Back to School
Miles of plexiglass, masks, and deranged parents. Back to school 2021 feels more like Stranger Things than the fall ritual we grew up with. Yet there’s an eerie sameness between this fall and the previous most-unusual-back-to-school year of our lives … last year. Classrooms are experiments on viral transmission rates, and school board meetings are proof that antipsychotic meds are dangerously underprescribed.
Whitney Was Right
The children are indeed our future. In my book, Post Corona, I offered this thesis: “The pandemic’s most enduring impact will be as an accelerant.” And that’s proving out in many areas. In health care, office work, food delivery, banking, and more, we are seeing “decades happen in weeks” as Lenin said. (Note: He didn’t say it, but attributing the quote to Lenin is gangster.)
In one sector, however, everything is moving slower. Education. Our elementary school kids are learning less, and some are nearly a full school year behind where they would have been pre-pandemic.
While their parents harass doctors at school board meetings and fight epic Facebook comment wars, our kids are not learning to read or count. McKinsey projects that this learning gap will reduce lifetime earnings for K-12 students by an average of $49,000 to $61,000. By the time the majority of these kids have joined the workforce in 2040, it’s estimated we’ll have lost as much as $188 billion a year in GDP due to unfinished learning during the pandemic.
As with most things, these ill effects are falling disproportionately on the poor and children of color. Black kids are six months behind in math and learning, whereas white kids are “only” four and three months behind.
Meanwhile, the U.S. educational system has been losing ground to those of our international peers for years. American students routinely score lower on tests of basic skills than students in other countries, a trend that isn’t likely to reverse.
Not for Teacher
Who will get these kids back on track? Don’t count on teachers. It turns out that if you underpay, under-resource, and fail to accord equal respect to people for long enough … they’ll quit. Two-thirds of our school districts face a teacher shortage, and 28% of teachers are likely to retire or leave the profession earlier than expected.
Who can blame them? Since 1980, their income relative to other college graduates has been in steady decline. Men have always taken a pay cut to enter the classroom, but it’s gone from a 17% haircut to a 30% scalping. Teaching used to be an economically attractive profession for women, relative to their other options — though I’d guess that wasn’t because we paid female teachers so well — but now a female college graduate makes 13% less than her peers if she goes into teaching.
In addition to underpaying them, we’re now asking teachers to stand in a room full of potential delta variant factories, and to referee QAnon vs. anti-vaxxer brawls on parent-teacher night.
Teaching is arguably the most important job in society. Our future is in their care. And something has gone very, very wrong. We’ll know the profession has hit a new low when we start referring to them as “heros” or (worse) “essential workers” — the lip-service labels liberals bestow on those we exploit to maintain our creature comforts through pestilence, poverty, and war.
The Ivory Tower
I write often about higher education — not only because it’s my day job, but also because it’s an integral part of the innovation and economic mobility at the heart of the American dream. College has become too expensive. It’s morphed from the ultimate lubricant of upward mobility to the enforcer of the caste system. Every day, it becomes less American. I thought Covid would inspire partnerships with tech firms to dramatically expand access. I was wrong. Our elite universities have doubled down on exclusivity rather than embrace the opportunity for change.
But while I and many others were worrying about rising costs, administrative bloat, and a lack of teaching innovation, another worrying trend was gathering momentum. Young men are opting out of college.
In 1970, men accounted for 60% of college enrollment. That number has decreased to 40%. This largely reflects a dwindling male applicant pool. Women now submit 35% more college applications than men, which is forcing some schools to quietly prop up male admission rates. Yes, you read that right. Men are receiving affirmative action for being men.
This decline is a Rorschach test for pundits and comment-section warriors. People who think college is too woke declare that’s what’s driving men out. People who hate video games, THC, or feminism can blame them.
Employment economics probably explains the trend to an extent. Young men without college degrees have better options than young women. Many fields that don’t require a degree are gender imbalanced, and the traditionally male-dominated jobs tend to pay better. Thus, as the value proposition of college gets worse (higher costs, worse experience), men opt out because they can. Women stick around because they have fewer choices. With traditionally male-dominated skilled labor trades in high demand, we should expect to see even more decline in male college attendance.
But is that enough to explain how far women have pulled ahead? UCLA has expanded its enrollment by 3,000 students since 2013, and 90% of that increase is attributed to women. The essence of this data is too much of a good thing. An overdue correction may have, as often happens in markets, inspired an overcorrection.
We’ve lost young men in the shuffle, made them objects of our political arguments and targets of our algorithms. It’s easy to shrug it off. “Someone else’s turn to eat,” so to speak. Sure. But hungry young men without role models or prospects are, to be blunt, dangerous. The wheel doesn’t need to turn, it needs to be broken.
Specifically, we need to dramatically expand enrollments at our great public universities and invest in vocational and apprenticeship programs (for young women and men). I’ve given up on elite private schools — we’ve become Birkin Bags posing as public servants whose arrogance and self-aggrandizement is noxious. This week, I was invited to an NYU faculty education session on the use of pronouns. If the supposedly most brilliant among us can’t keep track of he/she/they, what hope is there that we’ll ever tackle have/have nots and how we (faculty and administrators drunk on luxury) are making the problem worse?
Abandoning Ship
For a rapidly increasing number of American families, the answer to the problems with our schools is not to attend them. Home-schooling, growing in popularity for years, skyrocketed during the pandemic. Today, more than 1 in 10 kids are home-schooled. It may indeed be a solution for some families, but it’s impractical or unappealing for millions of households who rely on public and private schools to teach critical skills.
Hope
There are real signs of hope and change, though. U.K.-based Multiverse offers non-college-bound kids apprenticeships at many of the world’s premier firms. Promising kids get an onramp to the American dream that bypasses the arrogance and debt of admissions departments and outrageous tuition fees, respectively. In addition, this summer, the University of California sent out more than 160,000 admissions offers for Fall 2021, a record high. And institutions like the UC system that are taking positive steps got a boost this week from, of all places, the college-ranking industrial complex. Forbes magazine changed its ranking system in a way that could inspire a huge shift back to where higher ed needs to be.
Rankings are devastatingly important to the demand a school registers. Young people are inexperienced and insecure, which are the pillars upon which margin from brand equity rests. The next time you see a ranking of the “world’s strongest brands,” recognize that it’s left off the uber brands … universities. If Apple were a school, it could have paid for its $5 billion spaceship with naming rights across the side of the building, on each lecture hall, and over every urinal. Coke and McDonald’s don’t hold a candle to MIT and Michigan. Anyway, the most insidious input to these paramount rankings is the rate of admission. More accurately, non-admission. The more people they turn away, the higher the ranking, the more apps, the more margin power, the more student debt, the higher the pay of administrators, the more incentive to reject more students … and the wheel turns.
Forbes’s most recent ranking, however, includes “access” as a factor (specifically, the percentage of kids at the school who received a Pell grant). When that essential element is taken into account … UC Berkeley is the top-ranked school in America. Four UC campuses are in the top 25, as are five other public universities. This. Is. Big.
Ms. Jensen
My iPhone keeps serving pictures of my boys from years ago. It is very rewarding and, at the same time, heartbreaking. I feel a rush of happiness, and then longing sets in. I will never have back the 5-year-old who let me grow his curls out. Gone is the 8-year-old who’d sleep naked unless you found pajamas with Jedi Master Yoda on them. If you don’t find the preceding two sentences nauseating, it means one thing: You have kids.
Back to school, one week in, has been wondrous in our household. There’s been a step change in our 11-year-old. He left the fourth grade a boy who swore every morning he had unbearable stomach pain and had to be literally dragged out of bed. As a new fifth grader, he’s asking us to help him organize his homework the night before, as he wants “to impress Ms. Jensen.”
When he said this, I told him that a man expresses quiet confidence — we talk a lot about “what a man does” — and that one of the ways you develop quiet confidence is by being prepared, and that I’m really impressed with him as he’s clearly developing into a man. He beams … I mean beams. A feeling of reward and confidence visibly washes over him, and he lurches to hug me, only he evades my embrace, runs into his older brother’s room, hits him in the face, and screams “nobody likes you!” Everyone celebrates in their own way.
I tell him to stop (being a dad means issuing several million verbal warnings each day) and say he needs to get to bed right away. He responds, as he does dozens of times each day, with “why?” Because … we’re back to school.
Life is so rich,
P.S. Registration for my final Business Strategy Sprint of 2021 closes on Tuesday. Join us.
Man I fell in love with your combo of wit and intelligence when my friend introduced me to these articles a year or two ago. Felt like Hunter Thompson of the economic world. Yet I’ve seen a slow slippage from being above it & commenting with enlightened non-attachment to righteousness & opinionation. Today you said that “attributing a quote to Lenin was gangster.”
I’m sorry, but it’s taxing the extent of my own capacity for love to try and forgive that.
Today I am old and probably irrelevant to just about everyone but my 9 year old granddaughter. (I hope at least that part is true.) But I do believe firmly that just about everything truly important in life I learned in elementary school. This was post-war Britain with not much of anything available but we had wonderful teachers, many of them spinsters who had lost potential husbands in WWI; they devoted themselves to us. We learned to read, write, play games by the rules, accept both winning and losing, and care for each other and the world around us. After that, education was mainly technical stuff; high school, college and grad school. But the foundation from early childhood was there all along. Whatever you do, if you have children, please make sure that they get the grounding they deserve and which supports them throughout their lives. As Scott says, life is so rich – and that richness begins at the beginning.
Kudos to Ms. Jensen!
Best quote: “If the supposedly most brilliant among us can’t keep track of he/she/they, what hope is there that we’ll ever tackle have/have nots and how we (faculty and administrators drunk on luxury) are making the problem worse?”
There’s not a lot of need to invest in the US educational system. With automation we need less and less skilled human resources for production, and those resources we do need are much more efficiently accessed overseas, especially India where there is a wealth of inexpensive technical talent. Educating US children is too expensive to make economic sense.
Are you saying education is irrelevant unless it produces economic gains?
This is very insightful and a hard truth! We are really struggling as a country and our kids are bearing the brunt of the changes that are NOT happening. As a school board member, people are often at our meetings to discuss masking policies, not to discuss the quality of education their children may or may not have. Thanks for summing it up in a way to encourages action.
I find it offensive that you seem to be forgetting that “the quality of education their children may or may not have” has a direct connection to the truth, goals and curriculum decisions that those same “people at our meetings” not only desire, but are entitled to! You serve for the benefit of the students, with parameters defined by those who know best….the parents!
I miss the 5 and 8-year-old days as well. Replace Jedi PJs with the need to “steal” and wash at night the Levis and Car T-Shirt that was worn 7-days a week.
Thank you for your insights and trips down memory lane, Scott.
Always insightful commentary. Take a look at “administrative/administration” cost in school districts, often 40-60% of the budget. Administrators making 3-4x teachers is the norm.
Supply and Demand has a lot to do with the old value of a degree. When only 20-30% of the population has a degree that scarcity means those jobs pay better. As more people get 4 or 4+ year degrees the value of them should drop.
Likewise the value of trade training is also supply and demand related. There are fewer people that want to work in many traditionally male jobs. Outside work that is hot in the summer and cold in the winter attracts fewer people and so pays more. Getting your hands dirty, having to learn a specific skill that is not transferable, physical labor, and jobs that start early or go late, are all unattractive to many, and pay well. These are jobs that are often staffed by men.
The Educational-Industrial complex has been selling the value of a college education as the best way forward for everyone. Selling the idea that because someone has a degree, they should be paid more. Now what should happen (based on supply & demand) is those jobs will become less financially attractive. We should not be surprised that the payoff for a degree will not necessarily be worth it.
I expect that those whose livelihoods depend of issuing 4 year degrees to push back hard. And double down on the idea that a college degree is the only way to get ahead. Should be an interesting next decade.
Thanks for what you do.
Simply wonderful and horrifying all in the same blog! thank you Scott
Do you have a view on ‘months behind due to pandemic’ including Asians, out of interest?
2 comments:
1. I recently got a survey from my kid’s elementary school about how best to use the ESSER funding. My write-in answer? Pay teachers bonuses and give them stipends to buy what they need for the classroom. President Bartlett knew the answer back in the 90s. Teachers should make 6-figure salaries in the US and we should give them that respect.
2. The flight from college is well-deserved after decades of overselling smart but directionless kids on millions of liberal arts BAs. We have a skilled trades job gap of roughly the same millions of jobs. Mike Rowe and Germany are on the right side of this. Let’s respect the trades (which do earn six-figure salaries) and brag when Junior becomes a journeyman pipefitter earning enough to afford a Ford F150 and a mortgage.
Love this post. Because I’m living proof what Scott describes in terms of other options for men (and women) that don’t include spending $150K on an education that many times does not guarantee future prosperity.
5 years ago, I founded a 250 hour program (completed in 5 weeks) to train entry-level diesel mechanics. I just couldn’t stand to see kids spending two years at community college or coming out of a for profit school with crushing student loan debt…all the while still not being trained for what industry wanted.
We’ve become one of the largest producers of diesel mechanics in the U.S. Graduates work for more than 250 different companies.
The average starting salary for our grads is $42K, which is higher than many 4-year college grads. Many start at $50K plus. And we’ve had grads already promoted to management who are making six figures.
Here’s the better part. The vast…. vast majority of our students pay little or nothing for the training (which is $10K). Companies pick up the tab.
We have a class coming in Monday and 100% of them are sponsored by one of the best transportation brands in the world. Lodging, food, travel, tuition is covered. Oh. And they get paid while they train. The company interviewed and hired them based on attitude and aptitude, and is sending them to us. We will train to the exact specifications that the company wants.
This will be the future of trades education. It has to be.
Amazing!
Awesome!
Your higher education ‘so-called’ non-profit industry has been overpriced for too many years…maybe the parents of the young males you mention have FINALLY figured this out – more logical (better value) to spend 2-3 years making 40-70k learning a trade than spending almost that much on an overpriced college diploma. And for the love of g-o-d, start ‘properly’ taxing your international tax cheating corporations and citizens so your publicly funded school systems can afford to pay these teachers what they deserve.
Just wanted to say that I enjoyed the “Not for Teacher” pun 😄
But did you catch the Whitney one? #Greatestloveofall
Thanks – this was a great read
Teachers get little respect. But in too many cases, that is what they deserve. They demand to be treated as Professional, while the hide behind the DNC/Teacher Union skirt. Can’t be fired, so they are transferred where parents are too drunk/stoned to care. Locally, they refuse to incorporate any tech without paid time off to learn it, unlike other ‘Professionals’. Parents share a part of the problem, convinced that their offspring are all Stanford bound, but isn’t dealing with tough ‘clients’ part or a ‘Professional’ job? California COULD focus down on learning, but distractions like 1619 History crap get in the way. How to solve? Set up compensation that rewards best teachers. How to do it? Ask HR at big companies. They do it well, most of the time.
Teachers unions are an easy scapegoat eh? So much hyperbole in your comment it’s impossible to take it seriously.
San Francisco teacher’s union, the only one of 25 top US cities that did not put kids back in the classroom, not even having a plan to do do. There are some rotten apples out there, and this is being polite.
Teacher’s unions ensure due process. They don’t protect underperforming teachers beyond the point of no return, just like the private sector. In my experience, all tech introduced into the classroom is accompanied by training. And if you want to know why public education is difficult, here is the blame game trickle- down (and the order matters). State beancounters underfund education. School districts underfund Special Education programs and fail to provide adequate staffing and timely support. Parents or guardians are unable (for a myriad of reasons) to provide time and resources for their kids. At the end of the line are teachers. The best teachers are the ones who are able to somewhat overcome all the barriers placed in their way. Oftentimes their success is not always quantifiable by a test score. You are entitled to an opinion, but I would say its off-base. And a rewards system for “best” teachers? There’s a reason why such a system is rare.
I agree that teachers need more respect. When comparing teacher’s salaries are you including the full package that includes medical and retirement benefits along with reduced working days per year?
You can attribute to the teacher’s unions both the poor attitude and high benefits. There is basically regulatory capture with the union’s donations buying the support of those they negotiate with.
Around here, teachers are making $80K+ to start. That is for 8 month of working. And, off at 3pm. Few easy jobs for anyone now, so stop whining that you have to learn new software on your own time.
I don’t know where you are, but I have never met a teacher that gets off at three nor have I met one who doesn’t also work at home. Nor have I ever heard of teachers starting at $80k 😱 I’m clearly doing it wrong. Although I could never afford to live in Cali and the northeast winters are very unappealing.
Here teachers with a bachelor’s start around $50k. After 18 years and with a Master’s degree they make just over $100k. Clearly WAY lower than private sector. And yes they work a lot nights, weekends, and over the much hyped summer break. Salary schedule for my local district:. https://www.rcsdk8.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/certificated_salary_schedule_19.20_-_edit_4.17.20_board_approved_5.4.20_with_appendix_b.pdf
As a college teacher, and I bet the same with k-12, there is a lot of class preparation, grading, and service/parent meetings that are part of the compensation, lengthening their day beyond 730 – 230 or so. So while most get 2 months off, the compensation should reflect more like 10-11 hours per day, IMO.
“but attributing the quote to Lenin is gangster.”
Is this some modern slang? I have never heard this expression.
“is gangster” is 90s slang lol
Scott never tires of an “inequality narrative” always an easy store the woke elite educated east coasters can nod their heads in agreement too.
Why no discussion about how upteachers unions put out misinformation about teacher risk and lobbied politicians to keep schools closed…and that is why the kids are behind
Wake up Scott. Go actually talk to people that aren’t in your super rich elite bubble.
Or calling out parents for *gasp* believing that it’s important kids be allowed to participate in sports for their physical and mental well being, questioning the lack of research on these vaccines impact on children who are virtually immune to Covid (pneumonia and the seasonal flu kills more kids), or fighting for their kids right to not have to wear a face mask for 8 hours of the day when there’s been zero evidence they’ve done anything to slow the spread of Covid in schools (how’s masks are actually applied compared to efficacy tests are night and day different)
Parents actually recognize the political football for what it is and are rightly disgusted at teachers unions and politicians putting optics ahead of kids. Unions care about money, governors care about elections, you know what parents care about? Their own kids. Glad they do – someone has to, and I’m glad they speak their voice at these injustices
Scott never tires of an “inequality narrative” always an easy store the woke elite educated east coasters can nod their heads in agreement too.
Why no discussion about how upteachers unions put out misinformation about teacher risk and lobbied politicians to keep schools closed…and that is why the kids are behind
Wake up Scott. Go actually talk to people that aren’t in your super rich elite bubble.
As an adult that is dyslexic one of my concerns is how students with learning disabilities will be left even more behind as a result of Covid. Especially in state that don’t put the economic resources that are needed in there state Education systems
Do you really think being behind will effect GDP? I thought we are doing away with grades,SAT,ACT, any measure of accomplishment so we can just all feel cozy with UBI.
Great read, Scott. I too miss my kids being young and had similar experiences when I told them to “prepare in order to be better at life, …yada, yada.” This was great until it wasn’t. Now, anytime I offer up advice, they roll their eyes and visibly tune out. They’re entering their early 20s now, and of course, they know everything.
On another note I notice a major difference from today’s generation and kids from my time growing up (70’s, 80’s). Men were men and women were women. This is not quite so anymore. For instance, many young men I’ve come across these days are emotional wrecks; total pushovers who can’t handle stress and have no interest in sports or taking better care of their bodies. I can’t remember the last time I saw a pick up game of street hockey. (Those were the days, …sigh) Young women are different too. They’re stronger, more active, and better leaders. I say ‘bravo’ to these ladies, but something is happening to boys. (Video games, perhaps?). Anyway, thanks again.
Funniest line I have read in weeks, “A feeling of reward and confidence visibly washes over him, and he lurches to hug me, only he evades my embrace, runs into his older brother’s room, hits him in the face, and screams “nobody likes you!” Everyone celebrates in their own way.” Indeed.
“We’ve lost young men in the shuffle, made them objects of our political arguments and targets of our algorithms”
Pot calling the kettle black here. It’s rare to go a newsletter without a demoralizing shot being taken at men, and yet even now it’s framed as being advantageous for men as they have ‘better non-college options’ (i.e. physically demanding and dangerous work) than women. If framing this as men wisely avoiding college were true then you would see the income and wealth gap between genders be maintained – but when looking at data for individuals in their 20s women actually outearn men, to go along with their superior education, better longterm physical health, and lower suicide rates. This is a trend that will no doubt continue as higher education for a multitude of reasons is more attractive of an option to women as is men.
Why pay a university $30,000 a year to be lectured on all the advantages you have and how you are responsible for the evils of the world? For once can we turn off the progressive ‘who has it worse’ race to the bottom and just admit that in many aspects of life women have it hard, but in others men can have it just as hard too?
true
I too am sick to death of all the man bashing that I see going on. Just the other day on LinkedIn I saw yet another post where a woman was complaining about a male coworker she had who knows how many years ago. It’s just ridiculous.
🎻
Check out Synthesis! The founders built a school for Elon Musk’s kids and have built a STEM, teamwork, and problem solving curriculum for children aged 7-14. They love the challenges because it looks and feels like a game.
https://www.synthesis.is/
You write: “In one sector, however, everything is moving slower. Education. Our elementary school kids are learning less, and some are nearly a full school year behind where they would have been pre-pandemic.”
I say, “Uncle” or, more to the point, “piffle”. You have loaded this sentence with several assumptions that, by observation, are not interchangeable and therefore not equivalent. If the ‘school-and-curriculum’ playbook is the only measurement of learning then your statement is reasonably correct. But I challenge you to prove that children are “learning less” because you’re only considering this issue through a schooling lens. I’m a career, innovative educator, now completing my PhD on ‘the nature of learning experiences’ among youth, and I can confirm what every parent certainly knows: kids’ learning greatly exceeds the conventions of schooling. In our pandemic times, education has largely failed to inquire what kids ARE learning, and only presumes learning deficits rule because that’s the only criteria of investigation. Kids of all ages I’m in contact with have learned tremendous amounts about virology, epidemiology, emergency response, public health care, global geography, politics, political in-fighting, self-care, etc. etc. Surely this is equally important to rote-learning of binomial equations, Krebs cycle, crafting of Magna Carta, the ‘canon’ … But if educators don’t acknowledge and validate it then shame on us. And if educators only follow the ‘school-and-curriculum’ playbook then kids – who can easily discern how that playbook is contrived – will turn it off even more. Now is the time for educators and education to be responsive to the current situation. Check the playbook, be flexible, roll with the knowledge unfolding. Crisis = Opportunity, yes? Maybe you’ve even said that! – Michael Maser, Simon Fraser Uni.
Point taken indeed!
I have been actively defending 4 members of our local Scottsdale School Board who are targets of a recall petion campaign despite being elected only 8 months ago. They ruled to implement a mask mandate in our school district in a very red state. So the crazies are coming after them hard. Thank you for this analysis. It will help me in my efforts to get people to decline to sign the recall petitions.
Over all I believe was spot on. As a second career teacher who teaches interim assignments now since retiring, I see things from a different. We don’t need for everyone to attend college in todays job market.
The timing of this couldn’t be more perfect. My wife, a teacher, and I were just having this conversation last night. How are we going to address this? It seems it has *always* been about education… but what’ll we do when nobody wants to teach anymore?
Big dawg. I love your newsletter. Please keep turning out the hits…
In addition, the curriculum of public school desperately needs overhaul. Brilliant marketing guy and long-time critic of the current system, Seth Godin, just posted his proposed changes yesterday: https://seths.blog/2021/09/the-modern-curriculum/
Ante up Scott .. cost is a barrier – make a real difference reduce the cost of your seminars ..,
Scott, any reflections on intellectual curiosity of your students? I graduated last year with a Masters of Public Affairs from a top-ranked school. My father did not graduate high school. I found myself constantly being the only one asking questions. I wanted to take advantage of being around top people. Many (not all) of my fellow classmates seemed to just want to ‘learn a model’ to reproduce not *how* or *why*. Thoughts?
More advocacy (and less stigma) for community colleges, whether for trade professions or a more affordable first two years, would help. They are all about access.
Why doesn’t Scott Galloway address the issue of school choice beyond just homeschooling? A Competitive environment for k-12 student dollars should improve the educational opportunity for the families who need the most help. The US spends as much as almost any country in the world as in line with the GDP. So more money is unlikely to help. https://1.bp.blogspot.com/–BY6WhtBeO8/Ww63GUrwAGI/AAAAAAAAI7U/gyp9ZtTEPn83XqPzO4M2HyQH5F4XpNRNgCLcBGAs/s1600/education%2B1.jpg
If a significant percentage – a maximum of 28% – of teachers are likely to retire earlier than expected, how is that consistent with the claim that they are also underpaid?
Um, a second career? With higher pay and lower stress? Note that he said “retire or leave the profession earlier than expected.”
Does the teachers being “underpaid” consider that if the avg 22 yr old college graduate teaches for 30 years and retires with a pension of 80% of their ~$80K salary, that from ages 52-85 they will receive a $2.1M pension from the government? With, by the way, some of the best health benefits in the world? To be clear, they are being paid not to work for more years than they worked. I love public schools and my sons have all had great educations at them, but let’s stop calling teachers underpaid when not one of them has to worry about the market crashing for their entire retirement!
WELL said. While I readily admit that teaching is not a job that appeals to me, the pay and benefits do look enticing.
100% agree! Have to look at it holistically. Private sector jobs don’t have a guaranteed pension nowadays- just the good old DC plans that we fund ourselves. Also with the adjustment of 3months off, their salaries are right on par with private sector – dare I say along with much less stress and cutthroat competition. I have two kids in public schools and while some teachers have impressed me, others are there to collect a paycheck with sub-par effort.
Came here to say hi. “hi”
Speak truth to power and address the root causes, Scott. Teachers unions have destroyed public schools. They colluded with the CDC and Democrats to keep schools closed and students masked, which will have deleterious long-term effects especially in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. They are also driving a Cultural Revolution by infusing curriculums with woke “anti-racism”, indoctrinating children to view everything through race, gender, sexuality, and class – the opposite of Martin Luther King Jr’s I have a Dream speech. Meanwhile they neglect basic math, reading, and writing as we fall further behind the world. China laughs at us and our senile president. Schools in Europe have been open in person without masks, following the science while balancing risk/reward that young healthy people are not at risk and need to see each other’s faces to develop. The Democrat dominated teachers unions are harming children to seize power – all of this is intentional to keep people divided, dumb, fearful, and dependent on more government.
It’s important to point out that over 70% of adults in Europe are vaccinated while the US is still lingering around 54%. Also, the entire EU is not going back to school maskless. Some countries are still requiring masks. I agree that not having in person schooling more negatively affects “socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.” So does COVID. Why do you think it is that these communities are affected in this way? Why are these communities socioeconomically disadvantaged? It’s important to teach these things so we can understand and chip away at the previous hundreds of years of indoctrination that you so willingly accept. Do you disagree that everything is affected by race, gender and class? Perhaps we should instead be teaching kids how to clean their rose colored glasses or manufacture boot straps?
Department of education was created in 1979. All of your stats show decline since 1980. Govt bureaucracy kills everything.
1867, actually. But why let facts get in the way of your ideology?
Right on, historian. Screw the willfully ignorant. What happened in 1980 to start the mentioned decline? Reagan was elected…
‘What happened in 1980 to start the mentioned decline? Reagan was elected…’
To the left, history didn’t start until Reagan. No destruction of the family, now welfare state, no Great Society, no Baltimore. All Ronnys fault. Very convenient and typical of the left.