23K teachers were given pink slips in CA and 17K in IL. NJ and FL are cutting teacher jobs and reducing salaries. We need to get our priorities in order. Athletes are paid millions, but teachers, with whom we entrust to help raise our kids, are not valued. In honor of ALL teachers, copy and paste this into your status.Poor grammar aside (is that a commentary on teachers?), I think that our priorities are indeed askew when we pay non-producing members of society exorbitant amounts of money to ... what ... entertain us? And we neglect the more important people -- like teachers. On the other hand, I don't believe the solution to educational problems is more money. I'm quite certain our educational woes lie elsewhere. Still, I wish we did pay teachers better than we do. It would 1) give them better recompense for their very important jobs and 2) give us a bit more leverage to control things. (It's really difficult these days to try to fire a bad teacher, for instance.)
Still, I'm at a complete loss about what this thing is supposed to accomplish or even say. Teachers are paid out of taxes. Athletes are paid out of ticket purchases. We should tax athletes to pay teachers? No, that's not it. We should charge admission to schools so we can pay teachers more? No, no, that's not right either. Clearly our values in our society are skewed. But what am I or you or even a group of us supposed to do about this particular situation? Our tax money doesn't pay for athletes, so the correlation to their wages doesn't fit. Is it a call for higher taxes? Agreeing that teachers are underpaid, what do I do now?
Or is this just another "Here's a problem" without a solution offered?
2 comments:
Let's see, we could start a nonprofit foundation, asking folks to donate the money they would have spent on athletic fan paraphenalia, game tickets, food at the game, etc. Then we take that money and offer grants to teachers who demonstrate exceptional teaching skill, or districts that demonstrate significant, measurable improvements. Because it's a private charity, the standards to measure achievement can be set independent of union negotiations and federal benchmarks. But that would require teachers to agree to be accountable for real standards of measurement according to what and who they teach, and you offer them monetary incentives for performance (two big no-no's to the NEA). And you require the charity to set up measurable standards that are fair (for example, you can't compare a remedial math class for IEP students with a college prep algebra class) and independently verifiable (impossible without school district cooperation). And those folks have to be willing to part with their money for these purposes instead of being entertained by the pro athletes and supporting their franchises (and we know those pro team owners will be all for that). And everyone will sign on for that, right? Right?
Yeah, yeah! No.
Make teaching a spectator sport? You know, "Come see your favorite teacher handle a classroom of crazy kids! Entrance fee is ..."
Okay, not such a good idea.
I suggested to people in the past that it's wrong that non-producing members of society like athletes should make so much money while other more important, more contributing members of society make nearly nothing. The response has been angry. How dare I suggest that professional athletes aren't producing something of value?! Sigh.
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