On the way home last night I caught a bit of a piece on NPR with Abigail Thernstrom concerning her new book No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning. While the things she says often made sense and the few things I've read make sense, she said one thing that doesn't hold much water in my opinion.

When asked if paying teachers more would help the situation in our public schools, she balked. She didn't want to say no, instead she said things like "People don't teach for the money." Well, yeah...when I thought of going into teaching I didn't dream of the big paycheck. But is it too much to ask to pay teachers more for educating the masses? To help retain better teachers instead of letting them drift off into corporate America? I don't think that a teacher will ever end up making as much as a lawyer - we're not that smart of a society, but there are many ways to make teaching more enticing to those of us who HAVE to care about how much money we bring home.

- Why not forgive all student loans for teachers who teach more than 5 years?
- Why not make college tuition ZERO for those enrolled and making progress in their teacher education? (anyone below a C+ average has to pay tuition - but can get it back after teaching a certain number of years.)
- Just up their fucking pay!

We've had about 2 teachers strikes in the Chicagoland area this year and nearly had one in Chicago. These people are teaching our children, our future doctors, our future teachers, our future cab drivers, our future voters for geezus sake. The day that this country values our children the way we say we do, I just might fall down and die.

This Roni-rant (tm) was brought to you by Andrew.