13 thoughts on “More Straight Talk From Chris Christie”

  1. Alan, I agree, and I wish you would come to Dallas and tell that to the morons of the Dallas Independent School District, who pay THEIR superintendent well over $300,000 to preside of a school district with a high school graduation rate under 50%.

  2. Alan,

    Do you run a large school system? What makes you qualified to make a compensation estimate for educators?

    The above is actually a capitalist argument. I’d much rather we decide how much money we (as a nation) are going to dole out to each child for his/her education, and then let marekt forces (through privately owned schools and government vouchers) work out who gets paid how much. Maybe $200K is right in some circumstances.

    But yeah, doesn’t seem likely. But you never know. Maybe a star lecturer (whose lectures are YouTubed to tens of thousands of students around the country) would be worth that much. Or a genius curriculum designer, whose math & physics curriculum is used all accross the country.

  3. I’d have to agree Brock. Do I think the DISD super deserves $300K with his performance? No. But if DISD had a graduation rate >90%, along with other high performance marks, then I’m ok with that salary. To get good people into education, you have to pay well.

    Consider most of us engineers and scientific types that participate here. Some of us *cough* Carl *cough* would make great teachers. But deciding between a well paying career in industry vs. limited pay in teaching; the answer is usually an industrial career. Of course, most teachers are paid way too well for a lackluster performance. It’s the unions that protect these poor performers at the detriment of the next generation. If bad teachers could easily be fired and sent to other career options, then we could start having efficiencies.

  4. The problem is it is a system that protects itself from competition. Without competition you have no real basis for determining the correct salaries. If you have multiple administrators in two or preferably more competing systems in the same area, where each student had a voucher providing a specific amount of funds by age… Then they would have to compete for those students and would have a limited amount of funds to do it. If they overcompensated some it would take away from the students and parents would figure that out and change schools. Let them have a million dollar a year salary if they can earn it in a fair competition.

  5. @ken anthony: You are right: there will be no improvement of our education system unless market forces are permitted to come into play. The Rx for bad teachers, bad administrators, and bad curricula is vouchers. By allowing parents to vote with their education dollar, vouchers would have the effect of quickly revealing the bad eggs and institutions in our system (which is, of course, why most unionized “educators” are against them).

    Unfortunately, vouchers would also have the effect of turning each institution accepting them into a de facto arm of the federal government, with all that implies. You may rest assured that any private school receiving federal voucher cash will be compelled by law to have a staff and faculty that “looks like America” (i.e. one with the federally-mandated correct percentage of one-armed lesbian Native Americans of color) and a curriculum that educates students in the realities of oppression and exploitation inherent in the phallocratic, heteronormative system of white privilege in which we live. Caesar does not give his coin without requiring a pinch of incense to be burnt before his image.

  6. Do you run a large school system? What makes you qualified to make a compensation estimate for educators?

    A real nice capitalist argument would be your $300k salary is indexed directly proportional to the graduation rate.

    Seems fair.

  7. But maybe he makes the criteria for graduation that you attended at least one class, and know which end of a pencil to make your X with.

    Wherever the student goes next–college, trade school, business, needs to provide some feedback into how qualified the graduates were.

  8. How about this? A school district consists of one High School and the lower schools that feed it. That’s it. No more consolidated districts. Will it be inefficient? Dang skippy, and that’s a feature. Oh yeah, and term limits on unpaid school boards, spread the wealth.

    Further, with limited exceptions such as custodial and food preparation staff, all full time employees teach for most of the day at least 2 hrs teach for every hour spent on non-teaching activities. If you need full time administrators then that district is too big and needs to be fragmented.

    I’d also require teachers to have degrees in the subject matter that they’re teaching at the grade levels where teachers specialize. An Ed degree would not be qualifying on it’s own.

    And I’d expect journeyman level teachers to be capable of developing their own course material. Death to the textbook cartels!

  9. You may rest assured that any private school receiving federal voucher cash will be compelled by law…

    They’re always mucking up things with improper and unneeded laws. What’s the solution? We need to start a subset of the TPs called Pissed Off Parents (P.O.P.) that reform education by getting rid of ALL administration except one principle per school and a secretary… make every dollar spent public and let teachers have more control over classes. If vouchers don’t work, let parents pay for each child directly.

    I am sick and tired of hearing there are no solutions. Yes there are. They made a big deal out of a principle that fixed his school with a baseball bat. If that’s what it takes, then let’s play ball.

    The school marm used to teach calculus and latin to a mixed K-12 group of kids. Now we can’t teach them to read with our ‘superior’ model?

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