Money buys the most experienced teachers, less-crowded classrooms, high-quality teaching materials, and after-school programs.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It is vital that teachers can be paid more without having to leave the classroom. This will be particularly important to schools in the most disadvantaged areas as it will empower them to attract and recruit the best teachers.
I strongly believe that more money needs to be spent in the classroom.
In many ways, education is a lousy business. Teachers are not normal economic actors; almost all of them work for less money than they might fetch in some other industry, given their skills and advanced degrees.
The old ways of teaching are slow and expensive. But with mobile, cost plummets, access broadens, and pedagogy rises.
Parents matter, buildings count, curriculum choices, materials, resources - all these things are important in a top-class education. But, in the end, it comes down to the teachers.
To get enough of the teachers we need, teaching has to be a great job where talented people are supported and rewarded.
Our teachers at the public school level are the most underpaid for the importance of their job in America.
We can pay teachers a hundred thousand dollars a year, and we'll do nothing to improve our schools as long as we keep the A, B, C, D, F grading system.
As a former high school teacher and a student in a class of 60 urchins at St. Brigid's grammar school, I know that education is all about discipline and motivation. Disadvantaged students need extra attention, a stable school environment, and enough teacher creativity to stimulate their imaginations. Those things are not expensive.
Money is not the reason that people enter teaching.