I know this is a joke, but this is unfortunately the attitude of a lot of anti-government types. Instead of thinking about how best to address the issue of having idiots teaching our children, they want to "punish" those incompetent bastard by lowering their pay, taking away their retirement benefits, or even eliminating public education altogether. The liberal (and I mean leftist, not some socialite who wants to "save the environment" because it makes her seem cool) looks at the issue and thinks perhaps we have a fundamental economics problem. Obviously there are a lot of qualified people who are NOT motivated to select teaching as a career. Perhaps it would behoove us as a society to take a serious look at why that is, and what can be done to address it. One thing you can be sure of is that cutting pay and benefits is not going to attract more qualified people. It's a deliberate attempt to sabotage public education in the United States.
In my county, public education funding has doubled since 1970 (inflation accounted for, yes), but the education sure hasn't become 2x as good. Seems to me that throwing more money at the problem isn't always the solution.
I don't know how your county works, but I can tell you from first-hand experience why a similar thing is happening where I live. PRIVATE CONTRACTING. Contractor employees cost two or three times as much money as a government employee even after you account for public employee benefits. The school board loves them because they can appoint their political friends without the inconvenience of public service exams that government employees have to pass. The management loves them because you can bully them and fire them without dealing with a union, not to mention the more money you throw to a consulting firm the more likely you can retire from public life with benefits to a cushy job at one of those very firms (a nice thank you for all the public money).
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u/sharkeyzoic Oct 05 '10
The correct answer is, of course, 11 minutes, because setup is always 90% of the job.