You still have a lot of those old republican talking points in your dna. Coming from a parochial school graduate I'm sure that all makes sense to you. You got a great education obviously. Have you been in TPS classrooms lately? There is great new leadership from a superintendent that graduated from Tulsa Hale. She's made improvements in morale and operations. The schools are pretty high tech. BT puts out great college material. Jenks public does pretty well. Edison is okay. The rest are struggling but tech doesn't make kids smarter anymore than great buildings do, its merely a tool. It is parental support and environment for sure. Inner city kids don't have as much of that as Cascia, BK or Holland Hall. So, what, we punish any teachers that work for them? When you send a fresh college grad to work at Marshall and he realizes he is a social worker, a source for lunch money for hungry kids, a source of basic materials, a teacher of kids with mental problems, a traffic director in the parking lot, and yet is responsible for the failure of something he has no control over? Then you pay less than Texas or Kansas? Kansas?? Well, you have a prescription for failure.
Have you sent kids to public schools? I just took a group from a struggling but improving west side grade school to Holland Hall. The contrast is striking. The perfect Holland Hall students are something to admire. Their school is manicured suburban college campus. They come from fine families. Wealthy families. White families. Asian families. They understand the concept of reaching out to less fortunate at a very young age. The west siders are blue collar, children of meth addicts, coping poor, black, Hispanic, blind, ADD and poorly dressed by comparison. Thankfully, the kids don't know that. The teachers work more than 8 a day and get two months off but their less than the rest of the country income is augmented by extra jobs and spousal jobs. Its stressful to deal with the public perception, the families, the administration and the lack of respect their state gives them.
Many are doing a fantastic job with the kids that the suburbs don't have to take, (and don't encourage them to come unless they run like a college half back). And don't get me started on Special Needs teachers who have the craziest jobs ever created. Do you spend much time talking with TPS teachers? I'm guessing not. Engineers, accountants, teachers all have four year degrees. Yet only teachers are expected to be judged so harshly on their work when the company is performing poorly. If we were to take your logic, then engineers are only worth what they create, fix, design, or operate. So, no need to research market pay, simply put them on the job at less than surrounding state pay and if your company does well, then pay them more. If it doesn't, pay them less or grade them on their "productivity". Only it doesn't work like that. An engineer costs what the market in our area is willing to pay. Hard to find engineers in particular fields whether they are good or not. Of course, you can fire them if you truly can justify it but its not likely. If you don't like that example, choose a career. Most operate on that basis.
So, I don't see the dichotomy. The teachers that moved to Texas and Kansas weren't necessarily the best, they were the ones that could. No family to hold them here, no husband or one that could relocate, no kids, no roots. Nor will they find a significant difference in public schools in those states. They left for more money, more support from their public and a chance to pay off student loans and have a life. Something I think you can identify with. You wouldn't work for less than you think you're worth. $5000 will not be enough to make up for their working conditions but they can't all be absorbed by private schools. It will be enough to give them some self respect and make them think twice about living in ...Kansas.
Your condescending and mis-guided assumptions about others never cease to make me chuckle, Aqua.
At the time I was at Cascia, a greater majority of the faculty I had more of a rapport with ranged from being a Bernie type liberal to just to the left of Stalin. If anything, that is probably where some of my left leaning ideals come from. More than anything, my ideas on merit-based pay have come from my working career not anything I was indoctrinated with in school.
Going back to what I see as a dichotomy of teachers being willing to accept lower pay for better working conditions: Offer higher pay for those willing to make a difference in at risk schools in the poorer parts of the city, such as your example of Marshall. BTW does extremely well as they more-or-less hand-pick their students and suburban systems do great too as you have a lot of parental support and participation in those districts. But, you can continue to pay someone at a higher rate, but if their job is still insanely stressful, they may eventually opt to take a less stressful gig elsewhere. Ergo, higher pay still is no guarantee of getting the best and brightest where you really need them within a district.
Both my daughters are public school graduates and public university grads, so yes, I know what it is to have a child in public schools in recent history. I’m grateful they are out as I’m quite certain there has been a degradation of the public education system in the years between my time in school and theirs. Whether that’s due to cuts in education spending, spending money in the wrong areas, or parental apathy has been on the rise over the last 30 years is an endless debate.
I realize capital funds which pay for stadiums and training facilities are different than operating funds which pay for teachers and support staff. It still frosts me to drive past the Taj Mahal of a football stadium for the Stillwater Pioneers and hear anyone talk about needing teacher raises in Stillwater. I totally get that having nice facilities to learn in and do extracurricular activities in are good for the learning environment and the morale of teachers and students alike but we seemed to do just fine with wooden bleachers, no air conditioning, and 20-30 student core classes back in my day. I think too much emphasis has been placed on capital improvements amongst school systems while totally neglecting the real needs of the educational process (what those are is yet another endless debate).
I chatted last night with a life-long friend who is a middle school teacher at TPS. While he would love to have a raise, he’s adamantly against SQ779 as he believes the funding mechanism is all wrong and he has zero trust that the legislature won’t figure out a way to make cuts again when the economy tanks again down the road or that some of his benefits package could be cut later. I asked, from his perspective, do raises make teachers more effective? He says absolutely not, but he said feeling appreciated via a pay raise does make a difference in teacher morale.
How long that sense of appreciation lasts and whether that translates into becoming a more effective educator is anyone’s guess.
Your last paragraph is well-reasoned. Not every teacher who fled Oklahoma for a raise is necessarily the best of our educators, they simply had the freedom to travel. By the same token, those people also had the freedom to go back to school and become educated for a different occupation for which they could be paid quite a bit more but they chose not to.
If there were empirical evidence which supports a clear correlation between higher teacher pay and better educational results, I could get behind every teacher raise ever proposed and I’d suggest first year pay should start in the $50K range. There simply is no positive link anyone has been able to identify without logical refutation.
Everyone wants to be paid a fair market value for their skills. Some people end up under-paid and some simply have an over-inflated view of their skills.
Finally, and I’ll bow out and quit bloviating: voting yes on this measure rewards laziness in the Oklahoma Legislature. This funding "crisis" has existed here for decades, so why make a poor choice now "just to get something”? That is the worst logic of all to pass any bill or state question. If the true shortfall for education is $2 billion then why pass a measure which comes up 66% short of the “true” need? Prior measures apparently have fallen short or rather the later actions of the legislature have nullified their benefit. Let’s quit rewarding the cowardice of the GOP to raise income taxes and property taxes if there is such belief that revenue for education needs to be raised.