SENATE BILL: The Gaining Excellent Teachers (GET) Act (Law'd)

[Niemeyerite]

I strongly support this: better teachers means better students (and more good students, too). This is a long-term investment: by having less scientists/lawers/physicists today we will have more and better tomorrow

[Niemeyerite]

I'm not opposed, but I'm going to just do a real time bare-bones calculation here to see what this bill could end up costing us in terms of the budget.

(Most of the facts are taken from this page.)

There are about 3,300,000 public school teachers currently working in the United States Atlasia. Let's forget about this bill's provision for college grads and instead skip to the 10% of teachers in the top teir of the NTLE. The bill would therefore affect a minimum of 330,000 teachers.

The average salary for teachers in the 2010-2011 school year was about $56,000. In Atlasia, this number would put their income tax rate at 22%. Since 50% of this average income would become tax exempt, we're looking at taxes on $28,000. 22% of $28,000 is $6,160. When we multiply that figure by 330,000 for the minimum number of teachers affected by this bill, we can estimate that the GET Act would result in $2,032,800,000 of lost revenues. The federal government rakes in about $3 trillion in revenues each year, so that loss is almost inconsequential relative to the budget.

(I should note that I have no idea if I did the appropriate calculations for tax exemption. If we're only taxing 50% of the teacher's salary, does that mean we only look at the $26,000 when we're determining their tax rate? If so, the rate would be at 10%, and we'd need to do a few more calculations. Either way, this measure isn't very costly and will probably have my support. Maybe this exercise was a waste of time, but I like to be able to visualize things as best I can. )

You have to keep in mind that this will probably give us more money than it cost in the future, so I'd call it an investment.

[Niemeyerite]

Would this go on until retirement, I presume?

There should be a way to make sure they're still great teachers if that's the case, but I think that goes only for the year they placed in the top 15% of their graduating class and/or the top 10% of NTLE scores

[Niemeyerite]

I introduce an amendment:

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Yes, this is an important addition. Only thought about public schools for some reason.

Yes, the same for me, I was thinking about public schools only =S.
So, I support the amendment, of course.

[Niemeyerite]

I would like to say I cannot look favourably upon this amendment- I see no reason to have the goverment move quality teachers from private to public schools. Exempting teachers at private schools would create undesirable market distortions that would reduce the quality of private educatoon while making it even more expensive as private schools raise wages to compete with public schools,  causing increases in tuition, making it even further out of reach for ordinary Atlasians.

Why wouldn't it be in society's interest to have the best teachers at public schools? We're not here to look out for the interests of private schools, but rather to offer a universal hifh quality education.

Private schools are companies. The boss can give the teacher more money if he thinks they're doing a good job.

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NAY

[Niemeyerite]

AYE!!

[Niemeyerite]

I'm glad the amendment had the support of Hagrid and NC Yankee