Is this maybe the problem to address, then?

Reading this from outeide the US, it's bizarre to me that people don't want a professional, trained teacher who can do a better job than they could.

School is local in the US, so there’s no point in generalizing when discussing things like teacher salary.

That aside, a fantastic highly trained teacher with 30 students, isn’t likely to outperform a mediocre teacher devoting their full time to 1 or 2.

I wasn’t homeschooled myself but I did help my homeschooled younger (by 20 years) sister with math. If I had the time to devote 30 hours a week or so I’m fairly confident I could outperform even the best teacher teaching my own kids—-assuming they had 20+ full time students.

> there’s no point in generalizing when discussing things like teacher salary.

I bet there isn’t a single US public school district where teacher pay keeps pace with minimum wage when divided by the number of hours spent working.

That’s completely wrong. The state with the absolute lowest average teacher salary is Mississippi. Average salary is $48k. Assuming 12 hour days for 190 days a year, that’s about 3x minimum wage.

There are many districts with much higher averages. Just one example. In a relatively low cost of living state, Fulton county GA—the county Atlanta is in—the starting salary is $56k, and $62k with a masters. It goes up every year from there.

Why would you assume 190 days? However you are correct - minimum wage is WAY less than I assumed in the south (despite living there!)

Also: $62k/yr for a job requiring a masters degree is utterly criminal.

Because that’s the number of days teachers are required to work in Georgia and many other states. School is 180 days and then they have 2 weeks worth of teacher work days etc..

This has nothing to do with the south. Take the highest minimum wage in the country, Washington D.C., at $17 an hour.

The state with the lowest paid teachers pay more than that even assuming 12 hour days.

A masters degree isn’t required, you just start out making a few thousand a year more if you have one. Each year the gap grows though so that it becomes more and more worth it.

Also $62k a year is the starting salary for a teacher with no experience, but it’s only slightly lower than the median salary for anyone with a masters degree.

Also in many states teachers get defined benefit pensions and other benefits which are far better than what nearly anyone in the private sector gets. In Georgia, teachers can retire with their full pension after only 30 years. I know many teachers who retire in their early 50s. 10 years before nearly anyone else.

Teaching is a hard job and they probably are underpaid for the value the provide, but this misconception about teachers making below minimum wage and Jen accounting for hours worked is just wrong. Also I know a ton of teachers and most of them aren’t working more than 45-50 hours a week during the school year after their first year or 2.

The problem is you’re on HN, which probably means you’re quite intelligent.

A lot of parents that homeschool aren’t, and I sure as hell wouldn’t trust them to teach my kid anything past grade 4.

There’s plenty of teachers who I wouldn’t trust to teach any kid past 4th grade as well. I’m glad that public education exists, but I’m also glad there’s an opt out mechanism for people who don’t feel it’s working.

There will obviously be failures , but I don’t think it’s that hard for an average parent teaching 1-4 kids to outperform a trained teacher with 30.