• stewie3128@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    25 years ago in my suburban Chicago public high school district, my stats teacher brought out the teacher pay schedule for us to play with.

    There were six columns:

    Bachelors, bachelors+30, bachelors+60 Masters, masters+30, masters+60

    The +30 or +60 refer to credit hours of additional college coursework

    Each row showed the number of years of experience.

    In 1998, the upper-left (fresh out of college, no experience) salary was around $38,500 or something.

    The bottom right (masters+60 or doctorate, and 30 or 35 years of experience [I forget]) was $151,000. And they got a great pension (fatter than what teachers in IL starting now will get).

    You also got a small multiplier for each extra curricular you ran.

    We had mostly excellent teachers as a result. Couple of duds too, but that’s life. 70+% of graduating seniors went to college of some kind within two years. I believe I went to a good school.

    But this is what happens when you fund schools through property taxes: the good neighborhoods get good schools, and it propels a virtuous cycle. The bad neighborhoods get bad schools, and they just spiral downward. It’s a dumb way to fund education.