Sunday, May 11, 2008

Free Agent Teachers

NewsAlert (see blogroll) turns us on to the LA Times (blech!) story about California teachers' being recruited to work in other states.

Drawn by pink slips issued to thousands of teachers, recruiters from school districts nationwide are wooing California teachers with greater fervor than usual.

Districts in Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, Kansas, Virginia and Texas have been buying newspaper ads and renting billboard space, calling teachers unions and sending recruiters to regions facing the biggest school budget crunches.

You know, if one of the school districts in Colorado Springs offered me a high school teaching job, it wouldn't take too much to get me to consider it.

4 comments:

Ellen K said...

This is where state taxes vs. lower salaries could come into play. Texas has no state income tax. Sure, pay is lower, but so is cost of living. You can get a very nice four bedroom house in McKinney-a nice Dallas suburb-for around $180K. Unfortunately, people moving from Cali to other states that own houses, won't get the full value for their existing homes and will end up having to roll that deficit up into a new mortgage. But it still might be worth it.

Unknown said...
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Darren said...

Can't tell if the last commenter was just fishing for a link or just what.

If you have a post on your blog that you think relates to this post, then please, by all means, link to it. Linking to your main blog page, and expecting me to go through all your posts to find one that relates to this post--not gonna do that here.

Anonymous said...

In the 3rd pick of the second round, Colorado Springs District 11 chooses...

Since neighborhood home costs are marketed as being your buy-in to good schools, and the districts benefit from having some displayable measure of their greatness to lure in the "right" kind of families, showing their recruiting efforts might not be a bad way to go.

Plus, increasing the recruitment range makes better districts become a reality for teachers who wouldn't have considered moving there before. And it means that with more competition, mediocre teachers who were considered to be top teachers in their little area are now compared against teachers from all over -- encouraging them to improve to a true high standard or to move along to a less demanding career.