> Also, I don't see why it's unfair to call a teacher or firefighter overpaid.
Education should be extremely well compensated. There's a host of reasons why it's a good idea to pay teachers the way doctors, lawyers and engineers are paid; but it all comes down to wanting the best and brightest working in education, because kids getting a shitty education decreases the country's ability to produce bright people, whereas kids getting a good education increases the country's overall intelligence.
Instead, those people work on ads. Idiocracy thought it'd be the cosmetics industry. Turns out…
You're arguing for higher standards for teachers, which would naturally increase the market rate compensation. I don't think thats whats happening.
We can have a discussion about increasing the minimum training for teachers to be additional years + a PhD. I'm sure this would naturally increase the quality of teaching and also increase the market rate for teachers since there are less people who are qualified.
We can also discuss raising salaries if the school simply cannot find enough teachers.
It doesn't make as much sense to say we should simply increase the pay of teachers if there is a huge backlog of qualified applicants.
I believe SF is having a teacher shortage, so for that reason, it makes sense to increase teacher pay. But I think too often people make moralistic arguments for government pay but free market arguments for everyone else.
Someone might also reasonably feel that more money for teachers does not, by itself improve outcomes. It's certainly possible for bad teachers to be paid a lot, which some people might call "being overpaid" even if there exists some other teacher that is making more money and is perhaps underpaid.
Or, someone might reasonably think that teachers play only one part in educational outcomes, and that investing more in teaching quality isn't an efficient use of resources.
Or maybe both those people are wrong. But it's hardly dangerous to entertain the complaints of the people paying the bills.
I will agree with your position the second compensation for teacher is tied to performance. However unions do not want any compensation tied to performance, nor do most people on the "left"
They simply want the high salaries with no responsibly to produce results.
Education should be extremely well compensated. There's a host of reasons why it's a good idea to pay teachers the way doctors, lawyers and engineers are paid; but it all comes down to wanting the best and brightest working in education, because kids getting a shitty education decreases the country's ability to produce bright people, whereas kids getting a good education increases the country's overall intelligence.
Instead, those people work on ads. Idiocracy thought it'd be the cosmetics industry. Turns out…