Free Market Education for Teacher

From a recent Letter to the Editor by Heather Beutler:

First of all, I appreciate the intent behind Luna’s pay plan. I am a teacher myself and would love to see a pay raise. This is my eighth year teaching and my paycheck has changed by maybe $300. I guess I just don’t understand what giving up my contract rights has to do with student achievement. Can Luna answer that question for me? Am I going to try harder in my classroom every day because now I don’t have protection from being fired? I don’t understand why that component is in Luna’s plan.

In a word, yes. There are a lot of complacent teachers out there, in part because a good teachers makes as much as a bad teacher and they can never get fired. Giving up some contract rights has the effect of putting you in a fully incentivized situation, where you’re responsible for your performance and there are consequences for that.

I am a professional and I deserve to be treated as such.

That’s a two way street. Most professionals are much easier to fire if unsatisfactory results than are unionized teachers.

Build Families, Build Prisons, Take Your Pick

I have to wonder at the incredible short-sightedness of the Otter Administration which seems to non-chalantly comment on the overcrowding of our prisons with no clue as to addressing what’s going on.

Fundamentally, this comes back to the decline of family and the rate of fatherlessness in our communities. If we fail to address that, then we’d better expect to build a lot more prisons and get a lot more creative with space, because the number of criminals will keep on growing.

Tax Increase With No Purpose Dies

Hurrah to the Idaho Legislature for not voting for a senseless tax increase. It was senseless in that there was no point to the tax increase. There was no new program that would be funded, no taxes that would be cut, no comprehensive tax reform program, just eliminating some tax exemptions, just ‘cuz. Hey, I’m all for tax simplification, but it’s got to be part of a broader package. Simply removing exemptions with no reason isn’t going to fly.