Farewell (and Cheerio) From the K-12 Contrarian
It's been three years and 111 posts. It's time to say goodbye to the K-12 Contrarian.
It's been three years and 111 posts. It's time to say goodbye to the K-12 Contrarian.
It took awhile--after a year like last year, everyone seems to have been entitled to take some time off to recharge--but here's the second installment of my thoughts on government pension problems.
We have a full-blown pension crisis on our hands in Pennsylvania, but it's obvious what's happening here because we've seen this movie before: engineer a failure in a public system (or sit idly by while it happens), then blame the system for its failure. If we know the play maybe we can come up with a decent way to defend it.
One of the most persistent, and frustrating, myths in education is the myth of the fatcat teacher stealing precious school dollars to sock away in her gold-plated pension fund. Don't believe it. You might be the victim of a hoax.
The teacher shortage alarm has been sounded again. I would argue, though, that we don't just have a shortage of teachers on our hands; we have a shortage of well-paid teachers, and if we took steps to address it we might find the larger issue easier to tackle.
There is an old argument about teaching and teacher pay making the rounds, masquerading as a powerful new insight. The argument is that improving the working conditions of teachers is more important than raising teacher pay. Come on now.
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