Downward educational spiral

Okay, it might not be quite as bad as FB and real friend Mike suggests, but he’s definitely onto something here in response to this article:

Wake County (Raleigh NC) schools need to hire appox. 1,500 teachers for next year. Yet Houston Tx is holding a job fair in Raleigh to entice (poach) teachers to move to Houston where salaries are 20% higher. So, following the logic of the market place, Houston will pick the better teachers who apply, leaving Wake County with even more openings and a lower quality pool of teachers. The overall quality of this new cohort of teachers will be of lower quality than previous cohorts, giving the destroyers of public education (i.e., Republicans) more reasons to criticize the quality of public schools, justifying further reductions in pay, leading to an increasingly inferior cadre of teachers, justifying additional cuts, and so on. I read elsewhere that towns in South Carolina are poaching teachers from the Charlotte NC area because SC is actually paying teachers more than NC. It’s sad that a few years of GOP rule can undo 50 years of economic and educational progress.

Yep.  Though, I think the desirability of living in Wake County, NC versus Houston, TX works against this to some degree.  Nonetheless, so frustrating and depressing.  This is my county and the public schools my kids will be attending for 15 more years.