> For Dallas schools, “it’s about the passion, not about the paper,” said Robert Abel, the district’s human capital management chief.
It's also about the paper (the Benjamins).
During Covid, I know and heard of teachers who decided they just weren't getting paid enough for the conditions.
Already underpaid, they were then told to do additional things, including teach before a class of germ-factory children without being allowed to wear a mask when mask advisories were otherwise in effect. Or to take additional workload to teach both in-person and remote. Or, in the case of college lecturers and professors, to record video lectures that the school could reuse without them (video streaming is even cheaper than an adjunct).
It'd make sense to pay and treat teachers like the enormously important educators and nurturers of children that they are.
You can still get passion, but people saying someone else should do work out of passion... always sound like they're exploiting.
Paying teachers more will bring talent. Oklahoma had this problem when Texas started paying more a few years ago and Oklahoma experienced a brain drain of good teachers[0].
Texas is discussed a lot in this article. Texas has a problem with lack of teachers that could easily be alleviated by offering higher teacher salaries. Texas can afford to pay more. Texas gets a flush of money that could easily go to paying teachers more through its recapture system that is supposed to go to education but instead due to corruption is used to balance the general fund[1].
The general fund is used, among other things, to fund oil and gas subsidies.
> Texas gets a flush of money that could easily go to paying teachers more through its recapture system that is supposed to go to education
I'd be curious about how popular a straight-up pay raise for teachers is with voters. Not an education budget boost. Just raising pay on the argument that it will let the district/state attract the best candidates.
People whine about teachers being overpaid constantly. People call it part time work. People call teachers glorified babysitters. People complain about summer break. I’m not confident that the “other people are freeloaders” voters are going to be excited about pay raises.
It probably depends on how high other salaries are in the community. My parents were both teachers and even though they made very little, teachers were perceived as having some of the highest salaries in the area. This shows you how impoverished the rest of the community was. Paying them more was not popular with voters. "They make so much and they even get summers off" went the myth. This was a solidly blue collar working class town where kids were expected to barely graduate high school and then go work at the mill in town or the factory two towns over. Not sure if things have changed since then but they're probably even worse with those mill and factory jobs now gone. Teachers' awful salaries are probably still higher than most there, which is pretty sad.
We went through a recent bond election on our town that is currently under investigation by the state for electioneering.
Schools get a ton of money. Property rates go up. We have good schools.
But let me tell you, every school kid got a stupid iPad.
Every. Single. One. Apparently the "answer" to the pandemic wasn't printed worksheets... it was iPads.
I'm sorry—but it's totally stupid. The schools are wasting crap-tons of money on tech that kids don't need. That money should be going to the teachers... but it isn't!
The kind of base-model iPad that schools buy costs about $300 with education pricing and volume discounts. If you assume they last two years and there are 15 students for each teacher at the school, your school is spending about $2,250 per teacher per year on iPads.
Teachers make about $60k a year, so your school could either give them a 4% raise, or they could buy a bunch of iPads.
The iPads will probably have a bigger short-term impact, even if they're a bad long-term choice. At the very least, they'll look nicer to voters.
It's also about the paper (the Benjamins).
During Covid, I know and heard of teachers who decided they just weren't getting paid enough for the conditions.
Already underpaid, they were then told to do additional things, including teach before a class of germ-factory children without being allowed to wear a mask when mask advisories were otherwise in effect. Or to take additional workload to teach both in-person and remote. Or, in the case of college lecturers and professors, to record video lectures that the school could reuse without them (video streaming is even cheaper than an adjunct).
It'd make sense to pay and treat teachers like the enormously important educators and nurturers of children that they are.
You can still get passion, but people saying someone else should do work out of passion... always sound like they're exploiting.