Obama Merit Pay Plan a Good Start
Merit pay would encourage firemen like these to get out and fight fires instead of clowning around.
There’s an old song by the Pink Floyd that goes “We don’t need no education.” I’m not quite sure what the song is, but those lines always stuck with me. Teachers for years have been riding the educational gravy train in this country and we need to stop it. Today, Barrack Obama laid out his plans to make teachers accountable and it is about time. I may be one of Obama’s harshest critics, but I think his proposal is a good start. Obama called for tying teachers’ pay to students’ performance and expanding innovative charter schools Tuesday, embracing ideas that have provoked hostility from members of teachers unions.
Obama also called for us to emulate the South Korean school system where students go a month longer than kids in this country do. I applaud Obama for not looking to Canada which has the second best school system in the world behind only Finland, but which remains a hotbed of liberalism and socialized medicine. According to the Mathematics Association of America, “Most of the top countries pay their starting teachers a salary equivalent to about 95% of national GDP per capita. South Korea pays 141%. In the United States, average starting salaries for teachers are at 81% of national GDP per capita. With avergae ntional GDP in the US currently at $46,000, 81% means an average starting salary of a bit over $37,000. To raise starting salaries to 95% of US GDP per capita, this would have to rise to almost $44,000″ and 141% would be over $60,000 to start, but we’re America and if we can’t get a first class education for third world wages, we might as well just give up now. I would also hope we can avoid South Korea’s huge teen suicide epidemic which is often blamed on high stakes testing.
Now, Obama wants to increase funding for teacher salaries, but he is wisely tying this increase to merit pay. I really love this idea because it assures us of getting what we pay for. The problem with education is how lazy so many teachers are. They sit at their desks all day sipping their expensive coffee and not paying any attention to what theri students are doing. What about the lazy cops who hang out in the doughnut shop or the lazy firemen who don’t want to run into a burning building though? Let’s face it teachers aren’t the only lazy government workers on easy street.
Which is more valuable to a city–The cop who sits in his comfortable car all day or the one who is busting his back writing speeding tickets? Is the city getting its money’s worth for the fireman who sits around the station watching televsion all day or the one who is putting out fires? These people should also be put on incentive pay. Let’s allow cops to keep 20% of all ticket money they raise. Let’s give our firemen $100 for every burning building they enter. That’ll get them off their behinds. In the unfortunate event that you had to go to a public hospital, wouldn’t you want to know the doctor’s salary was being tied into his patients’ survival rates? Let’s truly make this a merit based society. For once, Obama and I seem to agree on something.
Let this teacher point out to you, Mr. Gentleman’s C, that “theri” is not a word. Also, as I told you twice today, you referred to George Bush in the 2nd to last paragraph of your previous post when you meant to refer to Obama. IF I didn’t know better, I’d think you were charter schooled.
steve
March 10, 2009 at 4:39 pm
i would be ok with paying teachers more if they worked as garbageman or road crew flag wavers during the summer, instead of having 3 months off drinking beer and playing lawn darts in their backyards.
gina
March 10, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Nate praising Obama!?!?!? Nate, you didn’t drink the kool-aid did you?
wrecksracer
March 10, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Gina–can’t we compromise and have them drink beer while they’re ont he road crew?
Wrecks–I’ve said it before. Education is one place where Obama has it right. I’m also looking forward to opening up a charter police station when he expands charters.
thatsrightnate
March 11, 2009 at 5:30 am
That’s an interesting statistic – knowing how much of the GDP each country pays its teachers. I imagine that poor countries like mine (Brazil) are way behind on this.
Lola
March 11, 2009 at 5:42 am
I did a little checking and the average teacher in Brazil makes 119% of GDP per person. I’d expect that beginning teachers make about the same percentage as they do in the United States.
thatsrightnate
March 11, 2009 at 7:19 am
why do you applaud obama for not looking to canada? i gather that you are happy that obama did not look to canada because it “remains a hotbed of liberalism and socialized medicine.” i am suprised that you would say that, but not being too worldly, you probably don’t know that finland also is a very left-leaning nation with a very strong history of socialized medicine. i am not sure of what conclusion you are drawing here – that following canada’s enduational system would lead to a hotbed of liberalism and socialized medicine or that following canada’s educational system would be wrong to begin with because its already established status as a hotbed of liberalism and socialized medicine? i have dual citizenship in both canada and the united states but i thank god almost on a daily basis for having an almost complete education in canada. i went to school in america when my family moved back to the states when i was 15 and hated the year of school i had to endure in the states. there was no encouragement of independent thought or critical thinking skills, there was no emphasis on engaging the students or to make the objectives and value of the content we learned contextualized and therefore relevant to us and there certainly wasn’t any push by any of my teachers to explore topics we learned further. everything i learned in the one year of school in the states was everything i had learned in canada two years or even, in som cases, three years prior. with my canadian education i am a more tolerant individual who sees himself with a broader global perspective who is still interested in learning and who is able to read through the bullshit that i hear and see and question instead of merely accept what i find out about as the truth. i can talk on a wide variety of subjects with confidence and expertise and have managed to escape the pervasive anti-intellectual sentiment that shrouds the united states. if that is what want to claim a country that is a hotbed of liberalism is capable of, then sign me up each and every lifetime for a canadian education. and as someone who has worked in the educational system in the united states and with american educators, i would suggest that these teachers aren’t “lazy” so much as “burned-out” or have given up hope. for many american educators who work in public k-12 schools, the system already in place goes a long way to kill creativity and to place an emphasis on teaching to the tests. it’s hard not to develop a sense of ennui and hopelessness when there’s an overpowering and oppressive set of guidelines, regulations, rules, statutes, and policies in place to destroy any enjoyment or pride teachers might have for their profession. it seems you should fact-check and do some *gasp* face-to-face interviews with educators before stating that they drink expensive coffee. have you checked out the salaries of the average teacher in the american public school system? it’s not the typical teacher who can afford expensive coffee day after day. i’d expect to see you cite that statement, but then again, fact-checking, interviewing at the source, and learning how to cite wasn’t probably something you learned in your american schooling. too bad for you.
b.c. skillen
June 14, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Too many words. Can you summarize this for us?
thatsrightnate
June 15, 2009 at 6:11 am
dumb.
jessica
November 9, 2009 at 10:02 am
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