“The secret to stellar grades and thriving students is teachers,” writes The Economist in a recent editorial. One study cited by the magazine found that “in a single year’s teaching the top 10% of teachers impart three times as much learning to their pupils as the worst 10% do” and another “estimates that if African-American children were taught by the top 25% of teachers, the gap between blacks and whites would close within eight years.” The magazine argues that a rigorous form of pedagogy can “make ordinary teachers great” and that “the biggest gains will come from preparing new teachers better and upgrading the ones already in classrooms.”
But California is radically boosting pension spending instead. Legislation bailing out California’s teacher pension fund requires a doubling of spending on pensions to more than $10 billion per year, leaving that much less for preparing, hiring, paying and upgrading active teachers. $10 billion is nearly three times more than the state spends on California State University or the University of California. Needless to say, California cannot deploy a sufficient number of great teachers for six million students when so much of its education budget is being diverted to pensions.
It didn’t have to be this way. The least expensive time to address underfunded pensions is early, before interest compounds. But state legislators a decade ago bet differently and citizens lost, resulting in the $240 billion* bailout. At this stage protecting students requires three ugly solutions, all of which must be in the mix.
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