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Opinion
 

Staff Editorial

                Chris Elliott                        Robyn Morrow                  Johnny Peña
                                      Fabian Sifuentes              Kristen Young

Teachers' work warrants salary increase 

Teachers are finally getting the recognition they deserve. For years, educators who have cultivated some of the brightest minds in the world have been ignored while athletes, filmmakers and actors are showered with unimaginable amounts of money.

The College Board's Center for Innovative Thought announced a proposal for the creation of a national "Teacher's Trust" paid for by all levels of government as well as private enterprise, USAToday reported. This group, comprised of academic and business leaders, wishes to increase public school teachers' pay immediately by as much as 20 percent and up to 50 percent in the future, the article said.

Sadly, the average public school teacher's salary is $48,000, according to the National Education Association, which is not nearly enough compensation for training the future of this country. 

Although teachers' salaries have risen minimally, they cannot keep up with the increase in inflation, the NEA also said. Teachers shouldn't have to suffer financially because they choose to guide a future Michael Dell or Bill Gates of the country rather than parading down a runway or pitching a baseball at ungodly speeds. 

The people who educate our doctors and business leaders receive little credit for the work they put into making sure that our country has intellectual minds to run it. 

This pay increase would also entice more people to consider a career in education. We need more teachers, especially intelligent, capable ones.

It's mind-boggling that we will pay an actor $20 million per movie to entertain us, but we can't scrounge up a portion of that for someone responsible for our future. Instead of teaching younger generations the value of an education, we teach them the value of a dollar, or rather, quite a few of them. So many great minds never reach their potential because we lack good teachers to harvest it.

Competent teachers willing to sacrifice a satisfying financial future are few and far in between. With a pay increase, we will be giving educators the recognition they deserve and attracting more adept individuals to help further the intelligence of this country.