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Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 12, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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This is my impression as well. I attended a well-funded public high school in the US where teachers made roughly what OP is quoting (100k-180k depending on seniority IIRC). A minority (maybe 20%?) of the teachers I encountered stood out noticeably from the kind of teaching quality I'd encountered before that point, i.e. "you would probably have trouble attracting this level of human capital with e.g. a 60k salary, all else being equal," and at least some of them were clearly not in it for the money. A lot of the others were phoning it in or actively bad in ways you would expect to encounter at schools with more normal salaries. I think most of them were coasting on the median quality of the students, which was pretty high. It's really hard for me to confidently say that attending that school (vs one closer to the median) had a significant positive impact on my education or the direction of my life. I definitely wouldn't use my experience to justify the claim "paying teachers 120k instead of 60k is usually worth it on the margin."