{"id":2049,"date":"2023-02-13T10:34:48","date_gmt":"2023-02-13T15:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rep-am.org\/?page_id=2049"},"modified":"2023-02-13T10:34:49","modified_gmt":"2023-02-13T15:34:49","slug":"paying-fairly","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/rep-am.org\/?page_id=2049","title":{"rendered":"Paying fairly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Paying fairly<\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

YESTERDAY, THE BRITISH BUGGERS AT BTINTERNET BLOCKED THE MONITOR AS SPAM ONCE AGAIN, EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVEN\u2019T (YET)<\/strong> BLOCKED MY PERSONAL EMAILS FROM THE SAME ADDRESS.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

13 February\u2014El Liberalissimo came through with his estimation of fair pay for teachers. Sort of. While he doesn\u2019t explicitly say what\u2019s fair, he does cite figures of $86,000 for fully credentialed and experienced teachers; and $40,000 for newbies. El retired from teaching many years ago, so his implied fair-pay scale is kind of low for the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So El would doubtless be happy with over $100,000 for public school teachers with MA+30 credits near the top of the longevity step scale; and $50,000 for new hires with BA degrees. That\u2019s pretty much what teachers in Connecticut are getting these days. And I see nothing wrong with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By way of comparison, independent\u2014private, prep\u2014school teachers in Connecticut, who don\u2019t have to be certified, tend to be paid at least 30 percent less, while prep parents pay through the nose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For further comparison, a median salary for pharmacists and registered nurses in Connecticut, according to El, is around $150,000; UPS warehouse workers earn as much as $100,000; Amazon pickers in Danbury kill themselves for $40,000. Salary.com tells us the median pay for a Connecticut lawyer is $110,000, while Careerexplorer.com puts it at $132,000. Medical doctors are even harder to pin down with any degree of accuracy. Unskilled state and municipal employees in Connecticut can easily top $70,000 in base pay (plus impressive fringe benefits).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the slick beaconnecticuttrooper.com website, Connecticut State Trooper trainees get an annualized $50,000 for the six months they\u2019re in the Academy. They start work at over $60,000 and go to a top step of over $100,000, with the sky being the limit with lucrative overtime. Not to mention perks like free state car and gasoline (including for off-duty use), free uniforms and dry cleaning, and a meal allowance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

El Liberalissimo now asks how important is schooling (which he has narrowed from \u201ceverything\u201d and \u201ceducation\u201d) in a post-industrial democracy? Well, in that case, schooling\u2014learning how to live and work\u2014is vital, absolutely necessary, a sine qua non. (On the other hand, a so-called liberal education, of which El and I are recipients and proponents but which is pretty useless in the real world, isn\u2019t necessary at all, just wonderful to have.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

El develops his thesis: \u201cHow important is the quality of teachers to that schooling?\u201d He knows the answer must be \u201cvery important.\u201d But then, how are we to judge \u201cquality\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I\u2019ll skip over that imponderable and answer his logical kicker: \u201cWhat is the role of salary in attracting quality teachers able to challenge and motivate our children?\u201d Presumably El means high-quality teachers. So we\u2019re back to children? Anyway, from what I\u2019ve observed in teaching and other vocations, I\u2019m confident in asserting that while salary certainly is a consideration, it doesn\u2019t play that important a role. Teachers in private schools are a prime case in point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s all about a free-market economy. The easier jobs are to fill, the less they\u2019ll pay. And that has to do with schooling, qualifications, and experience, all of which are quantifiable. Expertise can be tested. Quality, on the other hand, is purely subjective\u2014a wild card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And let\u2019s not forget that better pay also attracts more losers, certified or otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what about class size?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YESTERDAY, THE BRITISH BUGGERS AT BTINTERNET BLOCKED THE MONITOR AS SPAM ONCE AGAIN, EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVEN\u2019T (YET) BLOCKED MY PERSONAL EMAILS FROM THE SAME ADDRESS. 13 February\u2014El Liberalissimo came through with his estimation of fair pay for teachers. Sort of. While he doesn\u2019t explicitly say what\u2019s fair, he does cite figures of $86,000 for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2049","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rep-am.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rep-am.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rep-am.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rep-am.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rep-am.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rep-am.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2051,"href":"https:\/\/rep-am.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2049\/revisions\/2051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rep-am.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}