[geeks] One of the things I love about America

[Gregory Leblanc]

On Thu, 2002-05-02 at 09:36, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 07:29:49AM -0700, Peter L. Wargo wrote:
> 
> > I'm no big fan of unions, but my dad was a teacher for 32 years, and the 
> > teacher's union was essential to him getting any kind of pay 
> > raise/benefits.  In a small public school system where the administrator 
> > gets 4x the pay of the most senior teachers, there is a problem.
> 
> And that is exactly what the teachers unions should be doing.  Not informing
> public policy on education.  I think that moves like encouraging laws that
> make life harder for private schools, homeschoolers, or requiring things like
> every teacher be certified in every subject they teach (which the way the
> bill was written would have killed a lot of private schools in PA, thankfully
> it was defeated) is served by trying to increase the amount of jobs available
> for teachers, thus making them more valuable, rather than concern for students
> like they claim.
> 
> Also, while I think that teachers deserve to be paid more than they are, I
> don't think that increasing pay will fix anything.  Maybe offering increased
> pay for better performance could be usefull though...  But that has it own
> sets of problems (how to measure performance, encourage fairness, etc).

I think raising teacher salaries is exactly the way to go.  At my high
school, there were exactly three really smart teachers, a dozen or so
that had a brain, and the rest (50 or so) who were nice people, but
couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands.  Teaching misses out
on attracting some of the best and the brightest because everybody knows
that teachers don't get paid.  If we made a big deal about all teachers
getting six figure (starting) salaries, starting in, say, 10 years, I'll
bet you that we'd have a whole bunch more DAMN smart people getting
their teaching degrees in 10 years, and the trend would continue from
there.  Of course, this is just my pet theory, and I have nothing to
back it up.
	Greg

-- 
Portland, Oregon, USA.