Social Justice and Teacher Pay

[peary]

I agree with the other posts about funding issues. The money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is us parents. Our Catholic school teachers should be paid top dollar but it simply is not possible. We are blessed by their generosity of their service.

Since the topic is in the social justice area, let me also agree with those who have already commented on vouchers. I feel that it is simply immoral to force parents to fund the public school system during the period their own children are not spending those resources.

I will go a step further - to be truly fair, we should be able to designate where our school tax funds go all the time. Catholic and other private schools would boom, children would be better educated, their teachers would be paid a lot more, facilities could be expanded and improved, and really good teachers stuck in public schools would have the option of moving over (without pay loss).

Our school tax funds ARE allocated…to your local school districts, and they are all wrapped up in our property taxes, and whatever taxes our town or city levy on us. I do not believe that state monies should be given to private religious schools, and I am a Catholic Christian. If parents want their children to attend Catholic schools, then they need to make the sacrifice to pay for it. It is not up to the state to fund religious schools. Yes, it is more difficult now than it was when there were many teaching orders of good sisters, brothers, and priests who did the work of educating our children. And that is an intention we need to pray over daily - that the Lord will bring us vocations to teaching orders, or to start new teaching orders. Many dioceses have put academics on the backs of parents, and the dioceses do not support the schools. That is why there are so many closings. If they invested in the schools, more children would be able to attend. Many pastors don’t want parish schools because they are a hassle. Dioceses feel the same way.

As much as we dislike the funding of public schools when our own children are ‘finished’ with them, what are you to do then? Schools will close, students will be sent to overflowing educational institutions and receive a very weak education. Remember Hillary Clinton’s book It Takes a Village to Raise a Child? We are all in this together, whether or not our children are not in public schools.

And what does one consider a “fair wage” for a teacher today? My uncle believed up until the day he died last September that teachers shouldn’t be making more than $20,000 a year, and they can supplement by their husband’s ( or wife’s) salary. Figure that one out. And don’t think that teachers make all that much. It depends on the district and the town it is in. If you have a well-to-do district, the teachers will make more. If the area is not-so-well-to-do, they make much less. There is no equality across the board throughout the U.S. And elementary teachers (both men and women) make far way less than their high school counterparts.

There are no easy answers, believe me.

 

[manualman]

Our school tax funds ARE allocated…to your local school districts, and they are all wrapped up in our property taxes, and whatever taxes our town or city levy on us. I do not believe that state monies should be given to private religious schools, and I am a Catholic Christian.
…
There are no easy answers, believe me.

Nonsense on both points. There is a VERY easy and simple answer.

Establish a educational entitlement refund policy for parents with children eligible to attend public schools who choose to educate their children in another manner and whose children test above local average on standardized test. The refund cannot be higher than the actual costs incurred (simple to document). This doesn’t fund religious schools, it funds PARENTS who want the flexibility to choose how the tax money they are entitled to gets spent (as long as they prove they are doing so wisely, thus the testing). Set the maximum refund (say $2,500 per student) to a level FAR below what the typical public school actually SPENDS per student ($14,500 in my local district, probably boils down to about $10,000 for non-special ed kids) and EVERYBODY wins!

1. Homeschool parents can buy educational resources they need and get refunds for the expenses the state does NOT incur educating the kids.
2. Private school parents can choose any school they like and still afford to FEED their kids.
3. Public schools will lose thousands of students and be left with MORE money per student to get the job done (though with fewer schools and fewer teachers).
4. Phony and/or scam schools or Madrassas get weeded out by poor test scores if they don’t do a decent job actually educating the kids.

Everybody wins. Except those who are trying so hard to force all kids into public schools - which is why public school administrators and teachers unions alike screech so loud whenever the idea is brought up. Let me repeat it in case you missed it. At NO point does the government fund a religious school. It gives PARENTS who make a choice that saves the system thousands of dollars a year a small portion of the savings. Simple, easy and doable.

 

[peary]

Nonsense on both points. There is a VERY easy and simple answer.

Establish a educational entitlement refund policy for parents with children eligible to attend public schools who choose to educate their children in another manner and whose children test above local average on standardized test. The refund cannot be higher than the actual costs incurred (simple to document). This doesn’t fund religious schools, it funds PARENTS who want the flexibility to choose how the tax money they are entitled to gets spent (as long as they prove they are doing so wisely, thus the testing). Set the maximum refund (say $2,500 per student) to a level FAR below what the typical public school actually SPENDS per student ($14,500 in my local district, probably boils down to about $10,000 for non-special ed kids) and EVERYBODY wins!

1. Homeschool parents can buy educational resources they need and get refunds for the expenses the state does NOT incur educating the kids.
2. Private school parents can choose any school they like and still afford to FEED their kids.
3. Public schools will lose thousands of students and be left with MORE money per student to get the job done (though with fewer schools and fewer teachers).
4. Phony and/or scam schools or Madrassas get weeded out by poor test scores if they don’t do a decent job actually educating the kids.

Everybody wins. Except those who are trying so hard to force all kids into public schools - which is why public school administrators and teachers unions alike screech so loud whenever the idea is brought up. Let me repeat it in case you missed it. At NO point does the government fund a religious school. It gives PARENTS who make a choice that saves the system thousands of dollars a year a small portion of the savings. Simple, easy and doable.

NONSENSE? You don’t seem to realize that when dioceses and churches close private schools they are, in effect, FORCING those children to attend public schools and keeping parents from making a ‘choice.’ You just don’t get it. :banghead:

 

[manualman]

NONSENSE? You don’t seem to realize that when dioceses and churches close private schools they are, in effect, FORCING those children to attend public schools and keeping parents from making a ‘choice.’ You just don’t get it. :banghead:

You should read past the first word. My entire post was addressing your false assertion that direct government payments to the schools is the only way that government could help the situation.

The status quo today is that public schools are vacuuming $14,500 per STUDENT out of our wallets already. No wonder there is not enough left in most families budgets for private schools.

Under the current tax system, no amount of diocesan support can save us. Most diocese are nearly bankrupt already. And no parish should be asked to spend 20-25% of its budget on 10-15% of the child parishioners. The math doesn’t add up simply because the government takes too much of our money.

The answer is simple and easy. Reward those parents who save the public school system thousands of dollars a year by educating their kids elsewhere with a PORTION of the savings. Win-win. Snowball win-win actually!

 

[CPA2]

Name 7 possible objections to the school voucher plan and Milton Friedman’s answer to those objections.

1. The church-state issue. “…Vouchers would go to parents, not to schools. Under the GI bills, veterans have been free to attend Catholic or other colleges and, so far as we know, no First Amendment issue has ever been raised.”
2. Financial cost. “…(There is) present discrimination against parents who send their children to nonpublic schools. Universal vouchers would end the inequity of using tax funds to school some children but not others.”
3. The possibility of fraud. ‘…The voucher would have to be spent in an approved school or teaching establishment and could be redeemed for cash only by such schools.”
4. The racial issue. “Discrimination under a voucher plan can be prevented at least as easily as in public schools by redeeming vouchers only from schools that do not discriminate.”
5. The economic class issue. “Some have argued that the great value of the public school has been as a melting pot, in which rich and poor, native- and foreign-born, back and white have learned to live together. That image…is almost entirely false for large cities. There, the public school has fostered residential stratification, by tying the kind and cost of schooling to residential location. It is no accident that most of the country’s outstanding public schools are in high-income enclaves.”
6. Doubt about new schools. “What reason is there to suppose that alternatives will really arise? The reason is that a market would develop where it does not exist today…The one prediction that can be made is that only those schools that satisfy their customers will survive…Competition would see to that.”
7. The impact on public schools. “The threat to public schools arises from their defects, not their accomplishments. In small, closely knit communities where public schools, particularly elementary schools, are now reasonably satisfactory, not even the most comprehensive voucher plan would have much effect…But elsewhere, and particularly in the urban slums where the public schools are doing such a poor job, most parents would undoubtedly try to send their children to nonpublic schools.”

 

[tnystrom]

I have enjoyed reading the posts concerning my original post. I choose to teach at a Catholic school, but this doesn’t mean I should expect to be poor. God has provided for me and my family. We live in one of the poorest counties in Indiana so my pay is low.

 

[Matilda_Bennett]

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