02 Jan

Pay The Teachers

There was an interesting article this morning in the NYTimes about budget shortfalls in New Jersey. Many New Jersey residents are pointing their fingers at New Jersey teachers (specifically their union) as the culprit – and claiming they are overpaid. The average salary for a NJ teacher is $66,597 a year. This is New Jersey, the state with second highest income level in the country – $66k a year is still below the median pay of the state.

With all of the articles and statistics coming out with how the US is falling behind in terms of global education – why not actually recognize the state that is trying to pay educators a fair salary. I do understand that to balance New Jersey’s state budget other state employees are going to have to make cuts and sacrifices – but I believe teachers should be the 3rd rail. It is not a far leap to believe that by cutting the salary of teachers, New Jersey is going to start losing talent to the private sector. Looking at the resume pool that flows into EverFi – anecdotally there are a lot of teachers (and very talented ones) who are looking to leave teaching.

Singapore’s model of paying teachers competitive salaries is something that US should try to emulate. I know that scaling a country’s system who’s geographic size doesn’t compare to most of our larger cities would be incredibly difficult – but continually short changing our youth should not be an option. When trying to fix budget shortfalls in New Jersey – targeting the teachers’ salaries should not be the solution.

11 Notes

  1. benhatten posted this

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