Paying for Better Math and Science Teachers

Coryoth writes "While California is suffering from critical shortage of mathematics and science teachers, Kentucky is considering two bills that would give explicit financial incentives to math and science students and teachers. The first bill would provide cash incentives to schools to run AP math and science classes, and cash scholarships to students who did well on AP math and science exams. The second bill provides salary bumps for any teachers with degrees in math or science, or who score well in teacher-certification tests in math, chemistry and physics. Is such differentiated pay the right way to attract science graduates who can make much more in industry, or is it simply going to breed discontent among teachers?"

Comments

Re:We have a winner!

[susano_otter]

I, for one, would like to see students master Reading and Math before they spend very much time on Social Studies or Science. Considering that they don't even start teaching anything as basic as Algebra until 7th Grade at the earliest, why is your wife trying to spend any time at all on anything other than Math and Reading in the first place? It seems to me that presenting a half-hour of Science and a half-hour of Social Studies on alternating days is more than enough for Third-Graders already.

Re:We have a winner!

[beakerMeep]

Now, the program does do much good for the truly handicapped people, but there are very few people who have anything wrong with them, except for their work ethic. paint with a wide brush much?

honestly that's the longest, well ordered list of whiney bullshit I have ever read. enough with the anecedotal feigned outrage and fatalism. Honestly, I respect that your dad is a teacher but you've turned the end-of-the-day venting of a tired man into some kind of fatalistic rant on why teaching is hopeless.

before you get mad at me for calling you out on it, reread your post with tone in mind and try and discern the over all argument.

Anyways, in the interest of saying something positive, I think this program is good intentioned but they need to be really careful to implement it correctly. there is nothing wrong with paying teachers to train as well as higher pay for the subjects that there is a shortage of, but they need to be sure the incentive isnt so big as to be polarizing.