Examples of Why Another Law Should Not Be the First or Only Answer
Bill Summaries
S78 proposes that prior work experience may be reflected on a person’s teaching certificate and credited toward placement on the salary schedule should he or she have decided that teaching is their preferred profession after they have been employed in another related field.
This bill appears to do little more than create a reason to increase the pay of eligible teachers. A question that might be raised is, “Why should those who decided to try other areas of employment prior to deciding to become a teacher be given an effective bonus over those who entered the field as their initial choice for employment?” A second question that arises is, “Why is this kind of law being offered now?” Is it possible that this is a poorly disguised way to entice people to consider teaching or remain in teaching roles since they will get an unexpected bump in pay to help combat the growing shortage of willing and competent educators?
S79 goes even farther than S78 in regard to the questions raised above. This bill specifically addresses the benefits to those from other professions who become educators, if S79 is enacted. It is hard not to recognize this as an effort to open the field of education in order to find more applicants for areas of shortage. S78 is a companion bill, lest teachers already employed, who chose education as their first employment experience or who left another field to become educators and jumped through whatever hoops needed to become certified, resent those coming in and getting a boost on the salary schedule.
Commentary
Regardless of how this is handled, those who were employed as teachers right out of college may not appreciate that those coming in from other fields could earn a higher salary based on other experience. In the private sector employers generally still have the freedom to base individual salaries somewhat on merit and expected value from employees. Public education is different. Public education is becoming more and more a lock-step system in many ways, and it is falling more and more under state control as the body of codified education law in Title 59 has exploded, especially over the past decade or two.
One of the effects of each of these bills will be to raise the costs of teacher salaries. Teacher salary schedules have generally been based objectively on years of experience and accomplished education levels in the field of education per se. Given the high cost of personnel in the public education realm already, perhaps there might be better ways to manage personnel needs, including putting a pin in the ballon of educational bureaucracy—at every level, starting at the DOE.
It may not even be the intervention of the State that is most disturbing. It is the reality that the State’s only intervention method is to create laws to mandate the parameters with yet another piece of education law. The power of the State Department of Education is increased with each piece of legislation. By creating “little” bills with seemingly harmless, reasonable, or beneficial targets, legislation grows the slow creep of government control. Few legislators appear to have the courage to stand up and “Just say ‘NO’” to more law. More law is NOT a solution; it is not even a band-aid. It eliminates consideration of better options.
It is becoming clear that there is a concerted drive to compensate teachers with more and more money and benefits. Because the State has limitless access to the pockets of taxpayers, there should be more concern about what kind of compensation is reasonable for educators today, particularly given the environment in which every other adult is also trying to survive. Increasing tax burdens hurt everyone. The pathetic levels of competence evidenced by the graduates of public education, particularly in South Carolina, further weaken the argument for increased payment for teachers. These evident problems are not likely to vanish by arbitrarily giving more teachers more money. This is primarily a politically expedient solution. Such “solutions” give little or no consideration to merit and performance. Does this kind of government reaction ignore and help hide a much deeper problem?
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