So the budget came out today

[CNS]

Ed's structure is pretty messed up.

That said, it is underfunded in it's current form.

When new teacher salaries are anywhere in the $20k's, what kind of people do you think you attract to such salaries?   Then you are surprised why more progress can't be made.  

I was making more 3 or 4 years out of college than a teacher with 25 yrs experience and their masters makes.  

We are getting what we pay for.  Simple as that.
 
Pay better and better teachers will be produced.  

do you only work 9 months a year?  teachers are civil servants and make a very fine living relative to other civil servants. 

You are completely ignoring the "you get what you pay for" part of my comment. 

Seriously, it shouldn't be hard for a free market person to understand that a job that pays $30k isn't going to get as high caliber of applicants as a job that pays $60k.  It isn't hard.

What's hard is the fact that the current structure is pretty jacked up and that it will probably never get adequately dealt with because, like many other issues, it is almost too big for any politician to tackle and still be re-electable.    Given that, either pay teachers better to get better applicants, or quit bitching about "it not working".

[Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!)]

Not sure any of your figures are even all that accurate, and I'm sure it's relative to the school district, but I get what you're saying.  I'm also 100% sure teachers have outstanding benefits which is part of compensation and should be considered.

You certainly get what you pay for.  But when the main perks of applying for a job is 1) changing lives, 2) summers off, and 3) "if you don't eff up too bad for the first few years you can never get fired", you're definitely going to attract a certain "type" of worker.  One that likely isn't all that motivated by money.


No offense, but I'm not sure having an engineer (or engineer-lite CNS major) teach school is a realistic, viable or better option.  Confusing the pool of applicants is all you've really done here.  But I get what you're saying and it has some merit.  I think you need to think a little harder about the type of person that would want to be a teacher to begin with.  Not a lot of people motivated by great wealth, more likely a comfortable life with more altruistic career motives, jmho.

I really think education is best handled at the local level, where community standards can set the proper curriculum.  The federal government application of a single standard to myriad communities with myriad demographics is a real stupid way to do things.  But that's how its been for a while and its obviously not yielding any real positive results.  Putting every child that can breath in a school where they don't belong isn't helping anyone either, but that's a whole another topic. . .