Zais Budget Hits Right Notes

Mick Zais has it right.

The S.C. superintendent of education hit the right note with his recent proposed budget for next year. He properly reigns in a program that doesn’t make teachers better, prioritizes the spending on critical needs and rightly ends programs that are not priorities.

We need to start any education funding debate with this question: For those who say schools are underfunded, how much does it take to educate a child? Tell me the dollar number, we’ll provide it and include the cost of inflation every year. But to date, no school administrator has ever been able to quantify that number – MORE is always the answer.

In addition to increasing the entire state spending on education by 2 percent, Zais also works to prioritize spending items making sure we’re replacing the necessities for education in the state.

Textbooks and school buses are the foundation for school. You have to be able to get to school safely to start the learning process. You have to have materials to learn from.

This budget starts the process of replenishing our dilapidated supplies of both.

Zais’s most noteworthy budget change is to eliminate the stipend for any new teachers getting the National Board Certification. This program – albeit maybe worthwhile for some – doesn’t guarantee to make teachers better. Mostly it has served as a channel for teachers to get more salary, not become better teachers. Removing this incentive gets us more to where we need to be. Great teachers need to be rewarded, cherished and retained. Poor teachers do not.

I’m going to say something that shouldn’t be unpopular, but it’s just rarely said in education. Good teachers are underpaid. Bad teachers are overpaid. Teaching for 20 years doesn’t make you a better teacher than someone who has taught for 5 years. Better teachers are defined by those who bring innovation, enthusiasm and knowledge to the classroom and the results are seen in how they make their students better learners, their fellow teachers better teachers and their schools better schools.

The systemic problem of paying people based on longevity, not worth to the organization, is not just in education, but all levels of government. Our elected leaders – school board, county council, etc. – hire administrators and then those administrators hire subordinates. We should allow those administrators – and thus any supervisor to pay – within a budget – what the market determines for these individuals.

A teacher whose makes their students better, their fellow teachers work harder and their schools better learning environments should be rewarded through the principal being able to retain that teacher with additional salary. Superintendent Zais’s budget proposal starts that process by ending a program that doesn’t require better teachers and prioritizes the money where it needs to go.