Comparing Teaching in the US vs Other Countries

This piece is about an education graduate named Anna. She recently received her teaching degree from a US institution. Sophia can be observed here in contrast, as she is from Finland, and she also recently received her teaching degree from college.

Sophia and Anna both would like to teach in middle schools. But as it turns out, there's a significant probability that their experiences will be remarkably dissimilar. Anna is twice as likely to permanently stop teaching as Sophia, since they are so dissimilar. It's problematic because of it.

As more kids enroll in public schools, fewer newly qualified teachers are available to educate them. A severe lack of teachers’ alerts regarding the turnover of teachers. The lack of teachers in Colorado, for example, is a catastrophe, according to educators. Why does Sophia continue to do so while Anna leaves?

How can the United States maintain a higher percentage of teachers in the classroom? In the US, teachers work for about nine and a half hours each day. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD for short, reports that teachers in other nations often work 1.5 hours more each day than Americans. Economic experts frequently contrast this group of largely developed nations.

Compared to their counterparts in Finland, Sweden, and Israel, teachers in the US put in more than two and a half hours more work each day. New Zealand, Singapore, and the UK are a few nations that have similar teacher work schedules to those in the US. Although teaching hours are far shorter in all of these nations, for instance, teachers in Japan put in about two hours more work each day than their American counterparts.

In America, teachers work nine and a quarter hours a day, yet only five and a half of those hours are spent actually teaching. That is much more than teachers in New Zealand, the UK, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore and above the average for the OECD. These nations give teachers additional time for preparation, grading, and inter-teacher cooperation.

So, have the results improved as a result of all those extra teaching hours? On the PISA exam, which measures students' reading, science, and math skills at the age of 15, students in the US score somewhat higher than the OECD average. However, while they have significantly fewer instruction hours than pupils in nations like Singapore, South Korea, Finland, and Japan, they do worse than those children.

Sophia teaches an hour and a half less per day than Anna, if we were to peer inside their respective classrooms in the US and Finland. Additionally, Anna puts in more hours planning courses, grading assignments, and organizing extracurricular activities. However, Anna may not always receive a raise as a result of her additional work. In contrast, Sofia makes about 98 cents for every $1 that other college-educated Finns make.

Comparable countries' salary ratios for college graduates and instructors are comparable to this one. Anna and other middle school teachers in America, however, only get around 65 cents for every dollar that their college-educated counterparts do. We still spend more per student than practically every other rich country, as US politicians never get tired of pointing out, according to my calculations. By state, however, this number fluctuates considerably. The amount spent on each student in New York is twice what it is in California. Alaska spends twice as much as Mississippi, but at a lower rate.

Furthermore, compared to schools in other nations, American schools typically spend a lot more money on security and other non-teaching expenses. There are also several nations that spend more on education than the US does when you compare the proportion of each nation's national wealth, or GDP, that goes toward education. Additionally, Sofia and Anna differ in one more way. Two out of every three Finnish teachers respond positively when asked about the worth of teachers in their nation. A mere third of American instructors, though, are in agreement. There are many reasons why teachers quit their jobs, like Anna did, but if the US wants to retain more of them, we might want to borrow some ideas from Finland.