{"id":5163,"date":"2005-06-27T06:27:21","date_gmt":"2005-06-27T06:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/wp\/?p=5163"},"modified":"2005-06-27T06:27:21","modified_gmt":"2005-06-27T06:27:21","slug":"curing-what-ails-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cobranchi.com\/?p=5163","title":{"rendered":"CURING WHAT AILS US"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Fixing” NCLB and paying teachers a lot<\/i> more ought to do the trick, according to this insipid NYT Op\/Ed<\/a>. It’s amazing how so many supposedly learned folks don’t understand the simple concept of supply and demand:<\/p>\n

A few years ago, the residents of Helena, Mont., decided that their schools needed improvement. So they started with teacher salaries. They increased average pay some $8,000; pushed starting salaries to $30,000 from $23,000; and built incentives for improving performance, working on professional development and taking on responsibilities outside the classroom.<\/p>\n

In years past, a vacancy in the Helena school system would attract perhaps a dozen, mostly underqualified applicants. Last summer, Randy Carlson, principal of Capital High School, needed three new social studies teachers. He got to choose from a pool of more than a hundred candidates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course he did. That was perfectly predictable. But if all of the other local school districts follow the same course, Randy Carlson would be right back where he was, and the taxpayers of the Capital School District would be a bit poorer. Not to worry, though. All we have to do is borrow<\/i> the money for the salary increases:<\/p>\n

But where will local districts get the money to increase salaries? One idea: every day, bonds are approved to build stadiums, even schools. The presumption is that the new buildings will increase the profile of a given city, thus attracting more visitors, more businesses, more families and more tax revenue, all of which will pay down the bond. By the same token, then, wouldn’t it make sense to create a bond to pay for better educators?<\/p>\n

The district would get the best teachers, families would get better schools, businesses would settle in the city with the great public schools, property values would go up, and everyone would be happy. Especially the students, who would get the best educators, gain respect for the profession and might even consider becoming teachers themselves. The talent pool would then grow ever stronger, and in 20 years we could have created the best corps of teachers the country has ever known.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, there’s a huge difference between borrowing for a one-time expense (like for building a bridge) that will pay dividends in future economic growth and borrowing every year to pay your teachers more. And, second, this argument is just some twisted form of the Laffer curve.<\/p>\n

Here’s the problem– the Laffer curve predicts that up to a point a marginal tax rate decrease will lead to an increase in tax revenues by stimulating the economy. But only<\/i> up to a point<\/a>. It depends upon which side of the parabola you are on. The teacher’s Laffer is even more questionable. Is there a causal link between teacher salaries and community prosperity? Who knows? And assuming that there really does exist some type of Laffer curve for teacher salaries, what side of the curve are we on? After all, raising the taxes on the people who live in the Capital School District immediately makes them poorer (or more in debt if bonds are issued). Raise the salaries high enough and you can bankrupt the town.<\/p>\n

Back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Fixing” NCLB and paying teachers a lot more ought to do the trick, according to this insipid NYT Op\/Ed. It’s amazing how so many supposedly learned folks don’t understand the simple concept of supply and demand: A few years ago, the residents of Helena, Mont., decided that their schools needed improvement. So they started with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}