Tom Dempster versus the SDEA
Republican State Senator Tom Dempster was interviewed on KDLT, and had some good thoughts on why it’s important to allow differential pay for teachers based on supply and demand (imagine that?).
Sen. Dempster says, “I think the philosophy is should everybody in our economic system out of a sense of fairness and out of a sense of equity make exactly the same compensation? Well I don’t think so. That’s just crazy. That means that you’re going to have shortages all over the place.”
But some educators disagree. Executive Director of the South Dakota Education Association Bryce Healy believes if pay isn’t based on experience and education it could ruin the cohesive work environment because teachers’ salaries are made public. Adding it isn’t right that someone who has been teaching for many years would be paid the same as someone just starting out. And by compensating pay in certain subjects it could cause other problems.
Bryce Healy says, “You have students in college now that say I am going to shift my goals towards math and science and you could have an unintended consequence of actually creating a shortage in another area.”
Read it all here. or, click below to watch it.
(I’d embed the video, but this is KDLT we’re talking about. Any such capabilities would require that KDLT embrace 2005 era technology. - pp)
Anyway, I have to disagree with my friend Bryce. When he says that “you could have an unintended consequence of actually creating a shortage in another area” he says that as if it’s a bad thing. WRONG – it is simple economics, and that pesky principle of supply and demand. If we get a glut of people in one field after paying them more, then we don’t need to pay at an increased rate. We wouldn’t cut their pay, but we’d not have to use increased pay to recruit. What we do is to shift to what areas are then in demand.
It’s what businesses in the real world do, isn’t it?
If it would have any unintended consequence, it would increase the rate of pay overall as the balance of who got paid at an increased level shifted over time.
Imagine that – a plan to increase teacher pay naturally based on supply and demand. Sounds like something a teacher in economics 101 might suggest.
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Comments
good for dempster. he’s dead on correct.
mr. healy’s comments just show how shortsighted too many educrats are. if there becomes a shortage in another area, then you shift salaries and incentives, accordingly. it’s simple, if you’re not stuck in a bureacratic mindset, such as that of the SDEA.
Everybody keeps saying that their is this loss for Math/ Science teachers. I’d like to see some more data on this before I make too critical of a decision, as I know there are schools looking for English teachers also. I would argue it is a location situation, rather than subject, but I would like to see more data.
Also, wasn’t this was the TCAP funds were supposed to do? Didn’t Governor Rounds take this away already and now he’s just going to give it back as a ‘new’ idea?
PP, as I read again, I really want to look again at data that says that we need more Math/ Science teachers and not teachers in general.
we all need a raise!
comparing south dakota teachers to other south dakota workers in the private sector:
according to the American Federation of Teachers’ 2005 Teacher Salary Report, south dakota teacher pay ranked 23rd in “Average Salary of Teachers Compared with Annual Earnings in the Private Sector.” (www.aft.org/salary/2005/download/AFT2005SalarySurvey.pdf
And here we go again – the Republican Governor and a Republican (is he Republican?) legislator trying to be school board members. Salaries are set by school boards, which are free to do what they want.
You don’t like local control? Do away with school boards. You don’t want to eliminate school boards then get off of their backs. The State’s role is to provide funding. The School Board’s role is to manage the schools. The GOP these days seems to be all about micromanaging and taking away local control.
1:01
Is this mandated? I do not see that in the article, but maybe it is somewhere else. I thought it just allowed schools to pay certain positions more.
So, we raise the salaries of the Math and Science teachers until we no longer have a shortage. Then, according to PP, we raise the salaries of the other subjects that need the recruiting. My question is where is the funding for all these salary increases coming from? According to our State Legislators there is just no more funding available. We have appropriated all we can afford, so what do we cut? Or does the gov have another secret stash of funds like the laptop monies?
Maybe if we got rid of sports funded by tax dollars there would be enough money to pay actual teachers more. By the time schools hide all the costs of the extracurriculars in their budgets it looks like they cost little, but I’m getting they cost a whole lot more. Check out the minutes from your local school board and start highlighting all the costs for other than academic, factoring in of course the cost of school buses, their wear and tear, the huge gas bills for their multiple trips across the state, liability insurance, etc etc etc.
the u.s. senate just passed an amendment that provides some money for hard-to-recruit teachers, as well as for high-performing teachers.
but even more to the point, if a school district has a shortage of teachers this year, it will have money left over for the next year.
Pay them once, they’ll keep hollering, just as they have for many years already. Better pay will not produce better education. School choice is a good place to start. According to the post above, it appears that teacher pay is actually pretty good in relation to private sector jobs.
The problem is how does a school district define high producing teachers? Would probably be a popularity contest. And the winners will be, guess who, the winning coaches!!!!
I agree that you should pay math/science teachers more if it’s hard to recruit and keep them. But in my kids’ school, both the science and the math teachers were poor; however, they were good coaches. Parents complained over the years which did no good because after all these were coaches!
My son was at a disadvantage when he went to college because he was going into a field with heavy emphasis on science; he made it OK but was a lot harder without a good background.
There also needs to be a way to make sure that these teachers we pay more for are actually GOOD teachers.