Summertime Off and Large Class Sizes: Saginaw Teacher Takes on Gov. Snyder
Michigan public school teacher Krista Weber recently wrote a letter to The Saginaw News criticizing Gov. Rick Snyder’s K-12 education policies. Two of the claims Weber made deserve a closer look. The Hemmeter Elementary School in the Saginaw Township School District lists Weber as a third-grade teacher on its website. Weber didn’t respond to an email seeking comment from her.
Weber wrote to Snyder: “Thank you for the 31 students in my classroom, who will not get nearly the attention they deserve.”
She later added:
“Yes, teachers do have time off in the summer, which many of us use to fulfill our obligations of continuing education. I, of course, agree wholeheartedly that teachers must continue to be lifelong learners. However, in the private sector, this is paid for by the company hiring the individual. I took out a home equity loan to finance my continuing education. I feel money spent in learning is well spent.”
A master's degree is generally about 36 credit hours. Saginaw Valley State University charges $445.80 per credit hour for state residents taking graduate courses. That comes to about $16,000 for tuition.
The Saginaw Township School District pays teachers with master's degrees about $7,000 more per year than those with a bachelor’s degree. For example, a teacher with five years of service would make $44,891 with a bachelor’s degree and $51,854 with a master’s degree in the district. That extra $7,000 applies throughout the pay scale, so a teacher with a master’s degree would be paid about $21,000 extra over a three-year period than if the teacher just had a bachelor’s degree.
“To suggest the norm in the private sector is for the employer to pick up the tuition for the employee is false,” said Charles Owens, state director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses. “If teachers get a master’s degree, they don’t increase their responsibility in teaching, they get more money.
“Nobody automatically gets a pay hike because they get another degree pinned behind their name,” Owens said. “You just don’t get money because you get a degree. It’s just a crock. Same jobs. Same hours. The only thing different is, ‘I have a new set of letters after my name.’”
Michael Van Beek, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s education policy director, also said Weber’s larger class size may not have anything to do with Gov. Snyder.
According to the Saginaw Township School District, there are 5,086 students in the district (including 180 at alternate education Mackinaw High) and 220 regular education teachers. That’s a 23-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio, not including 53 special education teachers.
Van Beek notes that such a student-to-teacher ratio doesn’t necessarily equate to class size, but he also says that there are many reasons why Weber’s class size could be 31 students.
He suggests that more parents could have requested Weber as a teacher, or it could just be a large grade in particular. He says that with a 23-to-1 ratio, if one teacher does have 31 students, other classes could be smaller.
Also, the teachers’ contract for the district states that teachers in third grade receive an extra $8 per day for each student above 30.
“Apparently, her local teachers union doesn’t have a problem with class sizes like the one she has, as long as teachers receive additional compensation,” Van Beek said in an email.
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Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
Creating Health 'Exchange' Entrenches Obamacare
Cato Institute health care policy expert Michael Cannon testified recently before the Missouri Senate’s Interim Committee on Health Insurance Exchanges on why that state should not create an Obamacare exchange. His arguments apply just as much to Michigan, including this excerpt describing how creating an exchange will help entrench Obamacare.
From testimony delivered on Sept. 15, 2011
Some opponents of the law nevertheless argue for creating an exchange so that states can be prepared in case the law is not overturned or repealed. Yet creating an exchange would entrench the law and make it less likely to be repealed or overturned.
• First, creating an exchange lends a veneer of legitimacy to the law. The Obama administration heralds the creation of each new exchange as proof that the law is gaining acceptance, and heralds states accepting the federal grants available under the law in the same manner.
• Second, declaring the law unconstitutional but then accepting the funding it offers and creating an exchange undermines the credibility of state officials seeking to overturn the law and also undermines the lawsuits themselves. One federal judge who overturned the law wrote that the fact that some of the plaintiff states are themselves implementing the law undercuts their own argument that he should order the federal government to halt implementation.
• Third, to create an exchange is to create a taxpayer-funded lobbying group dedicated to fighting repeal. An exchange's employees would owe their power and their paychecks to this law. Naturally, they would aid the fight to preserve the law.
• Fourth, both Congress and the courts are less likely to eliminate actual government bureaucracies that have assembled dedicated constituencies than they are to eliminate theoretical ones. The more disruptive repeal would be, the less likely it becomes.
• Fifth, many knowledgeable observers believe few exchanges, state or federal, will be operational by 2014. If states like Missouri create their own exchanges, they will begin handing out billions of taxpayer dollars sooner than if the federal government creates them. Creating a state-run exchange will hasten the day when the private insurance companies that receive those subsidies plow much of the money back into fighting repeal.
• Sixth, and perhaps most important, due to a recently discovered glitch in the statute, the new health care law only authorizes premium assistance in state-run exchanges — not federal exchanges. States thus have the collective power to deny the Obama administration the legal authority to dispense more than a half-trillion dollars in new entitlement spending, to expose the full cost of the law's mandates and government price controls, as well as to enforce the law's employer mandate — simply by not creating exchanges. If Missouri joins other states in refusing to create an exchange, it can essentially force Congress to reconsider the law. If Missouri instead creates an exchange, it will increase the federal deficit and debt, hide the full cost of the health care law, expose Missouri employers to penalties and reduce the likelihood of repeal.
The Obama administration is offering financial inducements to states to create exchanges because the administration knows that every new exchange helps them shield the law from Congress, the courts, and the American people. Creating an exchange is not a hedging-your-bets strategy but a sabotaging-your bets strategy.
Full text of eye-opening testimony here.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
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