Teacher salaries
Gubernatorial candidate wants higher pay
Aplan from politicians usually has one of two objectives. Either it’s a proposal aimed at policy change, or it’s a gimmick announced to achieve a political result.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Clark County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak’s call for higher teacher pay falls into the latter category.
Last week, as the Review-journal’s Colton Lochhead reported, Mr. Sisolak announced he would donate his salary if elected governor until education improves. Standing at the Clark County Education Association’s headquarters, Mr. Sisolak said that higher salaries for educators is the major improvement he’d like to see.
“Teachers in Nevada are paid less than the average teacher in the United States of America,” said Mr. Sisolak. “They’re paid $20,000 less than the average teacher in California. In the real world — in the business world — you simply cannot expect to recruit and retain the best people if you’re not willing to compensate them.”
It’s a good sound bite, and the teachers standing around Mr. Sisolak dutifully applauded. But if that’s Mr. Sisolak’s plan to improve the state’s dismal education ranking, don’t expect increases in student achievement.
California is Nevada’s neighbor, but its cost of living is much higher. According to the National Education Association, California teachers are the second-highest paid in the country. Nevada’s are the 18th-highest at $56,943. That’s for a nine-month work year and doesn’t include benefits worth around $24,000.
This is high compared to Nevada’s other neighbors. The average teacher in Nevada makes around $10,000 more than the average teacher in Arizona, Idaho and Utah. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, those three states also had better fourth- and eighthgrade reading scores than Nevada.
The only neighboring state that Nevada beat in fourthgrade reading scores was — tada — California. Nevada and California’s eighth-grade reading scores were identical. So much for the academic benefits of higher salaries.
Mr. Sisolak also ignored the $135.5 million in pay hikes Clark County School District teachers got just two years ago. That contract boosted the starting salary for a new district teacher to $40,900, plus benefits. That’s $9,000 more than a new teacher makes in Arizona.
The other problem with pay increases is how they’re distributed. In the business world, you retain the best people by rewarding them through compensation. You also fire the worst ones. But the teacher unions that Mr. Sisolak is courting have historically rejected similar concepts, insisting on a one-size-fits-all socialized pay structure and fighting any effort to remove poor performers.
Perhaps Mr. Sisolak will surprise and propose substantive merit pay or even revamping the entire union-based compensation system. Because simply paying all current employees more money will do little to ensure improvement in Nevada’s public education system.
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Mr. Koski then uses a backhand blow with a claim that, even though the investigation is not yet complete, no collusion has been found. Surprise, surprise! Maybe it would be prudent to wait for the completion of the investigation to recognize its conclusions.
Further, without a completion of the investigation, how does Mr. Koski know that no collusion has been found? Oh, I almost forgot. This is an opinion column. disease because we are just innocent victims.
Rather than choosing to be a victim, wouldn’t life be more fun if we all took responsibility for everything that happened to us in our lives and took credit for the good and accepted blame for the bad?