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Originally Posted by mzdagrl  Not to say that they don't deserve to make money, either, but going back to the fact that I am almost flat broke and I educate the next generation... It's a little sad when I have to refinance my condo in order to afford the mortgage and i work in education, while some dude who owns stock in an oil company is rolling in it. There is something wrong with any country that values oil more than our kids' brains. |
Unfortunately that is the way capitalism works. From a business perspective, public eduation does nothing but lose money since they are not providing a product or service that generates revenue. Since it is our tax money that funds the majority of education through high school, people are disenchanted with the diminishing returns they get every time their taxes are increased to fund public education.
What I see as one of the significant problems with public education is the teacher's union which promotes mediocrity by fighting for contracts that base pay increases on seniority instead of merit. Every contract I have heard of doesn't have any form of merit based pay increases. Everything is based off of how long you have managed to not get fired. This ensures that the mediocre teachers will get their raise every year and not have any fear of being replace. You can work your ass off helping kids in ways far beyond what is expeted in your position and you will get the same raise as the lazy ass burnt out teacher that has been there forever and already makes 50% more than you. This same union has also made it virtually impossible to remove these bad teachers which just perpetuates the problem.
I would love to see an education system where the underpeforming teachers are shown the door and and the ones that make the cut are rewarded with larger pay increases and given incentives to be the best they can be.