teacher pay

[subjectivity]

A charter school in New York is experimenting with paying teachers $125,000 a year.

One good thing about charter schools is that they've been able to experiment.  My hunch is that you don't even have to pay teachers THAT much (well at least outside New York), just reasonably more than what they make now and enough to support a comfortable middle

Comments

[tevarin]

If your teachers are working the same hours, with classes no larger than standard, for more-than-standard pay, and you aren't cutting anything else, you need more money. Where do you get it?

I see your point that teacher pay, high or not, shouldn't be stagnant. Bonuses and promotions, upward mobility makes sense. Downward mobility too. Seniority bonuses would be counterproductive.

[subjectivity]

well, I'm curious to see how his no-assistant-principals thing works. That's one place to get more money, saving both on salary and office space. If you cut some electives, or share electives with other schools, that saves money on equipment and number of teachers you need. I'd be curious to see where his grants are coming from because I doubt they are sustainable, especially if he wanted to expand this program to public schools. I don't think class sizes are the only other way he is saving money, and it's possible if I saw his list of things he is cutting I might not agree with it. I can think of a lot of ways to save money in public education that are not politically feasible at this point. So back to the individual schools

[tevarin]

Ah, I forgot you'd have the teachers working more days. Does that let you hire fewer teachers?

I like the idea of open-source lessons a lot.

We should get Mom in on this conversation. She's got more background than anybody on this.