Well, now I know where you've been during all of the recent teacher-bashing threads...
Trying to save us all some time, let's predict where this thread is going to go...
- someone will come on & blame all of the problems on the unions
- someone will blame incompetent teachers
- someone will say that teachers get paid too much for only working 10 months out of the year.
- others will drag out stories about wrongs done by teachers that affected their children.
- some will point out (and probably rightly so) that this is just a big game of political extortion, where cuts are proposed that will impact children in an effort to garner monetary support to save the "cushy" central office jobs
- someone will point out that everyone is suffering from the economy so why does it matter if people involved in education also lose jobs
What did I miss?
On another note, I hear you and know exactly where you're coming from on this one. We are also going through this in PG county and it has become clear that the decision-makers do not listen to teachers, parents, or others arguing to save teaching positions and programs that directly impact the children, and cut elsewhere (cushy admin jobs), and the parents are the ones pointing out the admin jobs, not the teachers. The political entities are all playing "pass the buck, and pass the blame". I believe the whole effort is useless becuase the politicians simply do not care. They are all looking for soundbites and reputations for "getting tough and cutting budgets".
Good luck with your quest to find support. I am hoping that you find at least a few parents who will stand up and speak up for what they consider to be important to their children.
Let the mudslinging and witch-hunts commence.
There may be some people around here that blame teachers, or believe that they are, on the whole, overpayed, but there are some of us that certainly do not. I don't have anything at all against teachers. I also don't have anything against doctors, but I don't want doctors getting together as a group and negotiating with the government (which has the power to take whatever money it wants from me through taxation) to decide what is appropriate with regard to their compensation for our collective medical needs and wants and even how much medical service (e.g. how many doctors) we will collectively buy (pay), and then to have that government take my money to pay those doctors to provide medical service for everyone. I don't have anything against chefs either. But, the same thing - I don't want chefs acting collectively to demand a certain compensation amount/arrangement for the food they prepare, especially considering that I'd then be forced to buy their food whether I want it or not, and further that I'd be forced to pay for it even if I had no use for it and wouldn't be getting to eat it.
I'm not sure whether teachers are, on the whole, overcompensated or undercompensated for the services they provide. That's the point - we don't have a system (that even comes close to being one) that can, or is allowed to, figure that out. Some teachers probably get more than they deserve, while I'm certain that a great many teachers get far less than they deserve - we just don't have a reasonable way of figuring out which are which. I want teachers to be paid fairly. I want them to get what they deserve. Government control of the education business prevents that from happening. It also reduces the overall effectiveness and efficiency of education services. It also compels people to pay for other people's (children's) education and thus amounts to a redistribution of wealth. It also reduces flexibility and innovation. It inhibits that which makes most everything better and stronger - competition. Turning back to the plight of teachers in specific - it hurts the good ones and helps the bad ones, indeed creating (or expanding) a market and safe harbor for the bad ones. It facilitates people being teachers that probably have no business being teachers.
I understand people (that are recieving medical services) wanting more money spent on medical services. I understand doctors wanting more work created for their profession and I understand some of them wanting job security provided and compensation levels guaranteed. What I don't understand is how those parties, even feeling as they do, can justify others being forced to pay to provide what it is that they want. Education is extremely important. Parents should want to do (and want to have done) as much as is practical to prepare their children for the future. Health care is also important. Parents should want their children's physical well being tended to as best as possible. That doesn't mean it's okay to make other people pay for it though, and it surely doesn't mean that the health care system should be devised so as to best provide work for would-be health care providers and driven by what's in those providers best interests.
Assuming we feel the need to collectively provide some basic level of education services and medical services to all children (i.e. force people to pay for other's needs and responsibilities), is it not reasonable that, even while agreeing to do so, we draw a line somewhere and say: this right here is as far as we will go - this is the amount we'll provide, the amount we'll give you - anything beyond this reasonable level of care is up to you (the parent) to provide?
Again, I want to be absolutely clear: I'm sure that many teachers deserve far better compensation, and are worth far more, than they are currently getting. I want them to be able to get it. I just don't want whatever it is to be arbitrarily determined. I want it to be the result of the same real dynamics that have always dictated 'fair' results. My hunch - and it really is just a hunch because my information about you is fairly limited - is that you're among the better teachers. If that's the case, I want you to be able to get what you deserve, and children to be able to benefit from your abilities and efforts, and to be able to benefit from more teachers being better at what they do.
It's not that I can say with certainty that all of the results of the current system are bad, it's that I can say with utmost confidence that the current system is dysfunctional (or, rather, non-functional) on a basic level. So, whatever good results it might create are happenstance. I want a system that seeks - that faciliates - good results. Then, I can trust that the results we will get will be as good as they ought to be.
An enterprise having (a significant portion of) its revenue guaranteed, without significant regard to the quality of its products or performance, does not guarantee that said products or performance will be deficient. That's true. However, it does leave open the substantial likelihood that its products or performance will be deficient, and more importantly, that they might continue to be deficient for significant periods of time, because the enterprise might continue to exist - in its deficient form - indefinitely, occupying market space that might otherwise be filled by a better enterprise, producing better products or performance.
It's not the teachers that, in every case, are to blame (for whatever it is we're referring to). It's the system. It's not that, in every case, we owe our children better teachers. It's that we owe our children (and our benefactors) a better system.