G.I.’s Ladner pushes for firing experienced teachers as a cost saving measure

by David Safier

Goldwater Institute's Matthew Ladner warns if Arizona's school districts are not allowed to fire experienced teachers, class sizes will rise. The implication is, the best way to keep class sizes low is to fire the most experienced teachers and replace them with first year teachers whose salaries are lower. He refuses to consider the idea that raising funding for schools would allow all teachers to receive much deserved raises and mean districts do not have to resort to firing their most experienced teachers to keep costs down.

As teachers gain classroom experience and further their educations by taking advanced courses while they teach, their salaries rise. Given the low entry-level salaries teachers receive relative to their years of schooling, those pay raises are vital. But that also means an experienced teacher costs more than a beginner.

Ladner applauds the Republican push to remove tenure protections from experienced teachers, which he sees as an opportunity to replace experienced teachers with less expensive first year teachers. He thinks there is nothing wrong with Arizona being dead last in the nation in its spending per student and sees throwing out teachers who have dedicated years of their lives to their students as a good way to stretch our education dollars.

It would be instructive for Ladner, whose job is to pontificate about education, to spend some time teaching, especially in a classroom with 40 elementary school students. It would be more instructive still if he lived on a teacher's salary for a few years instead of the generous six figure income he receives at the Goldwater Institute. He might not begrudge teachers their salaries if he understood how hard they work for the money they make.