The Teacher Retirement System Of Texas

As the 1990’s approached Ann Richards the democratic gubernatorial nominee wins the governor’s race. Democrats are in control of the Texas legislature and confront a federal court ruling that called for educational funding to across Texas to be equalized. The issue of funding education remains a problem thought the early democratic 90’s to the early Republican 2000s.

During the twentieth century, Texans struggled to maintain acceptable funds for public education. Schools were short on funds, leading them to be short on school supplies, and textbooks. In 1949, the state legislature passed three bills to help with this issue. These bills also helped reconstruct the public education in Texas. These bills were known as the Gilmer-Aikin Laws. They helped raise teacher’s salaries regardless of race or sex, established minimum standards for teacher training, and mandated a nine-month academic year for students. (Erekson

STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematic) includes some of the most versatile and important careers in the modern world. Most new developments that are making the world a better place to live are from the influences of STEM fields. As the world becomes more technologically developed there is an increase demand for students well-trained in the STEM related fields. To keep pace with this rapidly expanding area of the economy requires an adequate number of P-12 teachers with the necessary content knowledge and skills to train the next generation. Currently, Texas is facing a critical shortage of teachers with strong backgrounds in STEM. This STEM teacher shortage is impacting student learning and if too many teachers pursue degrees

I believe the single biggest challenge facing Texas teachers is poverty. Recent statistic from The Southern Education Foundation indicate 60% of student in Texas public schools live in poverty. Studies published by The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, have found that socioeconomic status, not race, ethnicity, national origin, location of a school is the best predictor of whether a person will receive a college education.

The Texas Constitution guarantees an "efficient system of public free schools," but schools have recently found themselves unable to provide an adequate education to the more than 5 million students in Texas because of the many problems within the education policy in the state. Such issues involve school financing, lack of preparation for college, early childhood education, teacher quality, and school choice. Tough all of these conflicts pose a potential threat to the school system’s competence and effectiveness as well as to Texas’ economy, there are a broad number of possible adjustment and reforms that could be placed to improve the adequacy of Texas’ school system.

That means that out of 50 states there is only one state where teachers are paid worse. The feeling is that if the teachers are paid higher salaries more people might go into the field. Which means there would be more people to choose from that are actually qualified. Texas should be worried about the future this information predicts because if teachers aren’t paid equally there is a good chance they will move to states that have a competitive salary. To improve this reality Texas needs to give every resident the choice of school district. The guidelines should not be drawn by county but should be drawn by the willingness of the parent to travel and enforce a perfect attendance record for the student and also the hard work and effort put forth by the student to achieve high marks on their report card. By doing this I believe Texas’ Scholastics Assessment Test (SAT) scores which as of now rank 46 out of 50 will greatly improve. The student will strive to do better because they will know that the penalty of them doing poorly will result in transferring to a school closer to their

High quality education is a must in U.S. since it means that today's youth will be prepared with the knowledge needed to tackle our nations issues. When looking from state to state, you will notice how various states differ in how well they are able to educate students. Maryland was ranked number one in the nation by having a high grade point average amongst students and an equally high graduation rate. Texas on the other hand had the worst grade point average and graduation rate. The reason for this is the amount of funding that goes into public schools. Maryland puts a lot of funding into their public schools which helps raise grade point averages. Meanwhile Texas puts little funding into public schools and

In order to implement this policy, responsibility will be bestowed upon the “Foundation School Program” and the Texas state Legislature (Grusendorf, 2015, pg.2). These two groups play the most vital role in changing and implementing the new “state formulas” (Grusendorf, 2015, pg.3). Both will work together in creating and agreeing to the new state formulas. We will review the formulas every year and decide if funding is truly being distributed with equity. Only if they are not then will both organizations have to re-write the formulas to improve upon them.

The Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan (OTPP) is a defined contribution plan that was created in 1917 to provide and administer a pension plan for Ontario school teachers.  Sponsored by the Ontario Government and the Ontario Teacher’s Federation, the plan currently supports 343,000 teachers, former teachers and pensioners. The recent government decision to eliminate the 30% constraint on foreign investments and the increased volatility in the currency market has prompted the OTPP Investment Committee to address the following:

To solve most of Texas’ education dilemmas, we must ensure that state legislature along with every candidate and sate leader restores all funding and supports education for all Texas students. We must invest in high quality education as population continues to grow. This will help set the stage and make dreams reachable for the future leaders of

America has encountered a change within the teaching profession: concerning, experience, age, credentials, and ethnic background (Feistritzer, 2011). It is almost as if the year of 2005, overturned the trend of older employed teachers (Feistritzer, 2011). A six-year survey shows that the amount of teachers under the age of thirty has increased drastically, and that most teachers have earned master degrees. Also, although teaching has been a predominately white profession, more Hispanic and African American teachers were hired between the years of 2005 and 2011 (Feistritzer, 2011).

Teachers have and will always have a big impact in everyone’s life and if not everyone, well, at least they did for me. They teach you everything you need to know about a subject and valuable life lessons, so why are they not paid sufficiently enough to make a decent living? Teachers salaries have always been low and I believe it is the time that changes. Being a lawyer, doctor, or engineer is great, but none of that would be possible without the insight of a teacher, I will inform you in this paper on why I believe there is a need for action. I will go over the background of teacher’s salaries, my ideas on what would be best for teachers not just in Texas, but nationwide, and pros and cons on the issues and ideas at hand.

There is a consensus among the concerned stakeholders that the quality of teachers is the leading factor in determination of student performance. In the case of United States, the student performance can only be given an impetus by the efforts which the state can make, under all costs, to develop and retain high quality teachers. The measures undertaken determine the level of turnover of the school teachers. Lazear (2009) similarly argues the length of employment is a critical factor in averse risks of employment a trend contrary to teachers treatment. The turnover of public school teachers will refer to the rate at which the state, which is the teacher’s

With beginning teachers usually earning entirely less than other college graduates, the profession is at loss of top-notch, quality people who tend to find jobs seeking more money. Almost 50 percent leave the profession within 5 years, lured by higher pay and prestige elsewhere in the booming U.S. economy (World, 1999, par. 7). Starting teachers average a $25,735 salary in the United States compared to an engineer earning $56,820 or a physical therapist earning $56,600 (Engineer, 2000, par.1). And what signal does it send out about the value of good teachers and a good education when a 45-year-old teacher with a master’s degree earns $45,000 a year and a 25-year-old out of law school often starts at $80,000, considering a six year education for a master’s degree and a seven year education for a law degree (Greenhouse, 2002, par. 4)? A teacher is also given no compensation for the long hours spent basically in overtime work. The teacher’s day does not end when they leave school because if lesson plans, grading, or planning is not completed, it will have to be finished on their own time. Accountants, paralegals, and engineers all are compensated and get paid overtime for work that does not get completed in a regular day or if they want to stay and

Lurking over our great country is a troubling issue that is plaguing the professional educational workforce. When compared worldwide, American teachers work the most hours, yet are paid in the lowest brackets when related to the top 32 nations (Teachers Pay). In addition, when you compare a teacher’s salary to other four year degree salaries, teachers are among the 5 lowest paid degrees (O’Shaughnessy). Not only are the salaries among the lowest in the American workforce, a typical teachers at home workload exceeds all other professional jobs by 20% (Current). Furthermore, teachers were only given a 2.3% salary raise in 2009. Yet the rate of inflation rose to 3.1% causing a loss in purchasing power and creating a hardship on the