How to pay for teachers? Certainly not by maintaining the status quo.

My recent report on the high cost of teacher retirement packages definitely struck a cord with some folks. Reason‘s Brian Doherty notes that the teacher pension and healthcare deficits are part of an even-larger problem of funding civil servant retirements. Neil McCluskey at Cato offer their own thoughts, based in part on his own fine study of teacher compensation.

Meanwhile a couple of readers didn’t fully understand the argument being made — that teachers, for all their complaints about low play and demands for “respect” (i.e. money) — are among the best-compensated and best-protected professions. Think about it: The average teacher in TK states will

All that said, teacher compensation is out of whack: The lack of strong, objective annual evaluation of performance means that highly-effective teachers are paid as well as teachers lagging in subject-matter competence and instructional talent. The compensation system rewards veteran teachers, regardless of their ability, even though teachers are most likely to be effective during their early years in the classroom.