Thread

Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?

148 points · 332 comments · obscurette

ValueTheory · 1790606717 · focus · HN ↗
"The parents of the student who assaulted me sued the district, claiming it had failed to prevent the incident. Suddenly, I found myself on phone calls with administrators and attorneys questioning whether I had done enough to stop the assault."
This is the root of the problem. Of course, civil lawsuits are important to correct actual wrongs, but school districts seem to be so cowardly in the face of bad lawsuits that they are willing to throw teachers under the bus to avoid them.
1. toomuchtodo · 1790606824 · focus · HN ↗
  Like management and shareholders aligned against workers, parents and administrators are aligned against teachers, who are underpaid, under resourced, and being asked to deliver far beyond what they can accomplish on their own. I recommend being a teacher to no one, and will help any teacher who wants out into a better career or industry.
  From a systems failure perspective, they are where the forces from system failure are being directed. Teachers cannot fix poor parenting.
  (last I checked ~2 years ago, ~1600 school districts across 24 states in the US are on 4 day weeks to attempt to retain teachers)
  Schools across the U.S. are trying a 4-day week. Why? To retain teachers - <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the-u-s-are-trying-a-4-day-week-why-to-retain-teachers" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the... - November 8th, 2023
  Teachers are calling it quits amid rising school violence, burnout and stagnating salaries - <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/31/us/teachers-quitting-shortage-stress-burnout-dg/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/31/us/teachers-quitting-shortage... - May 31st, 2023
  Four day school week? In rural Missouri, more districts see it as a way to recruit teachers - <a href="https://www.kcur.org/education/2022-06-11/four-day-school-week-in-rural-missouri-more-districts-see-it-as-a-way-to-recruit-teachers" rel="nofollow">https://www.kcur.org/education/2022-06-11/four-day-school-we... - June 11th, 2022
  1. nailer · 1790607011 · focus · HN ↗
    > teachers, who are underpaid, under resourced, and being asked to deliver far beyond what they can accomplish on their own
    Look at the recent Nicole Hannah Jones article on regretting her daughters education choices. The 'bad' school with the disruptive children had 52K of funding per student. Something is up but I'm not sure it's underfunding.
    [deleted] · 1790607102 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    nemomarx · 1790607177 · focus · HN ↗
    How much of that goes to the teacher? It seems to be soaked up by administration.
    ericmay · 1790607386 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, what does the administration do? What programs does it have to manage? How are administrators paid compared to teachers?
    zdragnar · 1790607394 · focus · HN ↗
    The teachers who didn't grade homework and passed students who hadn't actually learned anything? They're utterly powerless and more funding won't help them. The schools need to radically change their approach to education, top to bottom.
    mrguyorama · 1790608711 · focus · HN ↗
    Those teachers wanted to fail the kids, but administration told them they couldn't.
    Because of changes that mostly started with No Child Left Behind, which tried to not leave children behind by not letting them be held back when they didn't learn!
    Why are kids suddenly so uneducated? Well what happened roughly one 18 year long education timespan ago? No Child Left Behind.
    zdragnar · 1790610059 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm calling BS here. The article on NHJ would have had the failure rate around 50% or higher based on how poorly the students performed. The school literally cannot accommodate so many students failing a grade level and being held back.
    Further, no child left behind punished schools based on standardized test scores, not the artificially inflated grades the students were getting.
    Instead, they are getting 52k per pupil to not even grade homework? That's definitely not a consequence of no child left behind.
    TitaRusell · 1790617430 · focus · HN ↗
    Schools are for education. They are not for raising kids. That is the parents job.
    If the home situation is fucked up it doesn't matter how much money you throw at the schools.
    alwaysthiserror · 1790615093 · focus · HN ↗
    > 52K of funding per student
    This gets kinda tricky to analyze, and especially hard to compare to other countries, which may have very different ways of accounting for things.
    That money goes to:
    1) Salaries for school administrators.
    2) Salaries for teachers.
    3) Salaries for office support staff (e.g. secretaries)
    4) Depending on how the accounting is done, that may include a fraction of the salaries of district admin (super and assistant superintendents, and Nb there can be several of the latter, even in smallish districts) and their office support staff.
    5) Facilities construction and renovation, and/or servicing debt on bonds for past facilities construction and renovation.
    6) Property and building maintenance. Mowing, fixing potholes and re-painting lines in parking lots, roof leaks, playground maintenance, whatever.
    7) Transportation for students (e.g. busses). This can get pretty expensive in sparsely-populated areas.
    8) Extracurriculars, including supplemental pay for coaches and sponsors, and maybe an equipment budget.
    9) Supplies for "specials" classes, including stuff like band instruments and maintenance of those instruments (lots of places you bring your own, but that's not true for all instruments, often the really big ones, especially, will be school-provided) and art supplies and all that.
    10) Electronics and computer services. Powerschool licenses, laptops, "smart" projectors, all that stuff.
    11) Special educators and paraprofessionals who will have much smaller student-counts they're responsible for than classroom teachers. This can get as low-count as a dedicated para for a single student, following around and helping them all day.
    12) ESOL services. Districts with lots of students speaking English as a second language (if at all...) bear higher costs.
    13) Special services for kids who can't fit into the mold of ordinary school. This can look like a district budget paying for transportation to and from a fairly distant magnet or private school, which school will probably cost a lot more than ordinary public schools because they'll have far lower student-to-staff ratios.
    14) School lunches, and maybe breakfasts. The food, the staff to serve it, health code compliance and appliance maintenance, all that. IDK if the spending figure would include money students put into accounts for their kids to use for this purpose, but lunches are often subsidized to at least some degree, if not 100%.
    15) Other support staff and services (nurses, counselors and psychologists, librarians, janitors)
    16) Other supplies. Books, paper, toner, et c.
    (and probably more stuff I'm forgetting about)
    The result is that actual spending for a given student, if we restricted it to only the things they're directly benefiting from, can be a ton lower than average per-student spending. Meanwhile, some students soak up well over $100k in spending per year, all on their own.
    Also, it's easy to pick out some of the above that might plausibly not count as part of the school's budget, in, say, another country that simply made different choices about what budget each thing belongs in, or might just naturally have far lower costs due to geography or demography or whatever.
    TL;DR average spending per-student doesn't tell you a lot on its own, and you definitely can't usefully compare one school to another based on such a figure without gathering a lot more context.
    underlipton · 1791060409 · focus · HN ↗
    Also doesn't capture parental spend in places where the per-student cost is "lower". The district only spends $nK, but then the parents add in private tutoring, study materials like books and computer programs/subscriptions, etc. Even something as basic as the monetary value of "supervision during study", where another child is on their own because both parents have to work just to afford rent and food.
  2. koolba · 1790607399 · focus · HN ↗
    > Like management and shareholders aligned against workers, parents and administrators are aligned against teachers, who are underpaid, under resourced, and being asked to deliver far beyond what they can accomplish on their own.
    Teachers are not underpaid. We live in a free market society and they have extensive collective bargaining agreements. If anything, they’re overpaid vs a totally free market.
    Those who can and want to use those same talents in a different progression are free to do so. Nobody is forced into the progression (okay maybe grad students but that’s something else…).
    > I recommend being a teacher to no one, and will help any teacher who wants out into a better career or industry.
    People who genuinely want to teach should be teachers. Just as people who genuinely want to cure the ill should be doctors.
    [deleted] · 1790607453 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    nl · 1790607811 · focus · HN ↗
    I think you need to do some reading on externalities and how they lead to misallocation of resources in a free market.
    orangedog · 1790608082 · focus · HN ↗
    Teachers in my state are lucky to crack $75,000 salary after 10 years. Yes, they are underpaid.
    wahern · 1790609614 · focus · HN ↗
    Almost all states offer pensions, or hybrid pensions and direct contribution plans. You have to add 1/3-1/2 or more (especially for states with retirement health plans) to yearly salary to appreciate real compensation.
    orangedog · 1790611713 · focus · HN ↗
    In my state the pension plan is pretty mediocre, it does not make up for the low pay.
    WarmWash · 1790610734 · focus · HN ↗
    I happen to have a friend group that has a few teachers in it.
    Most teachers have 14-16 weeks a year off. That alone is a tough counter argument to surmount. In a few of our local districts, on average teachers are making $130k/yr if you scaled their pay to a normal 48 week career schedule. This is on top of gangbusters benefits.
    Beyond that, once you get a few years into it and have your scaffolding built, you can kinda just cruise control for the rest of your career with only minor changes.
    Yes, the job is challenging and stressful, but lowkey most $130k/yr jobs are.
    The real devotion of teaching is being willing to have so much unproductive time which would be filled in a different higher paying career.
    orangedog · 1790611664 · focus · HN ↗
    it's very dependent on state and most states are underpaid even including getting summers off. The benefits aren't very good in my state and we're one of the better paying states in the region.
    There are some huge outliers like California but most states teachers are just treading water. I know this in my state because I was trying to get accredited earlier this year.
    phatfish · 1790613484 · focus · HN ↗
    14-16 weeks off a year is no compensation for dealing with little shits 5 days a week (and their parents), while attempting to teach the minority that want to learn.
    esseph · 1790615108 · focus · HN ↗
    > Most teachers have 14-16 weeks a year off. That alone is a tough counter argument to surmount.
    Teachers in my district take extra work for the district doing maintenance and tutoring and drive doordash to pay their bills during that time.
    koolba · 1790615518 · focus · HN ↗
    Why do you claim they are underpaid?
    If there’s plenty of people willing to do the job, that’s simple supply and demand.
    “I think educators should be paid more” or “I want us to pay them more” does not mean they’re underpaid.
    alwaysthiserror · 1790616881 · focus · HN ↗
    1) There aren't plenty. It's hitting the lowest-paying and least-otherwise-desirable areas first, but there's an ongoing staffing crisis that's been worsening for years. Enrollment in teaching programs has plummeted.
    2) People often talk about wanting the median teacher quality to be higher, and to be able to fire more bad teachers. A nigh-necessary early step toward addressing that complaint is to increase pay. A major implicit component of such complaints is that supply of good teachers is too low, suggesting we need to raise wages.
    koolba · 1790617139 · focus · HN ↗
    > A major implicit component of such complaints is that supply of good teachers is too low, suggesting we need to raise wages.
    This would be a fine argument if we could somehow align incentives, fire low performing teachers, and rate them retroactively based upon the outcomes of their respective students.
    alwaysthiserror · 1790619070 · focus · HN ↗
    > fire low performing teachers
    Why can't we fire them? The typical answer is "unions" but a bunch of states de facto don't have teachers' unions (as far as unions with any ability to collectively bargain or meaningfully protect teachers from firing), and still have to retain all but the very worst teachers... because the supply of good teachers is too low. These same states tend to have poor educational outcomes, further suggesting that ability to fire, on its own, isn't helping much.
    > rate them retroactively based upon the outcomes of their respective students.
    This, unfortunately, turns out to be a really hard problem. It's been sincerely attempted in a bunch of ways and they've all turned out to suck, is the short history of the notion.
    esseph · 1790615028 · focus · HN ↗
    > Teachers are not underpaid.
    A teacher with 20yr of experience in my district makes $5,000-$10,000 less than the state median wage.
    And their retirement actually sucks.
  3. apefulsin · 1790607406 · focus · HN ↗
    In many cases (not this one) parents are also the scapegoat of system failure. This occurs in debates about age verification. People say "why can't parents just parent" like it's a thought-ending cliche.
    toomuchtodo · 1790607691 · focus · HN ↗
    > In many cases (not this one) parents are also the scapegoat of system failure. This occurs in debates about age verification. People say "why can't parents just parent" like it's a thought-ending cliche.
    ~40 percent of pregnancies annually are unintended in the US (per the Guttmacher Institute), so lots of folks parenting who didn't want to or didn't intend to parent. As unintended pregnancies are driven down over time (via education and contraceptives), this should reduce aggregate load off the system of people who do not want to or cannot parent effectively. We avoid, to the best of our ability, people who don't want kids having them, we get parents to success to the best of our ability with the kids that are here today (because there is no other option). We can predict future demand for systems needed to support children based on the US projected fertility rate curve (US total fertility rate stands at ~1.58 as of this comment, and will continue to trend down into the future: <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool?demographyCountry=USA" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool?demogr...).
    Teen birth rates hit another historical low in 2025, CDC says - <a href="https://www.npr.org/2026/04/09/nx-s1-5777587/teen-birth-rates-hit-another-historical-low-2025-cdc" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2026/04/09/nx-s1-5777587/teen-birth-rate... - April 9th, 2026
    > There are approximately 7.3 million standalone single mothers and about 15.7 million single-mother family households in the United States, according to recent U.S. Census Bureau and demographic data tracking. Roughly 23% of children under 18 in the U.S. live with a single mother.
    <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-economic-status-of-single-mothers/" rel="nofollow">https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-economic-status...
    > More than 3 million college students are raising kids. Most won’t graduate
    <a href="https://fortune.com/2026/06/28/student-parents-workforce-talent-shortage-child-care-okebugwu/" rel="nofollow">https://fortune.com/2026/06/28/student-parents-workforce-tal... | <a href="https://archive.today/NZQRZ" rel="nofollow">https://archive.today/NZQRZ | <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48709130">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48709130 (0 comments)
    > The places with the most single parents tend to be, to put it bluntly, struggling. The strongest predictors of single parenthood are high poverty rates and high shares of the population receiving government assistance." There are ~13.6M single parents in the U.S. raising over 21M children. This means single parents head roughly one in three households and approximately 34% of all U.S. children live in a single-parent family.
    <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/24/kindergarten-cop-single-parent-capital/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/24/kindergar... | <a href="https://archive.today/Fm1nG" rel="nofollow">https://archive.today/Fm1nG | <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42867716">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42867716 (1 comment)
    > Lastly, many other caregivers assume primary caregiving responsibility when parents cannot, thus acting as a critical safety net for children. In recent years, there has been a notable increase in such individuals taking on caregiving responsibilities for children, with approximately 2.4 million children being raised by grandparents, other relatives, or family friends, without their biological parent(s) in the household.
    Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on the Mental Health & Well-Being of Parents - <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/parents-under-pressure.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/parents-under-pressu... - 2024
    <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-american-households-have-changed-over-time/" rel="nofollow">https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-american-households-hav... (~60% of US households consist of adults with no children in them)
    (think in systems, and overlay this issue with how many K-12 schools are closing across the US every year due to structural demographics and total fertility rate decline)
    Shrinking student populations cause spike in public school closures across U.S: Limited funds and low enrollment forced districts to close more than 1,000 schools in 2025-26 - <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/07/20/school-closures-rising-across-us-pools-students-funds-shrink/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/07/20/school-c... | <a href="https://archive.today/4r4uo" rel="nofollow">https://archive.today/4r4uo - July 20th, 2026 ("We call it the big shrink," said Marguerite Roza, who tracks school funding as director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab. “Enrollment at public schools is declining, partly because there are fewer kids in the U.S.")
    > Nationally, federal projections indicate public school enrollment has already started to decline from its peak in 2019 and will continue to do so in coming years. From 2019 to 2031, schools were projected to lose nearly 4 million students. And those estimates were made before the Trump administration made changes to sharply curb immigration, further reducing the number of kids at some schools.
    <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/01/08/nx-s1-5246200/demographic-cliff-fewer-college-students-mean-fewer-graduates" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2025/01/08/nx-s1-5246200/demographic-cli...
    (TLDR pay teachers a living wage, get class ratios to whatever the science says is best before diminishing returns to optimize for student success, and continue solving for avoiding unwanted children with education and contraceptives; k-12 schools, as well as colleges [<a href="https://college-cuts.com/" rel="nofollow">https://college-cuts.com/], will continue to close well into the future due to structural demographics, optimize accordingly)
    atmavatar · 1790609092 · focus · HN ↗
    Whose responsibility is a kid's behavior if not his/her parents'?
    Being a parent is a big responsibility, and (barring rare exceptions) you don't become one unintentionally.
    Unfortunately, I see plenty of people out in the wild who act like their kids' behavior is none of their business. There was a time when parents unable to control their children would be asked to leave public establishments, but now, everyone is supposed to stand by impotently, and anyone who dares speak up is accosted by the bad parent(s).
    hyperlinerapp · 1790612535 · focus · HN ↗
    Long are the days when if a kid did something wrong, he would get a whooping from the teacher and then at home from a parent.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.