OPINION:
Isn’t there something wrong with a Harvard professor cooking up surveys with questionable methodology in order to get in a kick at public-school teachers’ pay rates (“Teachers and schools are funded at a higher rate than most people know,” Web, Aug. 13)? Professor Paul Peterson’s definition of the “informed” and “uninformed” survey groups is laughable considering the number and complexity of the relevant factors that go into deciding appropriate per-pupil expenditures and teacher pay rates in a given community.
For example, do the people being surveyed know the average pay of other comparable professional jobs requiring college (and often graduate) degrees, as well as state-mandated qualifying exams? Do they know that public schools, unlike Harvard University, must and do take all comers — the severely physically handicapped, the non-English speakers, the academically unprepared and disaffected — along with the regular and gifted students?
I don’t know any college professors who quit because they couldn’t support their families on a university salary, but I do know teachers who have quit because they couldn’t pay the rent, their car loan, their college loans and support their families. I know teachers who work second jobs to stay true to their vocation and sacrifice their own children’s opportunities in order to serve the community’s public-school students. Maybe that is something that “informed” survey takers should be made aware of before they are asked to judge.
I feel pretty confident that an “informed” survey of the American public would find a distinct sense that if anyone in this country is overpaid, Harvard professors would probably be at or near the top of the list.
DAVID BURNS
Springfield
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