Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education

Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. A 13 reflects the split you live: the generative half of your prep — leveled passages, exit tickets, IEP-adjacent accommodation language, standards-aligned unit maps, Friday newsletters — is genuinely being drafted by a model now, while teaching a child to decode CVC words, running a small group where one kid is crying and another is under the table, and reading the room during a fire drill do not decompose into prompts.

Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. 15 puts you above nurses' aides in a controlled ward and below a lineman: the room is uncontrolled — playground duty, lunchroom, bathroom escorts, a vomit incident before 9am, physically redirecting a bolting student — but it's still an indoor space you know, with a floor plan and a door.

Licensed human required and personally liable. 13 is state licensure plus mandated-reporter statute plus in loco parentis custody, which legally requires a certified adult present for the instructional day; it's not 18 because the liability mostly runs through the district's insurance and your union contract rather than landing on you personally the way it does on a physician's malpractice policy.

The human relationship is the product. 18 because the second-grader who will read for you and not for a substitute is the entire mechanism of the job — parents choose schools by teacher reputation, and a year of attachment to one adult is what makes the academic gains happen, which is why long-term-sub coverage measurably underperforms.

Meaningful discretion. 13 sits where it does because you make consequential unscripted calls daily — whether that bruise is a DCF call, whether to hold a child at Tier 2 or refer for evaluation, how to seat and pair a class — but curriculum pacing, adopted reading programs, and state testing windows are handed to you, so the frame is set by someone else.