Last updated on 2012.03.01
The results of the latest Madville Times poll reflect the sentiments of legislators East River and West: Governor Dennis Daugaard's education reform package is going nowhere in its current form.
I posed you this question: "Gov. Daugaard says we have $15 million to spend on merit pay and math/sci bonuses. How would you spend it?" In the biggest response to a Madville Times poll in the last 13 months, the majority of your rejected merit bonuses and said raise base pay for all teachers. Here are the details on how you's spend $15 million:
- On increasing base pay for all teachers: 59%, (115 votes)
- It's more complicated than that...: 21% (40 votes)
- We spend enough on education! Cut taxes by $15M! 10% (20 votes)
- On merit pay and math/sci bonuses: 6% (12 votes)
- Just on merit pay: 2% (4 votes)
- Just on math/sci bonuses: 2% (3 votes)
- Total Voters: 194
Even with 194 votes, this poll maintains the usual blog margin of error just slightly larger than the pile of research that says merit pay doesn't work. Three out of five respondents say that we should use what little extra money we may have raising base pay for all teachers. Another fifth of you say we need a more complicated solution, a position that I deeply appreciate. A tenth of you, dear conservative readers, hold out for cutting taxes and education funding further. Only 8% of you explicitly embrace merit pay... which means 8% of you are flat wrong.
Governor Daugaard, you appear to be a member of that 8%. You have said that your plan is just "a plan, not the plan." I hope you're listening. I hope you are willing to pull your merit pay plan and consider the wealth of policy options that might actually work.
Well, I was one of the 59 percent.
Noticed that you've written a lot of posts about the teacher pay issue lately, and in particular, about the merit pay issue that our venerable politicians in Pierre have recently glommed onto.
Really gets to you, don't it, when they start messing around so close to one's life-blood stream?
"“It’s a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach. To go and raise someone’s child for eight hours a day, or many people’s children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn’t want to do it, OK?â€"
What was the % of teachers who answered this question?
I teach but I voted for the "It's more complicated option. . . "
Yes it does, Stan. Daugaard's education reforms strike me as one of the most important issues facing the Legislature, perhaps the most damaging bill that Pierre could pass. It deserves our scrutiny and stiff opposition.
I don't teach and voted with the 59%ers.
That's to bad Governor Duggard is choosing the same path the the Washington DC and Atlanta school systems chose. Remember the problems they had recently.