Baltimore to Buy Cheaper Teachers...

[YvonneCa]

... http://www.quickanded.com/2011/02/baltimore-to-buy-cheaper-teachers.html

Excerpt:

Running the numbers from the proposal, Baltimore calculates they’re going to be saving about $14,000 per teacher ($5 million in savings if 350 teachers participate or $10 million if 750 sign up), but these numbers do not include some hidden costs. To begin with, the move will shift costs from the district’s salary rolls to the state’s retirement system, which will eventually trickle back down to Baltimore. With employees retiring earlier than they planned to, this means the state will be paying out an additional year of benefits to those who are eligible.

The savings also include budgeting for new hires to fill the vacated positions. So Baltimore will be replacing one experienced teacher’s salary and benefits with a new teacher’s salary and benefits plus the cost of the retired teacher’s pension and health care. It also costs money to hire, train, and retain new employees.

None of this gets to the fact that experienced teachers are, on average, more effective teachers than the unexperienced.

Another piece of evidence. Many here have made this case for months (or more).

[pscot]

1. You get what you pay for

[notesdev]

2. Not in education

There is demonstrably no connection between funding levels and performance. Some of the worst-performing districts are also among the best-funded.

In education, like everything else these days, a great deal of the money gets siphoned off and embezzled. Much of it goes into administrators' pockets and into perks for them; also there was a great deal of building new schools at outrageous prices - there's a single school in Los Angeles that cost over half a billion dollars (not a typo). One school.

How many kids could you get educated for half a billion dollars? That amount of money should be sufficient to educate a million kids for a year, at a rate of $5000 each.

[sufrommich]

3. Holy shit. Do you have a link to the billion dollar school? Is it

gold plated?

[notesdev]

4. Right here... $578 million to be precise

http://www.aolnews.com/2010/08/23/half-billion-high-americas-5-most-expensive-public-schools/

[sufrommich]

5. Good Lord. It's like a McMansion with classrooms. nt

[Bluenorthwest]

6. It is a hell of a price, but in this case that price includes an

important historical preservation, costly real estate, and many public features including a 19 acre park that is needed in that dense neighborhood. So very expensive, but also not all for the school, and also not at all typical.
As a disclaimer, I'll say that they nearly tore the Ambassador down, and now the room where Bobby last spoke will be a school library instead of being redeveloped into a nice shopping center. It would have been cheaper to raze the buildings for the school as well. Cheaper in some contexts is not the only thing to consider.

[Starry Messenger]

7. recommend.