Sedosi Alhambra has previously noted Clay Robison’s preferred approach to Texas education reform (get out the money catapult and fling tax dollars).
Today, the Chronicle‘s six-days-per-week Austin bureau chief and Sunday partisan lefty editorialist tries a sneakier version of the money catapult argument:
There is the real world, where there would be no judges without lots of teachers, helping future jurists navigate everything from nap time and the three Rs to contracts and torts.
And there is the Texas statehouse, where lawmakers, meeting in a so-called “education” session, recently sent Gov. Rick Perry a bill giving judges a pay raise while continuing to reward teachers with compliments and promises.
[snip]
Most judges nevertheless deserve the higher pay, which will be financed with higher court fees. Stemming the turnover of experienced judges taking higher-paying jobs elsewhere in the legal profession frequently was cited by the governor and others as the main reason a raise was needed.
Judicial turnover, however, may be no greater a problem than the turnover of classroom teachers. According to a cursory statewide check, members of both professions are leaving their jobs at comparable rates, but time is rapidly running out for higher teacher pay.
[snip]
Meanwhile, 11 percent of the teachers in classrooms at the beginning of the 2004-05 school year didn’t return last fall, said Ed Fuller, an adjunct professor in educational administration at the University of Texas at Austin and former director of research for the State Board of Educator Certification.
Some retired after long careers, but many younger teachers quit for other reasons, unhappiness with their pay being a significant factor. Fuller said a 1999 study, the most recent done on the issue, determined that low pay was the No. 1 reason for teacher turnover.
Even if one accepts Robison’s turnover statistics, it’s arguably far easier to replace teachers than judges, simply because the talent pool from which to draw is MUCH larger and the required education is much less difficult to obtain. Robison tries to present his turnover statistics as a self-evident reason that the money catapult should be brought to bear on teacher salaries. However, as a matter of public policy, that view is not self-evident at all.
Furthermore, Robison’s citation of a 1999 study tells us hardly anything about current conditions and attitudes, and Robison doesn’t provide enough information about that study for interested parties to doublecheck his presentation of the facts.
Because the Chronicle inexplicably has its Austin bureau chief double as a partisan lefty editorialist on weekends, such sloppy editorial work of course calls into question the credibility of the news reporting from Austin the other six days of the week.
