Q&A of the Day – Florida teacher pay considerations – Part 1
Each day I’ll feature a listener question that’s been submitted by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Twitter: @brianmuddradio
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Today’s entry...
I wanted to chime in about the proposed teacher salary increase.
I am not writing to convince you that bad teachers (and there are plenty) should get more pay, but rather that we may want to consider a way to get better teachers into those roles.
Let me give you an analogy that should be easy to relate to; investments. For most parents, their children are their most precious investments, deserving the best available resources for their nurturing and growth, far more important than any stock portfolio.
I have met many a teacher over the years who came across as "mediocre", and not the best possible resource. There are also plenty of stories about teachers who get into trouble in ways ranging from political bias to inappropriate relationships with students.
So,what if investment brokers had their salary capped at a certain value by law such that these types of positions would not attract the best talent, but only mediocre talent? It would be frustrating for anybody who wanted to invest but would always worry that their investments were not in the best possible hands.
To attract better talent, obviously the cap would need to be lifted but just paying more to the mediocre people already in those positions would not solve the problem. Rather, there would need to be a way to purge the mediocre talent and replace it with talent that has been verified to be superior.
So in summary, I think it is a good idea to make sure that the best possible talent is tending to our most precious investments, which would mean pay increases, but it would need to be proven that the talent is actually well-worth that extra pay.
Bottom Line: I appreciate the direction you’re heading with this line of thinking. It’s part of what I’ve been attempting to do by providing information and challenging the status quo. I’ve continued to receive numerous notes about teacher compensation as I’ve continued to provide additional context and information about what’s already happening in Florida’s schools and how much we’re already paying for it. If you’ve missed my stories this week, I’d encourage you to check them out but in the interest of moving forward here are a couple of stats important to this specific conversation.
- $4,102 (the per household cost for Floridians for public education annually)
- 33% (how much more the average teacher earns than the avg. Floridian)
- 26% (the proposed raise for starting teacher salaries)
- 27th (Florida’s rank in K-12 education nationally)
Here’s the first new fact I have for you today. It’s where the US now ranks in education, 27th. So, Florida’s 27th in education in the 27th country for education. My next point is this...the whole education establishment is broken. And that ties into your point.Here we are the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world and our education is 27th? There’s simply no excuse but there is an explanation. In 1980 the United States ranked 2nd in the world in education – only Australia edged us out.That was the year the Department of Education, created by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by Democrat Jimmy Carter became law.It was the completion of the government’s takeover of the education establishment. What’s happened since?It’s been nowhere but down.I’ll start there in part two.