Commenters on the AJC Get Schooled blog debated a plan to uncouple teacher raises from advanced degrees and experience. Georgia now bumps teacher pay when teachers earn a related advanced degree and rewards them for experience. But that may change as Georgia reconsiders how it pays teachers. Here is a sampling of comments:
Early: I would like for those not in the educational field to put yourselves in our shoes. Your boss tells you: "We are going to decide the average pay in the field and give everyone the same pay." Say you worked 10 years and make $75K. You are now told the base pay is $50K and your experience did not matter. Basically, this is what Georgia is proposing to teachers. I recently read an article that almost 1,000 teachers resigned from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools due to low teacher salaries. Some moved to Texas or South Carolina because they could make more money. If Georgia follows suit, we could also lose highly qualified educators.
Class: Some of the best teachers in the past had only a high school diploma. Sometimes I think going to "education" college makes you worse. For example, the brainwashing about social promotion.
Super: Having gone through a master's degree straight from my bachelor's and then a specialist's years later, I will say money was a motivation. But another motivation was to learn to become better at my craft. Why on earth would I pay thousands of dollars for another degree if I wasn't going to be able to be compensated for it in some manner? Did I become better at my craft? I did.
DC: Sadly, much of the advanced degree charade is aimed at one thing: increasing teacher's pay, with no positive impact on the students. None. And anyone who teaches knows that.
TeacherMom: The move to destroy teaching as a profession is gaining momentum. Folks like Governor Deal and his policy aide Erin Hames will find research to back up their claims that advanced degrees do not improve learning because test scores show little to no improvement. This has nothing to do with school reform or school improvement. This is simply a back-door approach to reduce teacher salaries and cut education budgets.
Georgian: Teaching is a profession. But if all you are after is standardized test score improvement, you can do that with highly trained technicians. You can use scripted lessons that will improve performance of reasonably motivated students, and you can train high school graduates to deliver these. You hire an administrative person to keep up with data, testing and ongoing assessment for many groups. Your child only attends school for three hours per day – 1.5 hours for reading and 1.5 hours for math – you figure out lunch and child care for the rest of the day. Voila. You have simultaneously destroyed teaching as a profession, cut all unnecessary classes, saved the taxpayers billions and put the burden of all-day child care, sports, clubs, art, music, career training, etc. back where it belongs — on the parent. What's not to like?
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