Teachers' pay

To the Editor:

Teachers in Maine and across the country are up in arms as states grapple with tough decisions to close yawning budget gaps. As employees of the state, teachers' compensation is fair game when it comes to balancing the budget.

The chorus of teachers will cry out that their mission in life is so noble that doing anything other than paying them more is tantamount to throwing away the futures of our children. For decades now they and their union dignitaries have successfully foisted the ruse upon the taxpayer that higher spending on education is absolutely necessary for better educating our children. Their argument has guilted us into spending more money on what is most precious to us, our children.

Well, now we're broke. The gravy train is skidding to a halt and the fat and happy teachocracy have been jolted from their banquet in the dining car.

A teacher of 34 years cannot accept the notion of working for three more years as part of a compromise to help close Maine's budget gap, because she had planned to only work until the age of 62. I empathize with her disappointment in seeing her carefully planned retirement get delayed by a few years. Hard working folks at Enron, General Motors and scores of other private businesses have also had their retirement plans tossed to the wind, through no fault of their own.

As taxpayers, we too had plans for our children and the education we have so generously invested in over the past several decades. We had planned to see our kids show year to year improvement in their test scores and academic performance. We had planned to see our kids become more proficient, not less, at the core skills of reading, writing and math. Instead, our investment, like the state teachers' pension fund, has turned out to be a bust.

More spending on education does not produce better results. As evidence, I invite you to research the trend in SAT scores for Maine students from 1990-2010. Test scores are consistently below the national average for math and English and have steadily declined since the early 1990s. On second thought, perhaps we should encourage today's crop of teachers to retire sooner rather than later.

David Sawicki

(OHHS 1984)

Auburn