Quote:
Originally Posted by PaulS
I agree $ isn't the always the answer and with your example it may not help the students. However, if you can attract better teachers bc of higher pay/benefits that would benefit the students. There are many states that don't fund the teacher salaries adequately and that was reflected in the strikes last year. Some of the teachers were making like $35K and hadn't had raises in a few years.
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we’re having decent dialogue here. there’s something to be said for better pay attracting better teachers, but again, i point you to catholic schools, where teachers are almost literally paid in dirt, yet those schools get world
class teachers. teaching is a calling, if
you offer too many perks ( great benefits, insane time off) you get people
who go into teaching for that reason, and that’s not good.
i’ve seen this from every angle. and i'm willing to bet you believe that i want what’s best for all kids, not just my kids. i’ve been a student in public and catholic school, i’ve taught in public and catholic school, i’ve been a parent of
kids in public and catholic school. Money has very little to do with it, and another truth is this, liberals
do a terrible, terrible job of spending that money. way too much money is diverted away from things that actually help
kids learn, way too much money goes to salary and benefits, which does almost nothing for students.
here’s the fix. make teacher retirement and healthcare benefits exactly equal to the average of what’s available to white collar professionals in the private sector. that will save a ton. use that savings to hire more teachers, which reduces class size, because that IS correlated with student performance. Also, there is no sane argument against school
choice. And since all that really matters is what’s going on at home, we need to do more to encourage strong, stable, close nuclear families, because that is by far, the biggest driver of student performance, nothing else even comes close. the older i get, the
more certain i am that this is almost all that matters. without it, almost nothing else works.
i do appreciate the challenging questions, and the respect with which you asked them.
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