One of the top priorities on every U.S. president's agenda is education reform. This is the result of a continuing decrease in the quality of education in America. When compared to the rest of the world, the United States simply does not measure up to the educational standards of other countries. The comparison statistics may be inaccurate due to the methods in which other countries test. However, the endless resources that the U.S. has access to, should enable America to do much better despite misconstrued numbers.
There are multiple solutions to reforming education. Most traditional theories have failed to show reasonable results. It is time to take a simple, yet slightly different approach. Teachers are America's foundation and it is time to significantly raise their salaries. This does not mean raising money for education and increasing teacher's salaries by a small amount. It means giving them an increase that will improve their quality of life and allow them to better support their families.
In the year 2000, the national average teacher's pay was $37,900 per year. The average hourly rate was $18.22 per hour. During this time, there were about 7.5 million teachers employed. The national hourly rate for all employees during this time was $15.80. Teachers only made approximately $2.50 more than the national average, yet they are often held responsible for the outcome of a person over a given period of time. No teacher can be expected to raise a family making $38,000 a year. This reason is causing many great teachers to further their education or find other jobs simply because it does not pay to be in education. Although teacher pay increased over this period by 3.2 percent, inflation increased 3.4 percent resulting in no gain at all.
With teacher pay being this low, no one...
The problem is deeper
While this is a well stuctured and clearly written essay and while I agree that teachers should be paid fairly for the very difficult work that they do, I think that the solution to the education problems in this country (and many other countries) will not be solved simplty by paying the teachers what they deserve. I think that eveyone desrves to be paid a living wage wheather they are teachers or flipping burgers. I think that what has been forgotten is that people are born with the innate ability and desire to learn but that the school system, as it is destroys that ability in most people and leaves students, who grow up to be adults, feeling powerless.
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