American Innovation and Education

The education system is defunct.

The teaching unions have caused large cracks in the American Innovation Machine. Teachers seldom get fired, and there is no correlation between producing good students and teacher compensation.  Our state representatives allocate millions of dollars to build state of the art educational buildings, then pay teachers less than a McDonalds manager. 

Our colleges pay athletic directors more than $1 million per year and our top math instructors less than $80,000. No other country has this situation. In many countries, great national prestige is accompanied with the title professor. In this country, the position is maligned with quotes like the “Professors live in an ivory tower”, or “Those that can do work, those that can not teach.” 

The teacher's union bear the full responsibility for a  decline in education in our schools.  A brand new teacher with no experience has a staring salary of $30,000 per year. A teacher with 30 years experience makes $48,000  per year, which represents and annual increase in salary of less than 1% per year. Bad teachers and good teachers make the same salary. Teachers who grade papers at home make the same salary as teachers who do not. The teaching unions while making great noise over accountability really have none and pay is based on time in place rather than the production of great student And here is the final rub. 

The unions in most states are so strong that a person with 20 years of mathematics experience in a business environment, of giving seminars on math to hundreds of people is barred from teaching math in high school because he/she does not have a teaching certificate. The teaching union is not unlike the unions of the 30’s and 40’s—they did a great job for awhile.

The teaching unions are a barrier to providing the best teachers for our students. When was the last time you heard someone say they wished to grow up to be a teacher. Even the TV shows about teachers depict most of the typical teacher’s day “ Babysitting” rather than teaching.