First off.  Any one can say anything.  I can say we should seriously colonize a  nearby class “M” planet.   I can find 40,000 reasons why the human race should do so.  But, if you were to ask me how we would get there,  I couldn’t tell you.  But I would try.

I would blame the bad people here.  I would say we need to get good people in positions of power. People with “vision”. I would say, we aren’t and haven’t been trying hard enough to allocate resources towards that.  I would say that if we just rewarded those who worked on it, we’d get there. I’d say that if we paid some of my fellow science friends to figure what we are doing wrong, my fellow science friends with your money, would surely lead the way….

But in the end, after all your money was spent, all we’d have left to show for it…  is an idea; that idea being that you know, that we should colonize a nearby class “M” planet….

Just in case you couldn’t see through the metaphor, this is what the Rodel Foundation has done….

I could go on and on with details, but it would be just copying  this person who already has.  Instead, I promised you a hole in their reasoning , didn’t I?  Well, that’s what I promised so let me deliver.

Let us assume you recruit the best.  You go after the trophy winners where ever they may be…   you excite them with your presentation, you optimism and you give them a pen to sign the contract….

They pause, and ask.  How much will I get paid?

A quick check of sources  shows Delaware’s starting wage is $39,099.  From the top that puts Delaware as  the 10th highest starting salary.   If you think a teacher with a portfolio of student loans more than owed on one’s house is not going to go to the highest bidder, you aren’t thinking correctly. Which means Delaware is already starting out of the gate with a handicap of 10.

So isn’t it silly, you tell me, to spend all the federal RTTT  funds on recruiting the “best” teachers or professionals and then, forget to pay them because we are strapped for cash the following year?   Can you say 8% pay cuts?  Exactly how long ago was that?

What makes anyone think that a really good teacher who has an inside track in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Wyoming, California,New Jersey, Maryland, New York and Alaska is going to give it up to come to Delaware for less?

If you want talent, you have to pay for it.  The idea of waving a magic wand and good teachers will come, is not grounded in reality.   We might as well be recruiting on a class “M” planet.