A Georgia Kindergarten teacher has earned more than $1 million selling lesson plans to other teachers through a website, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Deanna Jump’s story is unusual, but two teachers have earned more than $300,000 and nearly two dozen have earned more than $100,000. Here’s how it works: Since signing on to the site, […]
Do you have a right to pension benefits in a right-to-work state? That’s one big question the state Supreme Court is facing in a lawsuit over the constitutionality of changing Florida’s pension requirements. In 2011, lawmakers needed to plug a multi-billion budget hole and saw a chance to save the state almost a billion dollars […]
A team of economists says a new study shows teachers are motivated by performance pay and produce better student results. That’s contrary to a handful of prior pay-for-performance studies which showed little to no improvement among students. The difference this time? Teachers were given the money up front and told they would lose it if […]
When Florida teachers were evaluated last year, the stakes for most of them were pretty low. No more. Soon, teacher evaluations will be tied to teacher pay. Starting this year, half of a teacher’s evaluation is based on a classroom observation by the school principal. (The other half is based on a formula that predicts how students should […]
Contract negotiations between Florida’s school districts and teacher unions is in full swing, but district face very different budget situations. Here’s a roundup of labor news around the state from the past week: Palm Beach County is facing a $31.7 million budget shortfall, but the teachers’ union is asking for raises, according to the South […]
Danna Contreras doesn’t like the new FCAT. The sophomore at Booker T. Washington High School in Miami emigrated from Colombia three years ago. She wears thick, pink-rimmed glasses and she squints a lot. She says the new computerized version is harder to take. “I think I am better with paper, not on the computer because […]
Few things get teachers talking quite like their paycheck, so we knew a recent post about a teacher salary study would get some reaction. And did it ever. Most people criticized the study, conducted by two conservative-leaning think tanks, with some picking apart the methodology. A few said the criticism of teacher pay is the […]
Remember that study from two conservative think tanks that argued teachers were overpaid by 50 percent? The study concluded that taxpayers were “overcharged” by $120 billion each year. That’s the difference between what teachers are paid in salary and benefits and what they would earn in a comparable private sector job. U.S. Secretary of Education […]
In politics, they talk about hitting the “third rail” – a topic so controversial that it’s almost deadly. And this week, we think we’ve touched the third rail of education policy: teacher pay.
Teachers, did you know you are overpaid by 52%? That’s the conclusion of a new study by conservative-leaning think tanks The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. Taxpayers, they conclude, are “overcharged” $120 billion each year from the difference in teacher salaries and compensation compared to similarly credentialed private sector workers. Teacher benefits are […]
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