re: LA Legislature to address Teacher Shortage using Retirees earning 50%.

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The biggest lie we have told society is that we underpay teachers.

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This is 100% true.

Especially in Missouri. We have a phenomenal teacher’s retirement system. So that pay extends all the way into their retirement.

An example, Parkway School District is a large district in suburban St. Louis. If you get a Masters degree and teach for 20 years, you’re making $83,000/yr this year.

In retirement at 30 years, assuming no increase in salary, you’d get around $7k/mo in pension benefits and be allowed to purchase your health insurance in the group until 65.

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So newer educators are actually earning almost 30 bucks an hour for actual time worked. About the same as Dental Hygienists.

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So we pay teachers with a degree the same way we pay people who get an associates degree.

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Now if we can just figure out a way to know who the good ones are...

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The only way that will truly work is a value added metric.

Fifth grade teacher starts the year with 28 students in a classroom. Based upon how those 28 kids did, as a cohort, on fourth grade testing / grades, it can be predicted how that class will perform on fifth grade testing / grades.

If the cohort beats the prediction - great teacher, consider more pay and promotion to "better" classes

If the cohort meets the prediction - good teacher, pay average

If the cohort fails the prediction - potentially a bad teacher. First year, free pass. Second year in a row, additional training / work with a mentor teacher. Third year in a row, find a new position.

Teachers cannot be held responsible for the crap teaching the kids received prior, or the crap family environment, etc. They can only be held responsible for the value they add, compared to expectation.

We have now over 20 years of state testing data. We can do longitudinal analysis and predictive scoring. The tools are all there, just need to use them.

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A lot of teachers suck in Louisiana. And I'm not saying that teachers are underpaid. But it's pretty clear that Louisiana isn't always getting the best and brightest for this line of work.

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And what is there to attract "the Best and Brightest " to live and work in Louisiana ?

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So newer educators are actually earning almost 30 bucks an hour for actual time worked. About the same as Dental Hygienists.

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Well a lot of teachers have general studies degrees along with other shite degrees so let’s not get out of hand.

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Teaching is a noble profession

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And even at elementary schools you have specialist teachers (PE, art, music, etc) who would need a different system.

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Did you ever have a bad PE teacher? Or a good PE teacher?

All I had were coaches who just let us do whatever.

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However, I think that system falls apart outside of elementary school

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I think it would work pretty well with your building block subjects like matn and ELA.

Science and social studies, where the subject material changes from year to year, it would be harder, sure. But the cohorts would be larger, because you are teaching more kids a day. You could still use data to say, these 110 kids averaged a score of X on US History, kids who got a similar score on US History averaged a Y score in Civics.

Having a larger cohort would reduce the impact from some kids just deciding to screw around or something.

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And on a political level there would be a lot of upset teachers who discover they are not as good they thought they were because they had good (often middle-class) students.

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I've often said that a teacher who can bring a D inner city student to a C inner city student is a better teacher than one that can bring a B middle class student to an A middle class student.

I think such a system WOULD tell us who the best teachers are, and they aren't going to be the ones we think they are.

That's ok.

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You mean like the real world? You know the founder of Microsoft dropped out of college don’t you?

There are farmers who make more than lawyers. There are small business owners who make more than engineers. Should oil rig workers make less than interior designers??

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Of course... but all of them took risks to get there. And only a small percentage are that successful.

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Sure there is the outlier that actually gives a shite about the kids, but mostly, they just want to be called "heroes" and demand a paycheck for not working.

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The outlier is the unions and their affiliated teachers. All teachers I associate with believe that going virtual was an unmitigated disaster that they're going to have to pay for for years to come. The media never covered those teachers.

We would see a repeat of the Atlanta school controversy where the teachers were changing the test answers so the kids would meet standards.