Teaching & Capitalism

Apparently, they're tossing the idea of merit-based pay for teachers in California. With that, teachers would no longer be paid for seniority, but for performance.

Now typically, I'm pro-union, but the little bitches in the teacher's union are complaining because there would be more competition amongst them. Funny how much fuss people kick up when you ask them to do their jobs...

Teaching is something that reaps benefits for generations to come. For someone to be awarded for being an effective teacher means that there's a higher incentive to produce a more educated class of kids. If that's not fair, then fuck me running.

"BUT PICK...What standards would be used for determining effective teachers? How would those measure be checked?"

I would think things like grades and administrative satisfaction. I don't think pay should be determined exclusively on merit, but I think it should play a much bigger part in their pay. I would say it should be split up 60/40, with the heavier emphasis on things like grades. Of course, I would hope they would develop a more effective way than grades to determine the teacher's effectiveness.

I've attended several schools in two states, and there hasn't been a one that could have stood to pay the teachers a little more. Not only that, but I can recall a few really good teachers who got walked on by the beaurocracy of the state education system, which is sad.

The Texas educational system is fucking horrible like that. The entire cirriculum is based on taking a mandatory graduation exam, so from grades K thru 12 students are being primed to pass this ridiculous test rather than learn and cultivate their minds. So those few teachers I remember that were really great were not thought as such by the state, because while they actually taught things worth knowing, they weren't contributing as much to the state-test quota of passing students, which made them inferior in the eyse of the administration.

That's my only worry about merit-based pay. Eventually, it'll stop being about grades and it will start being about contributing to a byzantine and irrelavant system of educational achievement that is, for all intensive purposes, nullified by its lack of scholastic enrichment.

You can really tell where a nation's priorities lie if you look how much they pay their police officers, teachers, and civil servants. People get all torqued about sports heroes and rockstars making shitloads of money, but if our nation as a whole didn't want that, they wouldn't be making that kind of money. So the moral of the story is, next time you get pissed about a teacher not making enough money or a rockstar making too much money, punch a complete stranger in the face. Honestly, if he's contributing to either of those scenes (like if he's a die-hard Cubs fan or something) he's contributing to the madness and he deserves it.

"Welcome to Capitalism Pick. It's sad but true. Public servents are inherently underpaid. That is because municiple police are paid by the city and the only real taxes the city collects is property taxes, and cities have a lot to pay for. The rest is all subsidized by the state. Those jerks aren't going to give up a penny either."

Right. Anyone who has even the slightest inkling of what the writing on the wall is knows that everything we've said about it thus far is the truth and there's no changing it. However, I don't think this is a system completely inherent to capitalism. Any governmental system that is not isolationist and completely controlled by the government will have problems exactly like that. Given, it occurs in a capitalist republic because people have more money and freedom in that system, but its happened everywhere that wasn't a Soviet satellite nation or a fundamentalist religious government...