1. You can absolutely be fired for cause as a tenured teacher in California, and it happens all the time. It's certainly more difficult than most other professions, but there is no law or policy preventing teachers from being fired.
2. Teacher pay is not entirely based on seniority. Graduate education, certifications such as the National Board of Teachers (which is merit based and does require observation) or a bilingual certification, coaching a team/leading a club, all can contribute significantly to a teacher's salary.
3.After a 10 years of service, a teacher with a masters degree in my area makes $63K/year. Adjusting to a 12 month schedule, they'd be paid $75K year. With only a BA that drops to $54K. Hard to argue they are overpaid at that rate IMO.
It's extremely easy to see the excessively high rates that some regents or college administrators make, and attempt to use that anecdata to draw a full conclusion, but in my experience the rank and file make on average 25-30% less than they could in private industry.
As for teacher firing, it is very rare in CA. [1]
> California has more than 1,000 school districts and 300,000 teachers, yet only 667 dismissal cases were filed between 2003 and 2012. Only 130 of those actually got to the hearing stage, and 82 resulted in dismissals — fewer than 10 a year.
1: https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/01/25/firing-a-tenured-teac...
I'm in metro Sac and got my numbers from this local district [3]. Looking at the numbers for Menlo Park City [4], the max pay rate is still only $130K, and that would require a PhD and over 20 years of service. A teacher with a BA never reaches $100K.
1: https://www.davisvanguard.org/2014/06/governor-signs-bill-st... 2: https://www.ctc.ca.gov/docs/default-source/educator-discipli... 3: https://www.sanjuan.edu/cms/lib/CA01902727/Centricity/domain... 4: https://district.mpcsd.org/cms/lib/CA01902565/Centricity/Dom...
[1] https://transparentcalifornia.com
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/18/the-first-b...
Possible ? Yes. Does it happen often ? No.
You can read this LA times article for detailed statistics.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-may-03-me-teach...
> 3.After a 10 years of service, a teacher with a masters degree in my area makes $63K/year. Adjusting to a 12 month schedule, they'd be paid $75K year. With only a BA that drops to $54K. Hard to argue they are overpaid at that rate IMO.
I agree here. Teachers in public school are not overpaid. It is mostly the rest of the public schooling system that is bloated and overpaid but not teachers. Teachers in public schools end up spending more than 8 hours per day on school related activities and have to struggle even to get a day off as they need to find a substitute.
The rest of the non teaching staff however is mostly bloated and is a jobs program for adults. Some of them directly hurt the learning and teaching process and yet have massive power over teachers.
> the rank and file make on average 25-30% less than they could in private industry.
True. But most of them will be unemployable in private sector due to sheer incompetence and actual accountability.
The LA Unified District has 25K teachers...and 50K administrative staff. Moving onto universities, Penn State has 8000 Academic Staff... and 17,000 administrative staff. The bloat is obscene.
My best friend from college was a guidance counselor at Hollywood high school. Besides from the foundations of the building crumbling, he told me that it was normal for teachers to get in physical fights with the students and in the aftermath you couldn't expel the student or fire the teacher. They were both locked into the system.
At which point the tax base starts rotting.
I grew in up the Bay Area. (Among other places.) The clear trend in my high school group: make money, buy a house, move to a lower-tax state (read: any state), pay what you owe for the days you’re in California. Which leaves middle class folks like my parents, one of whom was until recently a bank teller, shouldering the cost for these policies.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/housing-market-pandemic-home...
It's weakening society by giving the lazy children of privilege outsized reward and power while making it nearly impossible for motivated, hard working contributors to society the ability to rise up.
Because reality generally disagrees with your assessment.
https://blog.transparentcalifornia.com/2020/11/16/oakland-co...
If you look at how much you'd need to make to be able to save to have a pension this large - the average police officer in most major departments is getting paid close to an equivalent of $400k per year.
Public pensions are out-of-control generous.
I imagine the majority of police officers would gladly take 2x the pay and no pension and end up working until they're 65 like everyone else. So is it even really benefiting police officers?? It's just a massive drain on the public purse.
Logging workers, Aircraft pilots and flight engineers, Roofers, Construction helpers, Crossing guards, Garbage collectors, Farming supervisors, Delivery drivers, Ironworkers, Farmers, Cement masons, Agricultural workers, Construction supervisors, Highway maintenance workers, Grounds maintenance workers, Mining machine operators, Supervisors of mechanics, Power lineworkers, Construction workers, Construction equipment operators, Maintenance workers, Heavy vehicle mechanics, Crane operators, Landscaping supervisors
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings?int=top_nav...
Their top states are:
Washington
Minnesota
Utah
New Hampshire
Idaho
Nebraska
Virginia
Wisconsin
Massachusetts
Florida
I am not going to die on the hill that this is the best ranking system. For example, every benefit has a cost, but fiscal health is only one factor whereas health care, infrastructure, education are three factors so the rankings are biased towards benefits rather than cost-effictive benefits, but it's still a decent starting point.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/opportunity
But I have no idea what it's measuring based on that blurb.
Oh, if you click it breaks it down to "affordability", "equality" and "economic opportunity" of which it does poorly on the first two.
So basically, California's main weakness is that too many rich people live there.
California is a state where median house price is $760K, whereas median household income is $75K.
If you look at that number and say "Well, clearly that's because too many rich people live there", then I'm not sure what benefit is obtained from looking at any data at all.
> In the early 1970s, the City’s borrowing increased rapidly and bankers began to question the accuracy of its financial records and its ability to repay its debt. These concerns were exacerbated in 1974, when the State Urban Development Corporation defaulted on some of its debt. In 1975, the banks lost confidence in the City’s numbers and financial managers, and there were no bids for New York City notes and bonds. In short order, New York City lost all access to the long-term and short-term debt markets. During FY 1975, New York City had borrowed more that $8 billion in short term debt and had $4.5 million of notes outstanding at the end of the fiscal year. Moreover, New York City was funding $600 million (about 5% of its operating budget) through issuance of long-term bonds. When the markets closed to the City, it was unable to fund its cash flow needs; it was forced to halt its capital program; it could not finance the portion of its operating budget that had been funded by long-term debt; and it could no longer roll its accumulated deficit from year to year
https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/publications/Forsythe_D...
Similarly, the world was doing something similar to the US in the 1970's, then Nixon decided to take us off the gold standard and go to a fiat currency, which we still use today. They were questioning America's ability to repay it's bond obligations and whether America had enough physical gold in its vaults to cover it's paper currency inflation. Instead of being repaid in dollars, they started demanding being repaid in gold, which put a run on the gold supply, so Nixon took us off. The whole system is fake, and ripe for collapse. All major nations are financing the US Gov't. One day, they just might decide America is too far in debt to repay them, and stop. I think that's a matter if when, not if. I mean, have you looked at the interest rate on long term bonds?
In fact, it’s impossible, since the treasury can always buy them. Unlike New York City, the US government issues the currency as well as bonds denominated in that currency.
The fed owns like 20% of all federal debt, bought with printed money. Recently they have also been printing so much that they eat up >50% of bond auctions.
Before that I assumed that there was some logic behind the term but it is clear that there isn't.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory
Many people misunderstand what MMT actually is, cherry pick parts and call that MMT. It's interesting concept, I dont think it will work but many do.
Inflation will have a say in that... Zimbabwe here we come.
I cant wait until I need a virtual truck load of dollars to buy a loaf of bread because the "treasury can issues the currency"
Minor correction: The US Treasury issues bonds, the Federal Reserve Bank is the buyer.
>Keynes was able to make his proposal the official British proposal at the Bretton Woods Conference but it was not accepted.[4] Rather than a supranational currency, the conference adopted a system of pegged exchange rates ultimately tied to physical gold in a system managed by the World Bank and IMF. In practice, the system implicitly established the United States dollar as a reserve currency convertible to gold at a fixed price on demand by other governments. The dollar was implicitly established as the reserve by the large trade surplus and gold reserves held by the US at the time of the conference.
Jobs would come back. Wealth inequality would stop growing. Right wing extremism would die a quick death. All of this wouldn't be a big issue if your government used the cheap money to build long lasting infrastructure that will be of use long after the cheap money is gone. Oh, right. Trump did massive income tax cuts and burned a hole into the budget and now it's Biden with his infrastructure bill who is irresponsible.
Suggesting that jobs be brought back and goods produced here is right wing extremism according to many these days. If you do those things, right wing extremism won't die, it will have achieved its policy goals.
You aren't contradicting anything I said here. Most debt is domestic, but what matters is the external debt and it will dry up, and when it does USA will no longer be able to import way more than it exports. And imports/exports affects everything else in the economy, so altering massively as is bound to happen would have huge consequences.