The failure is multifold - I won't blame JUST the teachers; there is plenty of blame to go towards cocktail bureaucrats who have inserted ‘gay education’, ‘minority history’ and ‘green education’ into the curriculum. But at the end of the day, far fewer students are leaving primary school with the tools needed to complete their education. And that is mostly upon teachers who have far more concern about pay raises and more benefits.
Beyond, the ‘average’ of $68,000 quoted salary ignores the nearly equal cost of benefits - vacations, health care, pensions, tuition assistance, student loan repayments, etc. If the teachers had their salaries slashed in half tomorrow, the benefits cost wouldn't go down and they'd still be earning an equivalent of a hundred grand a year.
The focus must be on reigning in the existing costs of benefits, as well as stepping down the salaries. And honestly, the only way to do this is to put transparency back into the system - everything goes into the paycheck, with the educator able to purchase pension benefits, health care, loan repayments, etc out of pocket. And of course, all of it taxable, just like any average citizen has to do if they were in business for themselves.
Sounds good to me.
That will happen....just as soon as the entire democratically controlled legislature flips to majority republican control.
Wait for it.
The whole purpose of the extra payroll bennies is to ...hide those bennies from the public who pays the freight. Signed into law in 1975 by...tada...gov moonbeam.
50.5% of every dollar, every single one, that is the annual Ca budget, goes to education. Each and every year, year after year.
That is one hell of a lot of money, for what Ca has to show for it.
Oh, and concerning class size? That was made of sheer cloth, sole purpose was to get more births available for teachers, to double the numbers of them, for union dues as well as voting block clout. had nothing to do with student learning improvement, as shown by the history of same.