What Does the $30B in the American Jobs Act For Teachers Mean?
The White House just released a report Teachers Jobs at Risk. The report is used to justify the $30 billion included in the American Jobs Act, that we "must pass", to retain or rehire teachers.
Neal McClusky at the Cato Institute said it well in his blog:
Neal McClusky at the Cato Institute said it well in his blog:
But perhaps we are on the verge of education employment Armageddon. The administration’s report, after all, says that 300,000 elementary and secondary jobs were lost between 2008 and 2011, which seems like a big number. The report doesn’t say whether that was net or total, and it is probably a worst-case scenario, but still, that feels huge.Huge, that is, until you see what it’s out of. In 2008 the total number of school and district employees was 6,318,395. That means a 300,000 loss was just a 4.7 percent trimming — far from humongous. To put that in students-per-employee perspective, using the latest total enrollment estimate such a cut would have taken us from a ratio of 7.9 students per employee in 2008 to
