Sounds Fair to Me

Last night this school district voted an eight and a half percent raise for the Director of Schools. That’s all the teachers want.

- -MNEA President Jamye Merritt to the Nashville City Paper

While the social conservatives are trying to promote teach-to-test incentives for teachers in order to erode public education, Pedro Garcia's pay raise looks more like a bid by local business community leaders to encourage a corporate model in which salary and job security is scaled up at the top and a few throw-them-a-bone incentives scatter along the bottom of the education food chain. The social conservatives erode public education; the corporate conservatives erode institutional fairness. It's a one-two punch, and further proof that if the teachers do not have a union, then no one else will represent their interests when the School Board divides the pie.