I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Loving/Hating the Free Market in Education

I really don't mean to pick on "Pitchfork" Bob so much, but when he posts something like this, I just can't let it go without comment:
Local control got us in this mess with too many superintendents making outrageous salaries with bennies. Too many school boards are in way over their heads or are linked to the system themselves.  Like in Bell, California, a tiny town where council members paid themselves $100,000 a year for part-time work and the city administrator made more than $700,000.
Yeah, a town council in CA is a great example of runaway superintendent costs in NJ. Maybe Pitchfork can find a story about a corrupt Afghan warlord to further illustrate his point about NJ administrators.

But just reading the rest of the post makes me wonder: isn't the current situation with superintendents what the Christie acolytes are pushing for teachers?

Supers don't get tenure - they get renewable contracts. Every super negotiates a different deal with every school board - those who are more desirable get paid more. The supers don't engage in collective bargaining. It's the only real example of "merit pay" we have in education right now.

Isn't this the free market in action? Why isn't the "merit pay" crowd loving how supers are paid?

Oh, and read the commenters below Bob's post to see why I've given him his new moniker.

1 comment:

thinker said...

Kinda makes a thinking person deduce that maybe the end goal is simply to pay the workers in education less and it doesn't really matter what we call it or how we get there.

Incidentally, when tenure ended for supers, education professionals warned that it would result in higher salaries but eithe rno one believed it or no one cared. I guess it doens't really matter if, after we end tenure for teachers, the salaries go up as districts compete for talented teachers. We can always just cap those salaries too.