wjb182

Microsoft was surprisingly prescient in attempting to move to the walled garden and attempting to control the stack from top to bottom. Although it never panned out, the original vision for IE and MSN was that Microsoft would get a piece of all sales that took place on the platform, be it physical or digital. IE being the standard browser also pushed adoption of things like FrontPage, IIS, and BackOffice, and all of the proprietary vendor lock-in features they carried with them. I'm not sure to what extent Microsoft ever really feared that web browsers threatened their OS monopoly, but viewed it more as a chance to carry their dominance into a new lucrative market.

The laws governing teacher firing were changed in 2014 [1], and credential revocation has become compulsory in a large number of cases. The Commission on Teacher Credentialing opened 361 discipline cases last month alone [2].

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...

While I agree that the funding model for a lot of services in California is broken, I think you're basing your opinion on a number of false premises. For example, speaking directly to your claims about educator pay:

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.