Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Education Stats Palm Beach County

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Does anyone know how much the United States spends on students each year? We might not have the answer to that question but what we might admit to is that the money being spent isn’t doing much good.  Click here to see teacher pay by state.

"A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just eight percent (8%) of Likely U.S. Voters know that the United States spends an average of $11,000 per student per year. This is down slightly from September and tied with last January’s low. Forty-four percent (44%) think the country spends less, including 11% who think America spends as little as $3,000 per student. Seven percent (7%) think it spends an average of $13,000 per year. Forty-two percent (42%) are not sure, the highest level of doubt to date. (To see survey question wording, click here.)"

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Palm Beach County spends close to the national average per student.  Democrat Darren Soto from Kissimmee has filed a bill that will raise the starting salary for a teacher to $50,000. I guess he believes the more you pay the better the results even though many of our teachers are simply not qualified to teach or graduated from inferior schools. You can't fire those who may be incompetent as they are union protected. And then we have the disinterested student or one from a home that speaks no English where teaching is an impossible challenge.

As far as Lake Worth High is concerned, according to state standards, 31% of students at this school are considered proficient in math and/or reading. There have been 23 reviews written about the academics and they have been mixed.

SB 280: Teacher Salaries

GENERAL BILL by Soto
Teacher Salaries; Citing this act as the "Florida Teacher Fair Pay Act"; requiring the Legislature to fund the Florida Education Finance Program at a level that ensures a guaranteed minimum annual starting salary for instructional personnel; requiring the Department of Education to annually adjust the minimum starting salary; providing a formula for calculating such adjustment; requiring district school boards to adjust the minimum starting salary determined by the department by applying the district cost differential; providing that such adjustment may not reduce starting salaries below the statewide minimum, etc.
Effective Date: 7/1/2015
Last Action: 1/7/2015 Senate - Filed
Location: Filed
Bill Text: Web Page | PDF

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The reasoning of paying teachers 50k instead of 28k is you'll get a better pool of candidates that would consider teaching rather then other careers at that pay scale.

Lynn Anderson said...

Well, I guess you didn't read my blog. Your statement is untrue.

Anonymous said...

I read it, and what he said is exactly true. By raising the base pay you will in fact have a better pool of candidates wanting to become teachers. By that the selection process should be stiffened to only bring in the best candidates

Lynn Anderson said...

Difference of opinion, anonymous. There is no proof that paying a teacher more than the going average will reap better results. We do need a highly qualified pool of candidates and perhaps that can be ascertained by their test scores and the college/university from which they graduated.