Teachers: Should they be paid more?

[Tasselfoot]

I swear... Deltro is the single largest balloon on FFR. Boy, you're filled with so much hot air, it is unbelievable.

1. I, for one, have no idea where you live or the situation of that school. The example makes no sense to 99% of people reading it

2. Paying them more makes them less corrupt.... uh huh.... how? They are independant actions. Someone will screw over others for personal gain regardless of their current situation. Look at CEOs and white collar crime.

3. A teacher screwing up is usually them giving false information. How does this kill any system? Most classes will have a smart ass like me to correct the teacher when they are wrong.

4. Also, what system? Plus, a sub won't give 26 detentions... but could easily give 5-6 plus give a hard/long homework assignment plus inform the teacher for when they get back. Teacher then goes and rains down the wrath.

5. Teaching pays more than working as a secretary (I believe). I'm sure some people do teach because it is one of the higher paying opportunities they have. Especially hispanics, or any other foreigner who can teach their native language.

6. Paying teachers less will do no good. Decreasing their salary will cause strikes, huge beefs from unions, possible lawsuits, and the most obvious, malcontent amongst the current teachers. It will also further deter future teachers from going into the profession.

7. Tool? Hammers, hoes, shovels? Seriously though... how does this help? If you give a Comp Sci teacher better computers or a Chem teacher more chemicals, nothing is going to happen if they are "sub-par", which reads "incompetent" in my book. Sub-par teachers are by their nature unable to teach well.

8. So you want to spend more money on stuff that you don't think you'll need, and just throw it away. That makes tons of sense.

9. Teachers are only hard to fire after they get tenure. That takes 3+ years to do. It is pretty easy to figure out which teachers are "sub-par" before they are tenured, and they can be fired quite easily.

And, to end it... my $.02: Your two cents are worthless. Probably of negative value. I'm getting really sick and tired of reading your posts in CT, which although are decently written, contain absolutely no decent content. My suggestion: figure out something relavent to say, or stop posting in CT.

[alainbryden]

Tasselfoot should be payed more.

And yes, teachers too. Although, it is the low pay that draws the truely selfless teachers to the job, for only someone who truely loves teaching would take such a low paying career. :P

[lightdarkness]

Tasselfoot should be payed more.

[blahblah18]

Q plans on being a teacher too, all you people that mentioned that, who cares, it has nothing to do with the argument
The sole reason that teachers are paid dick is because its a government job paid through taxes... Every person will say "oh yeah teachers are great" then they're told it'll cost them tax money and they clam up... Its hard enough getting people to pony up for school improvements... they're not gonna want to pay taxes and not actually get any discernible benefit in return. And in response to Tass's point that he might make coutnering this, Private School teachers average annual salary is about 15-20% less then public school salary.

[Tasselfoot]

The big perk of private school for alot of teachers is that their children get free tuition, which is getting up to around college tuition for good private schools. So, they might get paid less, but their kids get public school costing education with private school environments and teachers. So chalk on 20-30 grand per kid of the teacher.

Counter that!

[deltro300111]

*is served*

[stretchypanda]

P-A-I-D.

Jesus Christ.

[The_Q]

Alright, here's the thing. What makes number of teachers in Oklahoma so low? Is it the student to teacher ratio? Who did the poll about it? If I get some data I might be able to do something with it.

Deltro, if you even suggest that people should do things for the sake of doing them again you might as well be kicked out of CT. It's breaking economics law number 2: Incentives matter. By saying that teachers should teach because it should be that they want to teach (which is good but not true) you're saying that pay is nothing to them. If there's no pay where did the incentive to work go? What would happen if you desire to share knowledge with others diminished? Your quality of work would diminish. If you work for money that's never a problem (until you realize that no matter what happens your pay goes down, in which case you find a new job. Yay for marginal disvalue curves!) Your desire to get more money would normally last longer anyway. Your being greedy causes me to benefit from your better services!

Yes, it's true that I want to teach when I'm older. I'm looking forward to making a living off of teaching a college class or two, doing loads of reasearch and publishing several books of simplified economics to the masses. You know that would be an awesome book. You know it.

Q

[Cenright]

If you increase pay, you need to increase the bar for the qualifications of teachers. Either that, or you have to lay off teachers to keep budgets from getting out of hand.

That is the case where I live.

Besides, pay the teachers higher in your area, and the taxes are higher in your area. The children aren't the ones rating the teacher on who should get a raise though, so the bad teachers are gaining money too.

[Tasselfoot]

Children, no. But in HS... well, lets just say my English teacher from senior year didn't come back for her second year. Damn bitch woulda given Squeek nightmares with her grammar mistakes.

[The_Q]

So that would make taxes too high? Then let's privatize it! Would it not be great to have a greater competition between teachers (which either produces better teachers or diminishes the number of crappy teachers) and at the same time should lower the prices of private schooling.

My last argument against raising the salaries of teachers: are there currently people in a waiting list to become teachers? Yes. From this I would assume that the pay is good enough for there to be people actually waiting to get the job.

Q

[alainbryden]

No. You cannot privatize education. I don't know if you were being serious. There is a much greater importance at stake then immediate economic feasability. If you privatize education, then you are cutting a whole lot of people out of ever being able to have a fair start at life, and you are causing future employment standards to deteriorate to the level of uneducated supply that will subsequently follow.

[Kilgamayan]

Q only cares about maximizing happiness for this generation (specifically, himself) so that argument is moot if you're directing it at him.

[alainbryden]

He'll change his mind when he has kids.

[Kilgamayan]

Kids aren't very cost-effective.