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Skunking Tennessee’s Teachers

            My readers may not be familiar with the term being skunked, but I can illustrate it with the pay plan designed for Tennessee’s teachers.  It’s a rip off, not a pay plan.  If this plan stays in force, then young teachers will be skunked—taken advantage of, beat.  Imagine spending four years and eighty thousand dollars to become a teacher, and earn only $30,990 the first year as a teacher.  Then nine years later, the teachers would earn only $37,005.  No increase for getting a Masters Degree or EDS.

            What is so stupid is an attempt to hold teachers to blame for the low scores of students who come from a negative environment—drug infested homes, parents fussing and fighting, the children never helped with homework.  Why not blame the low scores on the Commissioner of Education, who has absolutely no background in education?  When the Day of Judgment comes, students will still be making low grades, at least some, for sin will still be around and sin is usually responsible for students who fail in their educational pursuit.  This is not a cop out.  This is reality.

            Stop holding teachers responsible for something they can’t help—what goes on in the home.

            By the way, the Republicans had better get a handle on their efforts to improve education…it ain’t working.  Some will come home following the next election.  And the only job they will be able to find is a substitute teacher.  Then they can try out their new plans.