Comments on: The Ministry of Truth Speaks

By: Malcolm Kirkpatrick

Malcolm Kirkpatrick — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:50:03 +0000

The demonstration that advocates for budget increases lie serves to cast doubt on whatever else they say. Other than that, it seems to me, the details of teacher pay do not matter much, for any position on teacher pay (up, down, too high, too low, too uniform, too varied) presupposes a preference for some State-wide policy. In a competitive market in education services, how an individual parent pays some individual tutor, or some individual school pays some individual teacher will be that parent’s, or tutor’s, or school’s, or teacher’s business, and no one else’s.

It makes no more sense to put Math, Biology, English, Electronics Shop, and College Prep (there really is a class by that name at Campbell High School in Ewa Beach) teachers on the same salary schedule just because we call them all “teachers” than it makes to pay bicycle, automotive, diesel, A/C, and jet engine mechanics the same just because we call them all “mechanics”.

By: Greg Forster

Greg Forster — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:07:05 +0000

Matt: Those are not mutually exclusive options, as cases like this demonstrate.

Patrick: The claim that your state is last in the nation doesn’t vary from state to state. What does vary is the cornucopia of spurious methods used to compare states, so that every state’s spending level is last by some measure.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:54:29 +0000

I was on Nevada Public Radio last week and the local NSEA president stated that Nevada was last in spending on K-12 education and that teacher pay was near the bottom among the 50 states.

Nevada’s K-12 expenditures rank 26th through 47th depending on what is counted, while the NEA ranks Nevada 19th for teacher pay. But that was 2008 data, maybe Nevada wasn’t among the 36 states…

There must be some uniform handbook on talking points that doesn’t deviate from state to state.

By: matthewladner

matthewladner — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:21:07 +0000

Soooo, they are dumb rather than simply lying this time.

By: Mid-Riffs » Blog Archive » Put your waders on…the NEA is at it again

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:18:16 +0000

[...] friend Jay Greene has a great post over at his blog today. It seems the NEA is making the claim that , as their headline puts it, [...]

By: Apparently, NEA leaders didn’t read their own report « Education News Colorado Opinion & Commentary

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:42:06 +0000

[...] cannot afford to be ignored, of course. But on pronouncements of policy. I direct your attention to an excellent catch posted today by Dr. Jay [...]

By: Teacher pay: Up or down? « Joanne Jacobs

Teacher pay: Up or down? « Joanne Jacobs — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:39:36 +0000

[...] so. Teacher pay rose in 36 states after inflation, responds Jay P. Greene, looking at the NEA’s own data. . . . we see that [...]