Put the focus back on students

There is no problem with great teachers earning good salaries to perform their critically important and challenging jobs. Yet when we read that the average salary of a Long Island teacher is almost 60 percent higher than the national average, and their package of benefits is far sweeter than the ones enjoyed by most teachers nationally, it feels wrong. Why is that?

The problem is that mediocre teachers make those salaries, too. So do incompetent ones, who shouldn't have jobs in schools at all. The whole educational system on Long Island has gotten so fiscally out of whack that taxpayers, many of whom are parents, too, can't help but view all this with a certain amount of frustration.

In our current system it's almost impossible to pay teachers based on effectiveness, and that's entirely by the design of the union that represents them. And more anger-invoking than the pay to the public are the work rules and benefit packages.

Educators deserve health insurance, but they don't have a right to a system, as still exists in some Long Island districts, of unusually low contributions. Most of those who fund schools don't have that deal at their jobs. It's reasonable for teachers to get summers off and work class days that end at 3 p.m. if that allows enough time to teach their students. However, if the kids need longer instructional days, or even longer instructional years, the union and educators shouldn't fight those reforms tooth and nail, and shouldn't oppose innovations, like the charter school proposed in Brentwood, that might institute such policies.

It is certainly difficult to evaluate teachers, but it isn't impossible, and the New York State United Teachers shouldn't rush to court to stymie every attempt to do so. The opposition of the union to teacher evaluations is troubling to parents and destructive to the reputation of educators. The lack of evaluations protects only the poorest teachers, but resistance to standards besmirches all of them.

Good teachers deserve job security, but bad teachers shouldn't get tenure. Doesn't that, really, describe the employees of just about any enterprise?

We feel toward our teachers much as we do toward our police officers. We know the work is important, and difficult. We appreciate the sacrifices. We want them to be well compensated. But we can't get over the sense that the perks and the pensions, and in some cases, the pay, have gone too far.

We often love our teachers, while hating the education bureaucracy. And in the end, that's not really because of the salary. It's because that bureaucracy, more and more, seems designed to serve the teachers and administrators, not the students. hN