Interestingly, after I got off the plane, I went to go see my doctor; once again, some know-it-all elitist insisting that his way was the only way to care for the human body. Again, this is my body; nobody knows it better than me!
Amazingly, later in that day, I had a client who absolutely ignored my legal advice and found himself in legal trouble; utterly avoidable legal trouble. I guess he determined that he has lived under laws for his entire life and doesn't need some fancy pants, overpaid, elitist lawyer telling him "what's what." After all, the guy made a bunch of money by doing something utterly unrelated to law, so he must be qualified on legal matters too, right?
Perhaps my sarcasm is shining through?
It is in light of such sarcasm that I present you the latest and greatest from America's Worst Legislature:
A new bill aims to remedy Indiana’s teaching shortageWell, reading this, I was relieved. It's about time! What are they going to do? Restore collective bargaining rights? Raise wages? Limit workloads? Do something, anything, to entice people to devote their lives to this noble profession?
by allowing public schools to fill up to 10 percent of their teaching staff with unlicensed teachers.Look at me in my naivete!
I can't help but notice that our legislature believes that financial incentives work to entice wealthy people to work or invest more, yet this logic is wholly absent when it comes to teachers.
Leave it to the smartest man in the legislature to put his finger on the issue here:
“We don’t have enough qualified teachers and we don’t want to pay to have enough qualified teachers, so we create a teacher facsimile,” said Democratic Rep. Ed Delaney of Indianapolis. “This is a very big problem and we’re not addressing it.”The article continues:
The bill also targets hard-to-staff positions by allowing teachers specializing in special education, science, technology, engineering or math to receive additional pay.So, to be clear, this bill allows for superintendents to arbitrarily staff schools, up to 10% of the faculty, with "teachers" who aren't licensed to, you know, "teach." Then, to add insult to injury, it allows the superintendents to decide to pay some teachers more.
Well, I see no way that this could go bad (there's that sarcasm again). My only hope is that here in Speedway, the Town Council insists that (a) every teacher in Speedway public schools is licensed; and (b) Speedway Public Schools pays more than any other school corporation in Central Indiana. Perhaps we can make this a concrete demand of our elected representatives?
100% of the full time teaching staff at Speedway High School are certified, which requires a bachelors degree, Donkey.
ReplyDelete“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt” Mark Twain.
That the teaching staff at Speedway High is presently 100% certified is irrelevant to the discussion. The post pertains to a new bill that the General Assembly is passing this session. With the exception of the beer on Sunday law, it is rare for new laws to go into effect prior to July 1 of the year in which they are passed.
ReplyDeleteThat Speedway H.S. has not taken advantage of the "flexibility" provided by this yet-to-take-effect bill says precisely nothing about either Speedway H.S. or the merits of the bill.
Thanks for the comment nonetheless Anonymous.