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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (77681)	2/19/2010 11:17:56 AM
From: Oeconomicus	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

"Like any group there is always a segment that is more dedicated & willing to go the extra mile to excel. But to paint them all as both overworked & underpaid is a flat out lie." I didn't say they were underpaid, just that what you said the bunch in that RI high school are paid is not representative. I, too, know more than a few teachers, having been one myself briefly in a nearby HS and currently serving on the governance board of my daughter's charter HS. Just in my department I saw a wide range of effort (the football coach seemed to put the least effort into teaching, perhaps unsurprisingly), but the vast majority of teachers were dedicated and hard-working. The same goes for the teachers I've met at my daughter's HS (or heard about from her). Of course, of late I've only gotten to meet the ones who teach the AP and honors classes, so perhaps there's some sampling bias. Anyway, the pay scales for GA teachers are, IMO, generally fair as far as starting pay and pay for mid-career teachers. Starting pay was enough to ensure a steady supply of new teachers in most disciplines, though perhaps not in the harder to fill ones like higher level math and science. One problem I saw, however, was that new teachers had to wait several years for any material (or any at all if state budgets were stressed) increases. I suspect that results in the loss of many promising young teachers for purely financial reasons. The other problem I saw was the gaming of the pay scales, with teachers (and administrators) getting significant bumps up the scale just for getting advanced degrees, not in the field they are teaching, but in education broadly. I'm willing to pay up a bit for a physics or math or history teacher with a masters or PhD in those fields, but there seems to be sort of an industry in producing Masters of Ed. degrees, often online, for the sole purpose of qualifying for an automatic bump in pay. In fact, there was a scandal in a nearby county back in '04 or '05 where several teachers and administrators had obtained MEd degrees from a bogus online diploma mill. But still, I've been impressed with most teachers I've known and strongly disagree with the notion that they are, as a group, generally overpaid slackers. I can't say the same thing about school administrators, though. School level administrators are a mixed bag, from my experience, and they can sometimes get to pay levels that seem out of whack. Worse yet is at the district level where it gets all political, and often corrupt. So bash the higher-ups all you want, but teachers, IMO, deserve the benefit of the doubt.