Amadeo D’Adamo Jr., Renate Drive
A recent letter challenged my calculations of the cost of teaching per student per hour as a way of showing salaries of teachers are not out of line.
The writer negated this calculation by making a comparison with the cost of gasoline per mile traveled. The cost of human services can in no way be compared with the cost of driving a car.
The writer does have a point about poor or disinterested teachers, although in my experience they are a small percentage of the tenured faculty.
Tenure is actually a covenant agreement. The public, through the Board of Education, agrees to provide a near lifetime employment. The teacher, at the same time, agrees to maintain skills, enthusiasm and concern for all the students in the class, etc. over a likely 30-year period.
The problem of incompetent or poorly motivated teachers, can be approached by modifying the present tenure standards:
* The time to arrive at a tenure re-appointment should be increased to seven years instead of the usual three years.
* Lock-step increases in salary where all teachers receive the same increase should be eliminated. Instead, there should be different titles and income for teachers of different effectiveness. These titles might be instructor, assistant master teacher, associate master teacher, and master teacher. Promotion to the next step would not be guaranteed but should be no less than six years. Within grades salary increases would be the same for all teachers in that grade.
* Every four years all tenured teachers in a district should be ranked by criteria agreed to by the union and a state board of education so the standards will be the same through out the state. Teachers in the lowest 10 percentile will have their tenure revoked.
* Such a process would not occur in school districts showing considerable improvement in student capabilities. Thus every teacher in the district would share the responsibility to fulfil that goal.
* Finally, the Board of Education must require the superintendent to submit a summary of all grades given each semester by class, school and the whole district. Thus any grade inflation can be caught early.
The cost of public education may be higher than some citizens would agree to but we have a responsibility to our children, to the development of their talents and career objectives.
