[quote=no_such_reality]IMHO, the single biggest proof that money won’t fix the problem is LAUSD. When you look at the actual total expenditures across all funds and categories (i.e. icluding building new schools), over the last two decades, they’ve been spending close to $20,000 per pupil each year.
LAUSD is, IMHO, broken. Horribly broken in spite of many dedicated and competent individual teachers. They are sadded in a system that strips them of resources, saddles them in bereaucracy, structurally creates a hostile employee/employer relationship and tolerates mediocrity and covers-up failure in denial and cares more about politically correct talking points than accomplishing anything concrete.
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LAUSD has problems for a variety of reasons, but the teachers’ union is not one of the reasons. Because it is such a large district (second largest in the nation) in such a diverse state, and because it’s always under the spotlight, it tends to fall victim to the politicalization I’ve mentioned above where everyone from the POTUS and other federal politicians…through the state and municipal politicians…to the private sector technocrats and capitalists (looking to get their own piece of taxpayers’ money)…to the PTA mom…who all have their own agendas and will do everything in their power, often in very public ways, to get what they want. The teachers get caught in the middle of all this, and that can definitely get in the way of their ability to do their jobs properly.
It is ugly.
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As for this part, whether it’s a job with the fire department or the local school district…
[quote=no_such_reality]And anecdotally, the schools will have no problem hiring at current compensation levels. Much like LAFD, they get too many candidates. There is zero need to increase teacher compensation, the recent grads are literally beating down door, smoozing everybody in every school they can find trying to get one of few openings.
If you can’t find math instructors, you raise compensation for math qualified instructors, not raise compensation for all instructors.[/quote]
The number of applicants has nothing at all to do with the number of **qualified** applicants. Everyone in education knows that a teacher’s first year (at least) is going to involve a very steep learning curve. About 25% of teachers leave within the first three years, and 40-50% leave within the first five years.
Keeping good teachers in the classroom is a major challenge for most school districts. In addition to the fact that beginning teachers are less effective than more senior teachers, districts have to spend major resources on recruiting, hiring, and training new teachers when there is a high turnover rate.
That being said, I do agree that teachers who are in higher demand should be paid more, and I also think that teachers who work with more challenging students (behaviorally and academically) should be paid more.
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BTW, how many people show up for an acting job? How many would line up if a company publicly advertised for their CEO position? I can assure you the lines would be very long, indeed! Does this mean that actors and CEOs (and many others, as there are long lines for just about any job out there) should be paid less? How much less?
