Cass,

I'm hoping you eventually answer my request for your idea of an appropriate salary scale. In the meantime, I'll address your assumptions about salary and days worked annually.

First, no one works 250 days per year. Accounting for a normal 5 day work week, minus federal holidays and vacation time, most professionals work 240 days or fewer. If you're experienced, talented, or have been especially loyal to your employer, then you're probably getting 4-5 weeks of paid vacation, which puts the days worked down to as low as 225.

Students are required, in this state, to have classes for 180 days. That's not the number of days that teachers work. It's typical for teachers to start and end a week before and after the students, and teachers also work on most of the holidays that students (and many private employees) receive off. MLK day is a perfect example. Recognizing that teachers work 43-44 weeks, and subtracting for Christmas and Easter days off, the total days worked is actually between 215-220.

Suddenly, the numbers aren't so different, are they?

Of course, this argument is largely irrelevant to actually determining compensation for any professional. You assert, despite the fact that most teachers are severely underpaid compared to their counterparts with similar experience and education in the private sector, that teachers are overpaid.

Regardless of what teachers are paid in wages or benefits, they are educating our children. How many days the state says this should take or how many holidays occur is beside the point. What matters, ultimately, is that there is a job to be done, and we need to pay someone to do it.

Now, we could pay teachers $10 per hour. We could pay them $100. The basic laws of capitalism dictate that lower wages will attract a lower quality employee. Many janitors make more than $10 per hour, so you can imagine who we'd have teaching our children if we offered that wage. The people who make $100 per hour are well-educated, intelligent, and generally very good at what they do. Your lawyer, doctor, bankers, and executives, for instance. They make good money because society values their work. Would paying $100 per hour for teachers solve all our educational ills? Not likely. But it would undoubtedly weed out a lot of the "lemons" as another poster put it.

My question for you, Cass, is how much do you value education? How much do you value teachers? Are you - and society - willing to put money into bettering our children, or would you rather just keep paying it to lawyers and bankers and CEOs?