Friday, May 11, 2007

"Rubber Rooms", NYC's Holding Pens for Nonteaching Teachers

Frustrated at the constant request from your local government for higher taxes and school levees? Tired of hearing how they need more money in order to improve things like test scores and graduation rates? Do you constantly hear how teachers aren't paid enough? Well, here's an article from
EducationNews.org that talks about teachers who are paid full salary to do absolutely nothing.

In essence, the New York School administration has developed a program whereby teachers it thinks should not be in a classroom are reassigned to one of more than a dozen rooms where they are given nothing to do but continue to draw their full salary, which may be $60,000 or more a year.

The program is expanding.

Altman's article reports that in 2000 there were 385 such inactive teachers but that number has grown to 662 currently. This costs the system about $33 million a year just in salaries of the teachers involved. That doesn't count the costs for such additional details as maintaining the centers and paying for the necessary substitute teachers.

No wonder it's so expensive for a sub-par, public school education.

Watch John Stossel's "Stupid in America" on this very subject.

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