Why make millions when we can make thousands?
Posted on 11/03/2015 12:38:20 PM PST by MichCapCon
A Detroit businessman’s idea to attract talent to the city’s public schools by paying teachers between $125,000 to $150,000 could cost close to half a billion dollars every year. If superimposed on the school district’s current salaries and the state’s pension system, it would add up to $462 million to the Detroit school district’s $642 million annual operating budget, a 72 percent increase.
Peter Karmanos, who founded Compuware and is the owner of the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes, offered the idea on Charlie Langton’s radio show.
According to the most recent state records, there were 3,677 teachers in the Detroit Public Schools district earning an average of $57,758 a year. To boost that average to an across-the-board $125,000 salary would cost an additional $247 million. Paying all teachers $150,000 per year would require an extra $339 million.
That would not be the end of the increase in the obligations DPS would face, however. Those elevated payrolls would also make the district responsible for much higher contributions to the underfunded state-run school pension system. These expenses tack another $90 million or $123 million to the cost of paying Detroit teachers $125,000 or $150,000 salaries.
Karmanos suggested that his preference was for a school system run by the mayor, paying these kinds of salaries and operating differently in other ways, too.
“You’d have to make it one of the more esteemed jobs around, they would have to be recognized for being teachers, and you would have to insist that people who sent the kids to your public school system would have to spend some time on those kids’ education,†Karmanos said.
Gary Naeyaert, the executive director of the Great Lakes Education Project, also says the most effective teachers in Michigan should make six-figure salaries. But he references one shortcoming in the status quo Detroit system that makes the idea problematic: Determining which teachers are effective.
The Detroit school district finished last nationwide among urban school districts in reading and math in the recently released 2015 National Assessment of Education Progress, called “The Nation’s Report Card.†Yet this same school district also gave nearly 80 percent its teachers the top rating possible — “highly effective†— according to the most recent state data, from 2013-14.
“You can’t have an evaluation system that ranks everyone as ‘highly effective’ and then pay them that way,†Naeyaert said.
Under Naeyaert’s ideal, teachers whose students show 1.5 years of growth compared to their peers on standardized tests over a year would be the ones getting six-figure salaries.
They must figure that $150,000 per year is really combat pay.
Because they are obviously doing a fantastic job with such a high graduation rate, right?
Why not a $1 million a year?
Failure rewarded!
What utter crap. Students are illiterate now... giving the current teachers a raise won’t fix it.
Fire them all and pay them no money then the average salary for the area.
Oh... and drop the lifetime pension bs
I wanted to have the worse reply. What is happening to the fonts here at FR?
Watched a video of Hillary supporters being asked if they support Hillary’s push for Shariah Law in the country......stunningly they all agreed! Just goes to show they haven’t a clue about reality...only what they want it to be and that will rest in a “Person” not in what the person stands for or against.
hey simply believe what they are told.....stunningly so!
Well, if the liberals have their way on everything, fry cooks would be making $100,000 a year, so a teacher’s job wouldn’t be especially well paid (assuming $150,000 is their desired standard). Liberals are mainly concerned with devaluing the dollar, and can pick up the economically-ignorant public school teachers as voters along the way with this plan.
DANG!
You really need to pay someone 150k a year to teach them how to put rubbers on?
This idea is going about as far as the Tigers and Lions this year.
No more pretendies. Teacher salaries HAVE to include the ENTIRE COMPENSATION PACKAGE, and pay for it in that budget year. No more makeups if investments go bad - those are called investments, you're paid money based on risk - you don't get a free ride on risk...
At the end of each budget year, the entire ‘balance’ owed for salaries should be zero. And if that fund only lasts 6 years with platinum health care benefits? Then it only lasts 6 years.
Better yet, dump all benefits and pay the teachers the entire amount. Let them pick what retirement plans or investments (or maybe they'll just upgrade their home or start a business on the side, or some other way of managing that money - heck, maybe they'll blow it on fancy parties - I don't care anymore - get these things off of the budget card.)
Shoot, probably a lot of these teachers will be absolutely angry how much ‘of their money’ was going into expensive benefits and retirement packages. Oh, and you'll likely reach the average of 120k per year JUST by un-hiding the retirement, vacation, sick days, and health care.
Those that can, do.
Those who can't, rip off (er, I mean "teach").
I’m gonna have to stop pulling for the Hurricanes now....sheesh, what an idiotic idea.
Better teachers are always better, but no matter what the quality of the teachers, students who don’t want to learn, won’t anyway. Good students start at home.
This guy sure could have used a better teacher.
When I graduated from the military in the ‘90s, inner city Baltimore offered me a $22,500 a year job teaching, but I had to turn it down because they wouldn’t also pay for my ammo. $150,000 could fund some escape and evasion training and a new carry gun with laser.
ML/NJ
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.