This editorial appeared in The State.
What would happen if a school found the very best science teacher it could, offered her a salary high enough to lure her to work, let her order the best new lab equipment and paid her extra to spend a couple of hours every afternoon working intensively with 40 students, following up with their parents if necessary to make sure they were getting the support they needed at home, checking in with other teachers to make sure they were doing fine in other classes? Or if the school did the same for a first-grade reading teacher?
Think we'd see dramatic improvement in the test scores – and the life outcomes – of those 40 kids?
What if every school in the state did this? Think we'd see state averages increasing? Think we'd see parents getting involved to make sure their kids were among the select 40 chosen for these extras?
Many of our schools already do something like that: It's called the high school football program. The most athletic boys get intensive attention and instruction, not in academics but in athletics. As The Sun News and The State recently found, more and more coaches' salaries are approaching and surpassing six figures, while taxpayers foot the bill for half-million-dollar stadiums and all that football equipment that coaches say they have to spend so much time in the off-season ordering.
Now, we have no reason to believe that football coaches do not do enough work to earn their pay.
To read the complete editorial, visit The State.