Public School Teachers: Compensation

Can you imagine working in an environment that doesn’t reward merit?

In that vein, here are some complains I have regarding public education:

  1. Compensation takes many forms.  Days off, training, health care and what not.  One form of compensation is that of being safe from firing for poor performance.  This pushes down the salaries of teachers.
    1. Competent highly motivated people willingly trade such safety nets for higher salaries.  They have no fear of being perceived as incompetent.  Find a teacher unwilling to fire poor performs, rest assured that you are speaking to a poor performer.
  2. Highly motivated proficient teachers have no hope of earning more than older incompetent teachers.  This applies downward pressure on innovation and motivation.
  3. Teachers complain that salaries can not be merit based because there is no good method to measure merit.  Teachers fight tests and test scores in the same way a vampire fights garlic and mirrors.

Much of the reason teachers feel underpaid is due directly to how the system is set up.

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