Good luck getting your pay raise if you can’t defend it except with hand-waving.
Regards,
Shodan
Maybe, just maybe, you’re not really understanding his argument, and what you think he’s saying is not actually what he’s saying? Just a possibility, perhaps.
Is this a staying out until things change? Or a one day action?
Because the Oklahoma Republican Party just adopted the policy platform that OK educators/districts should be punished for each day we miss work. And they wonder why we spent weeks at the capitol.
I doubt that I am misunderstanding anything.
He’s trying to talk away the fact that there is no evidence that teachers with advanced degrees are more effective than those without. If he has a different justification for the bonus, he could present it. Apparently he doesn’t.
Regards,
Shodan
Good luck winning arguments with condescension and ad hominem.
You engaged in a rhetorical tactic. You claimed something your opponent never said, and tried to redirect them into having to refute that, tacitly admitting that your summary was correct.
They refused to engage with that tactic and simply told you that your summary was incorrect, refusing to allow you to take control of the narrative.
Because this tactic was frustrated, you were left with lashing out and trying to make the other person feel bad.
What that doesn’t do is provide an actual counterargument to what was said.
And if this is the level of opposition they face–with no actual reasons why their proposals are bad–and they keep control of the narrative on this,making it clear there is no valid opposition
…They win.
I will give your suggestions all the serious consideration they deserve, BigT.
Regards,
Shodan
I assume NC schools pay the tuition for teachers that get a MA/MS degree while they are teaching? It’s pretty standard in business to pay for tuition for employees. If schools don’t pay tuition then the pay bump would replace that .
Definitely not. Schools used to pay for teachers to gain National Board certification, but I’m pretty sure that’s gone as well. (When I got my certification, due to some bizarro accounting glitch I had to pay for it myself, because although I was a normal classroom teacher, accounting at central office drew my salary from local funds and not state funds. It suhuhucked.)
As for Shodan, he’s said his straw man piece, and he believes he’s won the argument, and I’m fine leaving it at that for him. For folks who are interested in a serious conversation, I’d love it if you could leave him with his sense of victory as well.
What’s #3 - the retiree benefit restoration?
I live in NC and that’s bad about not paying tuition. I wonder why some people stay in teaching so long, it’s not for the money. I have met some former teachers who left for other jobs and they make more money. I assume most people going back for MS degree go to a state school but even then tuition is not cheap now. I can’t see them going to Duke with their sky high tuition.
Tuition reimbursement is tax deductible up to IIRC ~$5k/employee.year, so is more expensive for a government entity like a school to offer.
Plus, as the OP mentioned in a later post, increased eduction has not been shown, on average, to correlate with improved student outcomes. So it makes little sense to offer this particular benefit.
What does make sense is to increase pay if needed to improve hiring and retention, possibly across the board, but especially for specific, hard-to-fill positions. If, for example, the state is flooded with AP physics teachers but has trouble finding elementary school Eurythmy instructors, the state or districts should be free to adjust wages, offer bonuses, etc , to account for market dynamics. It appears that NC already has a limited policy along these lines (not for Eurythmy though AFAICT). I can’t speak to whether it is sufficient.
I haven’t seen new numbers, but NC at least used to have pretty bad turnover (like top 10). Which suggests some means of improving retention may be warranted. I also suspect that plotting both the real NC and US teacher salary time series might be revelatory.
Read here. It’s specifically health insurance benefits, removed through an un-debated budget trick in 2017, but not effective until 2021.
Thanks. So this is similar to reduced pension benefits for employees hired after a certain date in an effort to curb pension expense. It’s definitely a reduction in benefits, or comp, but this doesn’t seem that out of line with what many government employers are doing to cut costs. I view it similar to a curtailing of a defined benefit plan. Is that about right?
Yes–it’s not outrageous.
But it’s a bad idea.
North Carolina has low pay and poor benefits for teachers, and has trouble recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers. Retirement benefits are one of the perks to joining and staying in the profession. Removing them removes another incentive to remain in the profession.
The bill was proposed earlier and withdrawn under opposition, but then reinserted into the budget in a last-minute maneuver; otherwise it would never have passed.
Our retirement system has a budget shortfall, but that’s because the state keeps cutting taxes. It’s a problem of our own making, and we need to solve it.
since most businesses pay tuition for a MS degree for employees they must think there is some value gained by getting the extra degree. But maybe they just are being nice and don’t care about their spending?
Where’s the research showing that the MS degree offers any benefit???!!?!? Without consistent peer-reviewed research, THE BENEFIT DOESN’T EXIST!
Some things are easily subjected to quantifiable research. One of the great fiascos of early-21st-century education policy is the attempt to subject education to such research. While at some point someone may succeed in doing so, the current attempts rely overwhelmingly on standardized testing, which is a shitass measure of pedagogical success.
So I’m deeply, deeply skeptical of the findings about correlations (or lack thereof) between advanced degrees and teacher success. That doesn’t mean there’s no correlation; it just means we lack effective tools for quantifying it.
When you lack the tools to quantify a correlation, though, that doesn’t tie your hands, as nearly everyone in the world understands. You simply have to rely on other methods to determine a wise course of action.
They cap it. It’s tax deductible. Most people don’t use it. And at least in my case, you have to pay them back if you leave within a certain time. So they can tout it on their bennies slick sheet without it costing much. Whether it actually improves profit, I’ve not seen an analysis. I’m skeptical.
I worked for a place that had a ton of benefits but did not pay tuition. They had a super low turnover rate but somehow thought if people got a MS or PhD they would quit. And ironically they really like to hire MS and PhD people but they wanted you to get the degrees before they hired you.
Mine wanted my PhD, I honestly think unnecessarily but it’s a selling point to clients. Our admin/receptionist/travel people all have BAs. If I were to rank my program managers, we’d see no correlation with PMP certs, MBAs, or nothing. Although obviously small samples/anecdotes don’t tell us much. Education is great. But it has a cost, both out-of-pocket and in opportunity. And credentialism results in using funds that could be better allocated elsewhere.
That’s extremely fucked up 