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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dire Bare" data-source="post: 8488311" data-attributes="member: 18182">It's not just California. There's been a growing teacher shortage nation-wide for years, kicked into overdrive by the pandemic. Urban, rural, and everywhere in between. How much of a shortage depends on your region and the specific type of teacher (we've had a shortage of STEM teachers for a long time now). More teachers are leaving the profession than ever before, less folks are entering . . . .Teacher pay varies widely between states, even between districts, due to the uneven way we fund our schools. There are districts out there that pay teachers a living wage, even a comfortable wage, but very few pay a competitive wage. And many pay poverty wages for professionals with a great degree of expertise, education, and responsibility.Teaching isn't the only under-compensated profession, of course. But to wave off that under-compensation by comparing teachers to unskilled labor . . . . We're in the midst of the "Great Resignation" for all types of labor, skilled and unskilled, most of us SHOULD be paid more . . . and we should also be willing to pay higher taxes so that our public servants can be paid fairly and competitively, at least so that we can attract and retain quality folks in those positions.Whew! Sorry . . . . can you guess what I do for a living?EDIT: I keep forgetting we're not all American here on EN World . . . . . Canada has a lot of similarities with the US in how the education profession is structured, but there are also significant differences. I'm not overly familiar with Canadian public ed . . . . other than their unions seem to be stronger than teacher unions in the US. Teaching outside of North America . . . . no idea, other than I hear similar complaints from my colleagues in the U.K.</blockquote>

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