[Vision2020] Paper on the Teachers' Salary Grid

[Dale Courtney]

Dale wrote: 
> "Annual inflation-adjusted expenditures per pupil tripled 
> between 1960 and 1991, surpassing $5,500 in 1991. Yet the 
> average combined (verbal and mathematics) score on the 
> Scholastic Aptitude Test was seventy-five points higher in 
> 1963 than it was in 1990."

Bill, I really *do* appreciate an intellectual discussion over this matter.
Thanks for dialoging with me about it. 

You wrote:

> This in itself doesn't mean much. When my car goes up a hill, 
> the cruise control causes the car to use twice as much gas, 
> but the speed is still lower than the target. Does this mean 
> that the cruise control isn't working?

If I've understood your analogy correctly, you are saying that something
changed between 1960 and 1991 to cause the schools to be climbing up-hill. 

What do you see those "changes" to be? And what were the underlying causes
for those changes? 

> The question has to be asked - what would have been happened 
> if the money had not been spent from 1960 - 1991. Just as if 
> the cruise control had been turned off, would the schools be 
> running at 10 mph instead of 45?

A question even before that would be: *what* were those changes? And *why*
did those changes occur? Are those changes for the good or for the worse? 

I would like someone to tell me *why* we spent 3x as much inflation-adjusted
money on the government schools, and yet the SAT scores have plummeted. 
 
> I find most of the statistics quoted in this area to be 
> self-serving while they ignore the underlying causes. 

What do *you* see as the underlying cause? 

I fully agree that many of these statistics are *symptoms* and not *causes*.
You *do* have to treat the cause and not the symptom. 

> It is 
> like the perpetual argument about class size. The 
> observational statistics thrown around are such a crock.

Again, all the statistics consistently demonstrate that lowering the class
size has *nothing* to do with performance. If you would like, I'll dig up
all those studies and post them here. I've done that before, for naught. 

Again, it's a mantra of many to lower class size. But that hasn't proven to
be the savior of the schools. 
 
> And I'm not certain why salaries in public schools are a 
> "liberal" issue that "they" have to solve. I think you come 
> close to falling into the same trap of which you warn others.

I hope I'm not falling into an *argumentum ad hominem*. But perhaps I am. So
let me restate my point. 

In every other area of life, people are paid for the results of what they
produce. You don't produce, you're fired. If you produce extra, you get
bonuses and pay raises. There's an *incentive* to do well. 

In the government schools, you are paid for the number of hours you attended
college and years you've taught. The incentives are reversed and the salary
is separated from the "product" (educating children). 

Also, it doesn't take into consideration that getting a Bachelor's Degree in
Underwater Basketweaving is significantly easier than in Chemistry. Somehow,
we think that we're being kind and fair by paying everyone the same,
regardless of the fact that the degrees that they earned are not the same.
IMO, this dysfunctional thinking is one of the significant reasons we are in
the pickle we are today with our math and sciences being behind the rest of
the industrialized world. 

FWIW.

Best, 
Dale Courtney