Florida teacher pay considerations – Part 2
Bottom Line: I talk about the premise. If the premise of anything is false anything built on it is too. The US was 2nd in education before the Department of Education, it’s 27th and still on the decline currently. In 1979, 5% of total government spending went to education, it’s still at 5%. So, if we’re spending the same relative amount on education and getting substantially worse results and the major change during that period was the creation of the Department of Education, what does that tell you? Spending more on a system that’s flawed is essentially the definition of insanity. The reason I’ve been such a vocal supporter of school choice isn’t because the other options are perfect, but they do represent changing the status quo. I’ll use your market-based analogy, which is a good one, and give you an idea of the way my mind works.
If every household in Florida were given $4,102 for grade school education per year what would we choose to do with it? Would it look the same as it does today? There’s no way that if American families had complete choice, rather than bureaucrats, grade school education would resemble anything close to what it does today. It’s just like healthcare. What happened to it once we allowed government and insurance companies take over? 68% of healthcare spending goes to insurance companies, 32% to actual medical care. I’ll revisit that nugget in a separate story soon.
When I said I need to see a plan from the governor on how dramatic increases in teacher pay would produce better results, I meant it. I want to see what’s different other than we’ll be able to recruit more teachers. We can recruit all the teachers we want and pay them a gazillion dollars to be here but if the system itself is the problem what have we accomplished? If we gave all parents full use of their tax money to provide the education they wanted for their kids, I bet you there’d be teachers that could make hundreds of thousands of dollars.Parents would want the best education for their kids. The best teachers would be in demand and market forces would allow them to earn what they’re worth rather than what government in conjunction with teachers’ unions decide.
The bureaucrats created a system that takes care of themselves while progressively failing our kids.And by the way, if you’ve followed my work over the years you know I've traced the removal of God from schools starting with the Department of Education to lower grades, higher levels of depression and increased violence (aside from the much worse education outcomes). The question is if we really do care about the best outcomes for our kids? We should demand complete school choice and an end to the traditional education establishment. These are our kids and it’s our tax money, when will we collectively be bold enough to act like it?