Who should be paid more money?

[AMoore]

catchacab wrote:

If you want to improve education

1. Eliminate tenure

2. Pay based on performance not seniority

3. Increase educational funding

Imagine a great teacher being recruited away by another school district offering him/her more money. Or being able to fire the teacher who has been in the district for 20 years that isn't able to connect with his/her students. Now we would have the free market economy working in the educational system.

Unfortunately, it is more difficult to measure a teacher's performance since each class of students is quite different - different size classes, different educational and socio-economic backgrounds, etc.

Additionally, do you really think a school district would rather pay $90,000 for an excellent teacher than $30,000 for an average teacher? The decision makers are bean counters who try to balance a budget in order to keep the taxpayers from whining. A charter school, trying to make a profit from the 5K per child they get from the government is certainly not going to pay extra for better teachers.