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PROMISE TO KEEP: 5% |
Rift seen growing in state GOP The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a math and science teacher shortage. So the Massachusetts Legislature wants to let teachers retire after thirty years at up to 80 percent pay. This makes sense only if you understand the following: 1. The Massachusetts Legislative leadership owes the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) a big favor in return for its years of support for high taxes and opposition to broad-based tax cuts. The ability to retire comfortably at age 55 is a big favor. 2. Legislators who defy the MTA on tax issues figure they better not offend it any further, for fear that it will focus on them during the next election and accuse them of not caring about "education," which polls show voters support. 3. Voters with mush for brains will hear this accusation and think that legislators who do not vote for early retirement for teachers don't care about "education." 4. Legislators are not sure how many voters have mush for brains, so they assume the worst and pander to the teachers union. Governor Paul Cellucci, possibly in the belief that most voters are intelligent enough to see that early teacher retirement has nothing to do with "education," or maybe just wanting to avoid worsening a math and science teacher shortage, has been attempting to make changes in the bill and now threatens to veto it. The Legislature, still in debt to or in fear of the MTA but concerned about the teacher shortage, has added a provision that lets the retired teachers return to the classroom after two years of retirement, there to collect their regular pay as well as their tax-free pension. This now falls into the category of a VERY big favor. Voters, most of whom cannot retire after 30 years with up to 80 percent pensions, nor return to their jobs in two years and collect both pay and pension, are expected let legislators get away with this taxpayer-funded gift to the teachers union lobby. To facilitate getting away with it, legislators passed the bill on a voice vote. A roll call vote is required, however, to override the Governor's veto, so eventually you may know if your legislator was willing to let you pay for this VERY big favor to the MTA, which not only costs your tax dollars but drains the school system of both competent and incompetent teachers, at least for two years. Then presumably teachers from both categories can be rehired. You can't tell the difference because the MTA is HIGHLY insulted that Governor Cellucci wants to test teachers, especially math teachers. One of the whispered reasons for why some legislators support this bill is to help school administrators get rid of older incompetent teachers that are so bad they can be identified without testing, but not fired without upsetting the MTA. The only way, the argument goes, to get rid of the bad ones is to let them all leave early. Then, the argument continues, new young teachers, presumed for some reason to be more competent, can be hired, and the lure of early retirement will encourage applications. Of course, application may be discouraged when young teachers realize they will have to pay more into the retirement system for the older teachers who retired early, and that legislators may renege on this scheme before the new teachers reach age 55. So now that we understand why the teacher pension bill is not the solution to the long-standing shortage of math and science teachers, we can ask: what is? Even though I was once married to a public school English teacher, I can see the benefit of applying free market incentives to the education marketplace: why not pay math and science teachers more money if you can't get them to leave the private sector for what the more available liberal arts teachers make? And why not pay good teachers more than merely adequate teachers? I don't mean just the relatively new merit bonuses and signing bonuses, but the base pay itself. Teachers would have more respect if they acted like professionals instead of insisting on union pay scales that reflect seniority and step increases instead of market demand and levels of competence. Author Ayn Rand was once asked by a student what career he should choose if he wanted to advance her free-market, pro-freedom philosophy: a lawyer? A politician? A political activist? Ms. Rand responded, "become a teacher." But the reason he probably didn't take her advice is that the education field itself is anti-free market, and many of the best and the brightest college graduates prefer to advance on their own merit through life. Some of these have eagerly embraced non-union charter schools. As more teachers who do not fear competition help create a dynamic education marketplace, more people will want to become valued teaching professionals. Until then, if the priorities of the MTA are any indication of its membership, we may have to settle for a lot of teachers who are thinking more about an early pension than they are about the kids.
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