Free Market Education for Teacher
Posted by Adam Graham on January 22, 2008
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.
