Okay, now let me get this straight. Your point on teacher pay is that we need more excellent math and science teachers and need to pay more in order to attract and retain them. I?ll buy that. You also argue that bad teachers are badly overpaid. I take it that you mean they should be fired. I?ll go for that. I think you may also be on to something with the notion that principals (at least the good ones) need more discretion.
Where you lose me is with the argument that average pay (and money, generally) isn?t important. How is it that we?re going to attract and keep the good teachers to replace the ?atrocious? ones if we don?t pay more and improve conditions in the schools? Whether we?re at the national average or not seems to me irrelevant if the excellent teachers we do attract are simply throwing up their hands and finding jobs in the private sector because they?re overwhelmed by the demands of overcrowded classes, high pressure, high-stakes testing and inadequate resources and facilities.
This also goes to your point about class size. While North Carolina has made some important progress in this area, the research has always shown that we really need to get to the ultimate target of 1 to 15 in order to achieve the breakthroughs we desire. Thus, it?s unfair to criticize the move toward smaller class size until we have achieved the ratio to which we aspire. Again, this will take resources.
As for the question of disparities between poor and wealthy school districts, there clearly is a large and meaningful difference. Anyone who doesn?t think so should compare the applicant pool for teaching jobs in Wake County and any number of poorer rural counties. Attracting and retaining the best teachers is a competitive business. While money is far from the only carrot for attracting quality teachers, the realities of the marketplace dictate that districts that can offer better wages have an advantage in attracting teachers.
While many rural areas would, ideally, seek to make up for the lack of amenities in their communities (public services, shopping, entertainment) by offering a salary premium in order to provide an incentive that will lure top-flight teachers, this is seldom possible. The systems with the top ten wage supplement schedules are mostly urban and have average local salary supplements ranging from $2888 to $7,122. The systems with the ten lowest supplement schedules are rural and average local salary supplements range from $0 to $441. These are not the tiny differences you imply in your last set of comments.
Finally, the subject of ?school choice? is always a hot button issue in the debate over public education. Many critics of traditional models of public education have long touted ?choice? as one of the magic bullets that will provide dissatisfied parents with an escape hatch from schools they don?t like. Proponents also argue that by fostering market-like competition, ?choice? provides an incentive for schools to try harder and do better. The choice model is, of course, a central component of the No Child Left Behind law.
While not wholly without merit as a tool for use in specific circumstances (the Wake County schools, for instance, do a solid job of using magnet school choice), choice is not the panacea its proponents would have us believe. In particular, the idea of using choice as an escape hatch (as No Child Left Behind attempts) is simply not a practical or sound idea.
First of all, not only does the escape hatch premise encourage caring parents to abandon struggling schools (just what those schools need!), but as a more general matter, crude application of choice encourages parents and students to treat public education as a mere consumer product, rather than a collective enterprise to which we all have a responsibility to contribute. This ?what?s in it for me?? attitude has much to do with the current challenges we face in public education and is readily evident in the shortsighted opposition to adequate funding for schools that is so often voiced by taxpayers without children in the public school system.
On a more practical level, the choice model also fails under No Child Left Behind due to the simple lack of resources and adequate spaces for kids to transfer to. This problem has arisen in several school systems around the country where parents from ?failing schools? have been rebuffed in their efforts to transfer their children simply because there was no place to which to transfer.
In sum, the idea that we can force schools to try harder and do better simply through dog eat dog competition and threats of lost students and revenues makes far less common sense than the notion that we should all pitch in and do our part to provide adequate resources for the single most important public function in our society.
