You misquoted me. I said salaries and pensions. It's all the same. People work for compensation and the pensions are part of it. What school can run a proper athletic or music program with parents contributions only? What parents can afford a set of timpani or a full football uniform including all the practice gear? No wonder California is screwed up. What in the world does that mean? Why pay an effective teacher the same as an ineffective teacher? And why not pay the superior teachers more? It works that way everywhere else. It helps keep the superior teachers from getting jaded and encourages the bad ones to move along or get better. Not if it is done properly. Incentives are what makes the private sector competitive and it is, in fact, a Republican mantra. Why won't it work with teachers? I say fire the bottom 5-10%% every year and give a raise to the top 5-10%.
Used to be medically necessary but he improved so much that he is at a "normal" private school. It is still not public, but it is not therapeutic. So it is not deductible anymore. Plus it is still not all that deductible as the first 7% of your income is subtracted from it. We barely beat the standard deduction. So it lowered my income by a few hundred so in tax terms (25% of that), it was barely worth the paper work and the red flag it sends up to the IRS.
I did so on purpose and I apologize for not mentioning that it was a CA-specific point of view. " CalSTRS, the pension fund is one of the biggest financial problems in a state with more than its share of money woes. Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders are pledging to repair and replenish the $181.1-billion retirement system that is supposed to finance more than 800,000 retirements for public school teachers, administrators and community college instructors. Hearings on possible solutions began in the Capitol on Wednesday. The second-largest public pension fund in the country, after California's primary pension system for public employees, it faces a $71-billion shortfall that worsens by $22 million every day, according to pension officials." People work and expect to be paid for it, yes. And yet not everyone is motivated by the exact same thing. Does everyone want a million dollars? Sure. Do they all want the responsibility that comes with that salary? No. That's why music programs are disappearing and plenty of inner-city schools have no athletics other than football or basketball. My point was meant more in terms of a teacher salary vs, say, a refuse hauler or sewer cleaner. Salaries for teachers should represent their worth to the community and IMO, at this point, they don't. I don't suggest that ALL teachers get the same salary. I have no problems with salary ranges dependent on certain factors that make sense and are measurable. IMO, that is impossible. The inputs, systems, training, students, funding, etc are all different enough that incentives don't serve to measure effective teaching and they are far too easily manipulated. Incentives can drive competition. They also drive competition between employees, rather than encouraging shared concepts that make the output more effective. But it is far from a Republican mantra. It's a Western/capitalist philosophy and obviously one that is used widely in America by ALL types of businesses and managers and compensation "experts". I just don't happen to agree with it other than to achieve short-term goals where the unintended consequences are minimal. Incentives are also used in the public sector to severe detriment..... "veterans were put on secret waiting lists when they called for appointments, but they wouldn't formally get an appointment booked in the computer until one came up within the VA's goal of 14 days. The purpose of the lists, she says, was to hide how often veterans were not being seen on time. Clarno says the purpose of the lists was "to make numbers look better for their own recognition and for bonuses." The VA grants bonuses to executives and doctors, partly based on short wait times. Whistleblowers -- including Dr. Sam Foote, who revealed the scandal in Phoenix, where up to 40 veterans may have died -- believe bonuses give an incentive to conceal delays in care. " It will, and does, work with teachers and school districts the way it does with any other type of employee. Cheating, manipulation, sandbagging, playing with the numbers. All in an effort to get that incentive. There is a list of school districts who have cheated to get the LNCB and RTTT federal incentive dollars. There is just no way to measure effectiveness or talent as it were. You have acknowledged the Bell Curve and yet you want to focus all your attention on either firing or incentivizing the smallest percent of the workforce? Those bottom feeders will weed themselves and you will never completely eradicate them. The top folks are also likely never going to stop doing what they do so why focus time or money on their pay? The truth is that the middle group produces the greatest mass of work and overall represents the greatest improvements but they get overlooked and that perpetual incentive to the top earners is a disincentive to them. It's an artificial barrier to what they could achieve. So IMO, there should be salary ranges (not too many) that can be achieved through reliable measurements. Only when you remove pay (in all forms) as a focus for the teacher, will they being to focus on the student! It's not about the pay. It's about the system.
Again it comes down to accountability. Why is teacher and school accountability so difficult? Interesting. It would seem that this issue could be addressed somehow. Accountability again. Any incentives that come without strict accountability won't work. What is making this difficult? Civil Service rules? I know at the university level, it is almost impossible to fire a secretary or a janitor with Civil Service protection. It is equally impossible to reward them or incentivize them. No so with the unclassified professional and technical staff, who serve at the pleasure of the university. Low performers get dismissed, high performers get rewarded. I suppose that is true in a true bell curve situation and I suppose school teachers would fall into that. My experience is in a system geared to producing high achievers so the curve is much flatter on the high side. There is always the possibility for the average performers to fall below expectations and the incentive to produce is high because the bar keeps changing. A teacher that is close to me has always said they they didn't need to pay teachers more, they needed to pay more teachers. Both require more money that isn't there and those reliable accountability measures still don't seem to be working.
The 11k per student is about as realistic as the stat that says we average 15 students per class. Those 15 kids include special ed classes with 2 kids with 2 teachers and 2 paras, gifted classes that are legally limited to 15 or less, and electives that are very small. The average general education teacher at a public school in BR has at least 30 per class.
