30-50% of current budgets, not that in 30 years you think that schools would be able to cut 30-50% of their budgets (and keep in mind that the teachers' salaries only accounted for 1/6 of the hypothetical budget, so it's actually cutting 40% of 16%, not 40% of 100%). And on top of that, you can't assume that the costs of everything else (the other 5/6 of the budget: school maintenance, food, resources, etc.) over the next 30 years can be cut back the same way salaries can, and compound to get you a 40% reduction for the remaining 5/6 of the budget. It's unrealistic to think that all goods and services that are upcharged can be haggled down to merely the price of inflation. I really don't think any of this is working out, mathematically CA 2000-2015. Obviously I don't know if that truly extrapolates either nationwide of for a full 30 years. But who knows. Also, I will note that prof salaries is not the answer vis a vis college tuition AFAIK. Its admin bloat + new facilities.
From what you were saying before it sounds like California teachers are overpaid (although they may not have been 30 years ago) and that is contributing towards inefficient per student spending. I admittedly did only a cursory search for your state, but this is the data I looked at:
https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp
I'll focus on High School Districts because they are what I am most familiar with. For medium sized, the beginning teacher salary on average is $50,546, and the highest teacher annual salary is $103,463. How high should those numbers really be after making whatever corrections you think are appropriate?
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On November 11 2021 09:16 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2021 08:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:What state are you referring to? I would like to look at the actual numbers, because I'm skeptical that teachers are consistently being paid 2-3% above inflation percentages for 30 straight years (or that such a thing could ever happen). I've never heard of that happening before, and I don't think it's reasonable to project it now. Maybe your state happens to be an interesting exception, but everything I'm seeing seems to show that teacher salaries are barely keeping up with inflation, at best: (This source is pre-covid, to control for your suggestion that the pandemic is creating an exception) From 2000 to 2018: "In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept pace with inflation ... On the whole, salaries in 19 places increased while salaries in 32 places (including DC) decreased." https://usafacts.org/articles/32-states-teacher-salaries-have-not-kept-pace-inflation/#:~:text=In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept,from 2000 to 2018 More than 10% decrease The average rate of inflation over the past 10 years seems to be around 1-3%, and the salary increases of most teachers are not 2-3% more than that. That would suggest that teachers are generally making a 4-5% salary increase every year, and that would be incredibly rare. Salary guides for public schools (as well as teachers' actual salaries) are available for public record, and my annual salary increases have been 1-2%, keeping steady with (or slightly less than) these inflation numbers: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi -> 10YR on the map. As an aside, keep in mind that your 30-year hypothetical compounding is to get to 40% of this year's budget, not the budget 30 years from now. That's a problem. You said that you can cut 30-50% of current budgets, not that in 30 years you think that schools would be able to cut 30-50% of their budgets (and keep in mind that the teachers' salaries only accounted for 1/6 of the hypothetical budget, so it's actually cutting 40% of 16%, not 40% of 100%). And on top of that, you can't assume that the costs of everything else (the other 5/6 of the budget: school maintenance, food, resources, etc.) over the next 30 years can be cut back the same way salaries can, and compound to get you a 40% reduction for the remaining 5/6 of the budget. It's unrealistic to think that all goods and services that are upcharged can be haggled down to merely the price of inflation. I really don't think any of this is working out, mathematically CA 2000-2015. Obviously I don't know if that truly extrapolates either nationwide of for a full 30 years. But who knows. Also, I will note that prof salaries is not the answer vis a vis college tuition AFAIK. Its admin bloat + new facilities.
Thanks for sharing about California  As per the source I cited above (also here: + Show Spoiler + ), California seems to have one of the highest percent increases in annual salaries for teachers. 2000-2015 is covered in the data from that source, and it says that from 2000 to 2018, the total percent increase for California teachers was 16.09%. If we average that across 18 years, that's less than 1% pay increase annually*, so I feel like this contradicts your earlier statement, since inflation has been 1-3% over that same period of time, rather than in perpetual deflation of negative 1-3% (which is the only way that CA teachers could be getting paid several percent more). Thoughts?
*I know that this is technically compound interest, so simply dividing by 18 isn't 100% accurate, but it doesn't change the fact that CA teachers are definitely not making consistently 4-5% increases annually. We could at least put an upper bound at 2%.
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On November 11 2021 09:22 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2021 09:16 cLutZ wrote:On November 11 2021 08:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:What state are you referring to? I would like to look at the actual numbers, because I'm skeptical that teachers are consistently being paid 2-3% above inflation percentages for 30 straight years (or that such a thing could ever happen). I've never heard of that happening before, and I don't think it's reasonable to project it now. Maybe your state happens to be an interesting exception, but everything I'm seeing seems to show that teacher salaries are barely keeping up with inflation, at best: (This source is pre-covid, to control for your suggestion that the pandemic is creating an exception) From 2000 to 2018: "In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept pace with inflation ... On the whole, salaries in 19 places increased while salaries in 32 places (including DC) decreased." https://usafacts.org/articles/32-states-teacher-salaries-have-not-kept-pace-inflation/#:~:text=In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept,from 2000 to 2018 More than 10% decrease The average rate of inflation over the past 10 years seems to be around 1-3%, and the salary increases of most teachers are not 2-3% more than that. That would suggest that teachers are generally making a 4-5% salary increase every year, and that would be incredibly rare. Salary guides for public schools (as well as teachers' actual salaries) are available for public record, and my annual salary increases have been 1-2%, keeping steady with (or slightly less than) these inflation numbers: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi -> 10YR on the map. As an aside, keep in mind that your 30-year hypothetical compounding is to get to 40% of this year's budget, not the budget 30 years from now. That's a problem. You said that you can cut 30-50% of current budgets, not that in 30 years you think that schools would be able to cut 30-50% of their budgets (and keep in mind that the teachers' salaries only accounted for 1/6 of the hypothetical budget, so it's actually cutting 40% of 16%, not 40% of 100%). And on top of that, you can't assume that the costs of everything else (the other 5/6 of the budget: school maintenance, food, resources, etc.) over the next 30 years can be cut back the same way salaries can, and compound to get you a 40% reduction for the remaining 5/6 of the budget. It's unrealistic to think that all goods and services that are upcharged can be haggled down to merely the price of inflation. I really don't think any of this is working out, mathematically CA 2000-2015. Obviously I don't know if that truly extrapolates either nationwide of for a full 30 years. But who knows. Also, I will note that prof salaries is not the answer vis a vis college tuition AFAIK. Its admin bloat + new facilities. From what you were saying before it sounds like California teachers are overpaid (although they may not have been 30 years ago) and that is contributing towards inefficient per student spending. I admittedly did only a cursory search for your state, but this is the data I looked at: https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.aspI'll focus on High School Districts because they are what I am most familiar with. For medium sized, the beginning teacher salary on average is $50,546, and the highest teacher annual salary is $103,463. How high should those numbers really be after making whatever corrections you think are appropriate?
I think the top end could be cut about 20%. Obviously I was using a simple model (which exaggerated the result way too much) in suggesting you could potentially get 40% out of the teacher salary budget.
Going forward though, I think the real cost savings is to stop building new facilities and stop the admin bloat. In the UC system the prof-admin ration has gone from ~4-1 to ~1.5-1. Non-teacher-faculty has more than doubled! I struggle to find stats for public schools, but even if its half that, it would amount to a 75% increase in money paid to non-teacher faculty.
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On November 11 2021 09:40 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2021 09:22 micronesia wrote:On November 11 2021 09:16 cLutZ wrote:On November 11 2021 08:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:What state are you referring to? I would like to look at the actual numbers, because I'm skeptical that teachers are consistently being paid 2-3% above inflation percentages for 30 straight years (or that such a thing could ever happen). I've never heard of that happening before, and I don't think it's reasonable to project it now. Maybe your state happens to be an interesting exception, but everything I'm seeing seems to show that teacher salaries are barely keeping up with inflation, at best: (This source is pre-covid, to control for your suggestion that the pandemic is creating an exception) From 2000 to 2018: "In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept pace with inflation ... On the whole, salaries in 19 places increased while salaries in 32 places (including DC) decreased." https://usafacts.org/articles/32-states-teacher-salaries-have-not-kept-pace-inflation/#:~:text=In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept,from 2000 to 2018 More than 10% decrease The average rate of inflation over the past 10 years seems to be around 1-3%, and the salary increases of most teachers are not 2-3% more than that. That would suggest that teachers are generally making a 4-5% salary increase every year, and that would be incredibly rare. Salary guides for public schools (as well as teachers' actual salaries) are available for public record, and my annual salary increases have been 1-2%, keeping steady with (or slightly less than) these inflation numbers: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi -> 10YR on the map. As an aside, keep in mind that your 30-year hypothetical compounding is to get to 40% of this year's budget, not the budget 30 years from now. That's a problem. You said that you can cut 30-50% of current budgets, not that in 30 years you think that schools would be able to cut 30-50% of their budgets (and keep in mind that the teachers' salaries only accounted for 1/6 of the hypothetical budget, so it's actually cutting 40% of 16%, not 40% of 100%). And on top of that, you can't assume that the costs of everything else (the other 5/6 of the budget: school maintenance, food, resources, etc.) over the next 30 years can be cut back the same way salaries can, and compound to get you a 40% reduction for the remaining 5/6 of the budget. It's unrealistic to think that all goods and services that are upcharged can be haggled down to merely the price of inflation. I really don't think any of this is working out, mathematically CA 2000-2015. Obviously I don't know if that truly extrapolates either nationwide of for a full 30 years. But who knows. Also, I will note that prof salaries is not the answer vis a vis college tuition AFAIK. Its admin bloat + new facilities. From what you were saying before it sounds like California teachers are overpaid (although they may not have been 30 years ago) and that is contributing towards inefficient per student spending. I admittedly did only a cursory search for your state, but this is the data I looked at: https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.aspI'll focus on High School Districts because they are what I am most familiar with. For medium sized, the beginning teacher salary on average is $50,546, and the highest teacher annual salary is $103,463. How high should those numbers really be after making whatever corrections you think are appropriate? I think the top end could be cut about 20%. Obviously I was using a simple model (which exaggerated the result way too much) in suggesting you could potentially get 40% out of the teacher salary budget.
Are you referring to the teachers who are making over $100,000 per year? That's a very small number of teachers, so cutting their salaries won't affect much of the budget. Even if we decided to screw over teachers making at least $90,000, those are also the ones who have advanced degrees (often PhDs) and/or have been working for 30+ years, with incremental pay increases. If teachers stopped getting pay increases after 20 years, then teachers would leave after 20 years. If teachers stopped being financially rewarded for having advanced degrees, then they wouldn't bother pursuing more education to better prepare them for teaching.
I'd like to ask a follow-up question: Why bother cutting teacher salaries at all?
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Could you tell me whats counting as non-teacher faculty ?
From what i've found
In many universities, the members of the administration (e.g., department chairs, deans, vice presidents, presidents, and librarians) are also faculty members; many of them begin (and remain) as professors. At some universities, the distinction between "academic faculty" and "administrative faculty" is made explicit by the former being contracted for nine months per year, meaning that they can devote their time to research (and possibly be absent from the campus) during the summer months, while the latter are contracted for twelve months per year.
+ Show Spoiler +
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On November 11 2021 07:06 WombaT wrote:
I think Clutz touches on some interesting areas, although I do also think some of the pushback on specifics in the thread is pretty valid too.
What is education for, and how does it intersect with other things? What can it accomplish, realistically? What is it meant to accomplish? I think some of these real fundamental questions are somewhat neglected in general discourse around it.
It seems, to me in totality to be a complete fucking mess. It neither rewards a genuinely holistic approach, nor a real test-orientated approach as well, such a huge amount of people have the requisite test qualifications that they cease to have particular meaning.
It does an extremely shit job of, equally rewarding people who may have a whole bunch of really useful soft skills, vs those who have better grades. Speaking as someone who's always had stellar grades and had huge deficiencies in my wider skillsets I'm still getting the interviews regardless.
In the absolute crudest sense possible the current system, most of the world over is something that rewards smart people, whatever that means, above everything else. And those who aren't 'smart people' get naturally discouraged by the system.
Yeah I wonder if it would help for more administrators to step back and evaluate the actual goals of education rather than being hyper-focused on efficiency and cost. Doesn't help to become more efficient if you're working towards bad ends in the first place. From the little I remember from my experience there was a good deal of aimlessness that the kids definitely felt. And as you say, those who aren't good enough trained monkeys when it comes to tests easily become discouraged and give up entirely. I agree with you in wishing that more alternative skillsets were taught to people who inclined that way. Great example in the US is the decline of trade schools partly due to stigma of them being for dumb kids who couldn't cut it for university.
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I think the biggest salary earners are the varsity sport coaches, followed by the top admin?
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I ain't supporting college sports or the olympics until the athletes get paid.
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On November 11 2021 09:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2021 09:40 cLutZ wrote:On November 11 2021 09:22 micronesia wrote:On November 11 2021 09:16 cLutZ wrote:On November 11 2021 08:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:What state are you referring to? I would like to look at the actual numbers, because I'm skeptical that teachers are consistently being paid 2-3% above inflation percentages for 30 straight years (or that such a thing could ever happen). I've never heard of that happening before, and I don't think it's reasonable to project it now. Maybe your state happens to be an interesting exception, but everything I'm seeing seems to show that teacher salaries are barely keeping up with inflation, at best: (This source is pre-covid, to control for your suggestion that the pandemic is creating an exception) From 2000 to 2018: "In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept pace with inflation ... On the whole, salaries in 19 places increased while salaries in 32 places (including DC) decreased." https://usafacts.org/articles/32-states-teacher-salaries-have-not-kept-pace-inflation/#:~:text=In 32 states, teacher salaries have not kept,from 2000 to 2018 More than 10% decrease The average rate of inflation over the past 10 years seems to be around 1-3%, and the salary increases of most teachers are not 2-3% more than that. That would suggest that teachers are generally making a 4-5% salary increase every year, and that would be incredibly rare. Salary guides for public schools (as well as teachers' actual salaries) are available for public record, and my annual salary increases have been 1-2%, keeping steady with (or slightly less than) these inflation numbers: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi -> 10YR on the map. As an aside, keep in mind that your 30-year hypothetical compounding is to get to 40% of this year's budget, not the budget 30 years from now. That's a problem. You said that you can cut 30-50% of current budgets, not that in 30 years you think that schools would be able to cut 30-50% of their budgets (and keep in mind that the teachers' salaries only accounted for 1/6 of the hypothetical budget, so it's actually cutting 40% of 16%, not 40% of 100%). And on top of that, you can't assume that the costs of everything else (the other 5/6 of the budget: school maintenance, food, resources, etc.) over the next 30 years can be cut back the same way salaries can, and compound to get you a 40% reduction for the remaining 5/6 of the budget. It's unrealistic to think that all goods and services that are upcharged can be haggled down to merely the price of inflation. I really don't think any of this is working out, mathematically CA 2000-2015. Obviously I don't know if that truly extrapolates either nationwide of for a full 30 years. But who knows. Also, I will note that prof salaries is not the answer vis a vis college tuition AFAIK. Its admin bloat + new facilities. From what you were saying before it sounds like California teachers are overpaid (although they may not have been 30 years ago) and that is contributing towards inefficient per student spending. I admittedly did only a cursory search for your state, but this is the data I looked at: https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.aspI'll focus on High School Districts because they are what I am most familiar with. For medium sized, the beginning teacher salary on average is $50,546, and the highest teacher annual salary is $103,463. How high should those numbers really be after making whatever corrections you think are appropriate? I think the top end could be cut about 20%. Obviously I was using a simple model (which exaggerated the result way too much) in suggesting you could potentially get 40% out of the teacher salary budget. Are you referring to the teachers who are making over $100,000 per year? That's a very small number of teachers, so cutting their salaries won't affect much of the budget. Even if we decided to screw over teachers making at least $90,000, those are also the ones who have advanced degrees (often PhDs) and/or have been working for 30+ years, with incremental pay increases. If teachers stopped getting pay increases after 20 years, then teachers would leave after 20 years. If teachers stopped being financially rewarded for having advanced degrees, then they wouldn't bother pursuing more education to better prepare them for teaching. I'd like to ask a follow-up question: Why bother cutting teacher salaries at all?
I mean, at my HS the majority of teachers with more than 10 years EXP earned over that, obviously not median school, but they weren't particularly good. Yes they had advanced degrees, notably Ed. D, but that is literally a joke degree almost no one would get (many were online/mail only decades before Covid!) if there weren't automatic raises for getting one.
I doubt most (or even many) teachers would leave the profession if it paid less at the top end. They don't draw from prestigious universities, and Ed programs regularly are regularly comprised of the lower scoring students at those schools. They don't have mobility or transferrable skills. Indeed, my best HS teacher "retired" from chemical engineering to become a chem teacher.
On November 11 2021 10:46 gobbledydook wrote:
I think the biggest salary earners are the varsity sport coaches, followed by the top admin?
Its mostly people who game the system by stacking positions (which also decreases teaching load! so the problem is worse than you think because they don't even count as NTF's, but they are only teaching 1 class a day!). An infamous guy at my HS was Math Department Chair and AD so he taught 1 math class and made like 160k.
But it is true that going after teacher's salaries isn't the best move for efficiency. You need to rid yourself of various deans, counselors, etc, which are the bulk of the new costs relating to salaries. And you need to stop building new schools, pretending IPads are a legitimate school expense etc. My school district, for example, built an elementary school circa 2000, only to retire my elementary school (built 1990) in 2005. Its madness!
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Lets revamp the education system from the ground up, rather than figure out what redundant administrators can be dismissed. The majority of teaching is based around memorization rather than teaching children how to think. And there is a uniformity issue where children who are succeeding faster are held back, and those who are struggling get pushed to fit the arbitrary grade so that uniformly the class can move on.
Unchain children to specific grades based on age, and allow students that thrive in certain subjects to keep progressing. I know some states have tried this, or locally in some cases, but I'd love to get more focus on that.
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On November 11 2021 13:44 Husyelt wrote:
Lets revamp the education system from the ground up, rather than figure out what redundant administrators can be dismissed. The majority of teaching is based around memorization rather than teaching children how to think. And there is a uniformity issue where children who are succeeding faster are held back, and those who are struggling get pushed to fit the arbitrary grade so that uniformly the class can move on.
Unchain children to specific grades based on age, and allow students that thrive in certain subjects to keep progressing. I know some states have tried this, or locally in some cases, but I'd love to get more focus on that.
This is basically unschooling. It works fine for high IQ kids with conscientious parents, and is basically untested in the bottom 50%. The bottom 50% are the people who are the problem in the current schooling system (per CRT and wokists at least). I suspect such a system would enrage them even more as it would compound pre-schooling disparities even more than our regimented current system (which, if we are being honest even places with AP and gifted programs hold back gifted students quite a bit).
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EPT
