re: Controversial Opinion - Teachers don’t deserve pay raises

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Mom retired after 30 years with the school system. Pretty sure I have a great idea of how it works. Both of my SILs are also in the school system. Ones a vice principal and the other is a teachers aide.

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None of them taught you how to use an apostrophe. You’re right, maybe teachers are overpaid.

The problem with the teaching profession is the union which does not allow bad teachers to be fired. So the good ones get grouped in with the bad ones and hence taxpayers are against them.

Also, if a teacher wanted more pay they could go to private schools but they’d have to give up all the benefits which made the public job attractive. In my town the 3 private schools all have teachers who retired from the public schools, thus getting their pensions, and now can take a better job where only good teachers are hired. People will gladly pay for their kids to be educated by older teachers who actually have to perform or they will be fired. I’ve seen several teachers fired in the private school I sent my kids too because they stopped preparing, They didn’t have a union to pressure the head of the school.

How timely. My 8th grader's teachers turn to YouTube multiple times a day to teach concepts they should be able to articulate, and it's all over the country.

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YouTube has quietly become the backbone of US classrooms
School-issued devices and Google accounts have turned the video platform into a default teaching tool

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Teachers use it to read to a class, teach first graders to draw, or fill the last few minutes before dismissal. But the platform was never designed to be the primary gatekeeper of what children watch during the school day.

Parents who gain access to usage logs can see just how much time their children spend inside YouTube's recommendation engine on school-issued devices. In Wichita, Kan., one seventh grader watched more than 13,000 videos on his school account from December 2024 through February 2025, according to data his mother, My Warren, obtained. His feed was filled with Shorts and clips about guns, "headshots," in which children realistically pretend to be killed, and sexually explicit jokes.

These stories are unfolding amid a broader technological shift. More than 88% of public schools now run one-to-one device programs, and Chromebooks alone account for roughly 60% of the K – 12 mobile market.

By 2019, internal exchanges concluded that "the YouTube experience in K – 12 schools is broken," citing inappropriate content, advertising, and weak controls. The company's Restricted Mode, intended to filter out adult material, was described as under-resourced and "trivially easy for students to bypass."

School districts have run into those same limitations. Many have tried to block YouTube, only to watch students route around filters by logging out of managed accounts or sharing links in Google Slides and Docs.

YouTube argues that administrators, not algorithms, are responsible for what students see.

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I think teachers are different than other govt employees. In many areas they are underpaid if you look at what bloated admin staff make, who have no impact on students.

Now other government employees are all overpaid and over employed. Cut 50% in all areas of govt and no one would notice except taxpayer wallets

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Teachers make on average 60k a year.

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Sucks to suck.

I make $94k/year in Alabama at a public school. Yes, I work around 190 days a year and typically work 8am-3:30pm. I do not stay late. I get all of my work completed during my two planning periods. I do some ongoing personal education and planning when I feel like it during the summer, but I’m mostly present at home with my kids. I have never once thought about health insurance outside of my $30 copays and when I have to click some buttons during open enrollment. I can retire with full pension and a great insurance plan at 25 years. In Alabama, we pay into social security.

I’m not ever going to argue against pay increases for myself, just like you all wouldn’t either no matter the profession. I do think there are a lot of teachers who have worked the same job at the same shite school system with just a bachelor’s degree slowly working their way up the pay scale. These are the teachers who complain all the time, have no idea how to manage a classroom, and believe they are God’s gift to society. That’s why they make around $55k/year forever and ever.

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Good teachers are hard to find

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They wouldn’t be if we could pay good teachers more than the shitty ones. You know, like most other jobs?

But teachers don’t want that

I mean everyone deserves raises eventually to keep up with inflation and if they stay at a job for a long time and have good performance.

But I agree that many teachers ask for too much and expect to be put on a pedestal for their profession. Don’t get me wrong it’s an honorable profession but also should be like any other job, you get rewarded for good performance and long tenure. Just being a teacher shouldn’t warrant a raise across the board.

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They wouldn’t be if we could pay good teachers more than the shitty ones. You know, like most other jobs? But teachers don’t want that

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We got a nice bonus 1 year. The district only gave it to teachers who showed up for work and didn’t use all of their sick days. In other words the teachers who showed up for work 95% of the time. I thought there was going to be a riot over that, lol. I understand people who have serious medical conditions. That’s not who was complaining.

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It’s apparent that random posters on here know more about the job than I do, despite my years of experience.

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Teachers recieve a pension. Its based on years of services and funds TYPICALLY go into a TRS. When you retire they take the 5 years of highest earning and determine BY THE YEARS OF SERVICE AND ACCOUNT GROWTH, what your payment is accordingly. At 30 years, my mom recieves a check every month roughly 75% of what she made her last 5 years.


Glad I could explain that since you refused for whatever reason.

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You get 100% of your salary for life after 25 years of service?

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100% of your pension =/= to 100% of salary and you know thats what he means. Name any proffesion currently which has a 100% pension.