L’Observateur / March 8, 2000

DEAR EDITOR: In January, Louisiana politicians fired a broadside at the proposal to increase Louisiana teacher salary to the Southern Region Education Board (SREB) average. Using creative financial analytical techniques, state governmentalofficials are backing off an original pledge to work toward the Southern average for Louisiana teachers’ pay. Now, the governor’s administration isadvancing the position that teachers’ average salary should be based on an “adjusted Southern average salary.” The “adjusted figure” is less than thefigure used by other states.

It seems this legislative session is shaping up to be like others in the past when the state budget was in the red. The teachers’ rate-of-paycontroversy will be the political football used to encourage the public to put more money into education. However, the political debate and heated rhetoricwill not touch on the one issue that would resolve the problem of continually having to find scarce state dollars for teachers’ salaries: How do we take school teachers out from under government authority and pay them like professionals in other vocational fields? Politicians should ponder the question of how to pay teachers in the same ways other professionals are paid: by a wage market tied to competencies and demand. Why should politicians and the state government budgetingprocess be involved in deciding a profession’s rate of pay? Only in the profession of teaching is this true.

In the schools of today, major limitations are placed on teachers as professionals when compared to all other professions of the 21st century.

Architects, lawyers, nurses, engineers choose among several options to practice their profession. Other professionals can be employed byorganizations, they can work with other colleagues in private practice, they can remain independent and work for themselves in an individual practice.

School teachers do not have any of these options unless they are willing to leave the classroom and accept other employment. If they choose to be aclassroom teacher they must do so as employees of government-owned school boards. Only new job options for teachers can deliver trueprofessionalism and offer the market dynamics that drive higher salaries and better products.

School systems traditionally contract for some services year to year or month to month, like transportation, food services, building maintenance, lawyers, architects and consultants. Why not contract for instruction in asimilar way? Teaching must become competitive with other professional careers. Opportunities for career growth and better wages for teachersmust be broadened beyond the status of lifetime state public employees.

Excessive legislative wrangling, prestigious blue-ribbon commissions and boards of education committee meetings have fossilized and polarized our public education system and the teaching profession. More charter schools,private contracting for instruction, parent-teacher cooperatives, for-profit schools, more high-tech distance learning, plus other choices that change the education dynamics will fulfill the promises of a better-paying job for teachers and better learning opportunities for students.

Is it not time for teachers and students to have more options and opportunities for teaching and learning, without the politics?

Polly Broussard Executive Director Associated Professional Educators of Louisiana

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