Nah, of course not… the U.S. Secretary of Education is just sayin’:
Escalating coaches’ salaries are the single largest contributing factor to the unsustainable growth of athletic expenditures. And we believe that universities and colleges must start rethinking coaches’ compensation, at least in the Division I revenue sports.
If universities and colleges want to readjust a coach’s priorities, they need to change the penalties and incentives they offer coaches.
And why is Duncan convinced drastic action must be taken?
Coaches today earn whatever the market pays. But many coaches work at public universities, funded with taxpayer dollars. In 2011, in Oklahoma, Connecticut and Maryland, a head football or basketball coach was not only the highest-paid employee at the university but the highest-paid state employee.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin earned $147,000 in 2011, while the football coach at the University of Oklahoma, Bob Stoops, was paid $4.875 million, 33 times as much as Gov. Fallin. Moreover, nine Oklahoma football assistant coaches were paid more than the governor, including the tight ends/tackles coach, who pulled down a $240,000 salary.
Successful head coaches’ salaries should be tied to what their governors make? Good luck with that argument, fellas. Does Fallin have a tie-in shoe deal?
Get The Picture 
“I know, but I had a better year than (President Herbert) Hoover.” – 1930 Babe Ruth response to his salary of $80,000 being more than the President’s $75,000
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I was gonna say the same thing about Stoops but I looked up the Sooners’ 2012 record and, particularly with the bowl outcome, I’m not sure that Bob Stoops had a better year than Gov. Fallin.
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Touché
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+100
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They can equalize the pay all they want, but in the SEC West the football coach can still hire and fire the governor.
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Well at least the player make less.
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“Does Fallin have a tie-in shoe deal?”
Can Palin hold up on a Big Gulp?
Yes, she can! Not only that, rumor is that Sarah and 7-Eleven (the math of which is check-sum 8-Teen) are presently in training for this year’s Happy Slurpee Day during which she will look awesome and 8-Teen will look the other way while those at the Juneau branch suck it up for almost a full work day.
After which, incredibly enough and only because she’s as tireless as an Artic cougar, she will go one-on-two for a boom-goes-the-dynamite pickup game of round-ball against Arne Duncan and Glen Rice with all proceeds going into her PAC. Adding to the fun and excitement, the games will be played outdoors because in July, the sun rarely rises in Russia and Juneau because it never sets.
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Arctic cougar? or Arthritic cougar?
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http://instantrimshot.com/
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Is a cougar (arthritic or otherwise) the same as a MILF?
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yes and yes
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Deconstruction of an Arthritic Artic Cougar
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Are Econ I and II no longer required courses?
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Politicians make too much as it is. I don’t pity the Governor of any state.
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How easy it is to forget that coaches at public institutions are still not paid with tax dollars….thus the term market value.
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“Easy to forget”? I doubt the people, who made the statements above, ever knew.
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Not every public athletic department that has a highly paid coach is financially independent. You could argue that it’s paid with pure football revenue, but you could also argue field hockey is paid with pure football revenue and the salary is paid with student fees/tuition subsidies.
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if the market is setting salaries, wouldnt you think the market will react when the salaries cant be afforded?
I wonder if anyone is proposing limiting the salaries of useless educrats in the Department of Education?
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Anybody who cites that “Delta Cost Project” study is being disingenuous. You know, the study that looked at athletic spending without looking at revenue. And why didn’t he mention athletic director compensation? Million dollar athletic directors is frankly more revolting than $5 million dollar coaches.
If Arne Duncan wants coaches to make less money he should try to find a regulation to re-interpret that forces athletic departments to compensate revenue athletes at their market rates. As long as the money that would be going to players is floating around, it’s gonna go somewhere.
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Sounds to me like he thinks the governor is under paid.
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While I do feel that coaching salaries, and increases (200-300%?), in college football are out of proportion in hundreds of cases, I don’t see why salaries for football are being viewed with educators and other state employees. If the football program is self-sufficient, and not relying on taxpayer dollars, it is irrelevant what other state employees make on a comparitive basis. Let the market speak. Programs which cannot support themselves will have to either hold costs down (extraordinary concept in this country), or decide to invest in upgrades in hopes profits will come one day. Similar to investments in R&D, technology, etc. for many businesses.
I don’t think many educators in this country want to get paid based on their performance. Take the easy money and run from accountability as long as you can. Before some lambast that generalization, I do realize there are quality teachers and administrators, but the truth is they are not the majority and the education system in this country is sad. Even sadder is the number of absolute louses that should be fired immediately, but are protected. My suggestion is to drastically reduce the number of “professional ” educators involved in education. I know this isn’t the forum for that discussion but that particular group complaining about what they are paid is just laughable to me, and that is a part of the topic.
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I challenge you to teach in a public school with today’s restrictions before you judge educators. The unpaid hours are long. Parents are disengaged and kids want to be entertained. I saw this volunteering in a great school district. Kids from families who were wealthy. Kids are not widgets that teachers can stamp out. But like you said this is not the blog for this discussion.
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Debby, you can’t argue with comments that waft of racism on the surface and stink to high Hell at their heart. Consider the source.
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Wow. Did somebody just step on your ding dong????
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Amen to that, DB.
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Debby, I really don’t argue/care whether others have different opinions about this, it is what I feel and my right to have that opinion, and to express it. For your information, I did teach in the state of Georgia, as did my wife. I attended public schools in this country, as did my children. I am as qualified as any to have an opinion. I said in my statement, this is not the place for a debate on public education, my comment was educators should not wish to be paid by their worth because some may not like how they are valued. That was relevant to the subject, an extended debate in this forum about the quality of education is not.
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As usual, you had some nice points buried underneath a pile of rhetorical excess. Are you posting your opinions to make yourself feel better or actually spur people to think about a point of view that may not have considered?
The way I phrased that made it difficult to hear, didn’t it? Rather than build on it, you probably want to refute it. It’s actually a large problem in policy debates and political engagements in general, IMO. People feel they have earned the right to pull out the double-barrel, but then we just end up with two competing monologues instead of dialogue.
You taught? What subject and grade level? I am genuinely curious.
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“You taught? What subject and grade level?”
Allow me to take a wild guess how Mac, based on what is probably his favorite motion picture character, would answer:
“Very well. Where do I begin? My Principal was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Bogart with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My Department Head was a 15-year old Florida prostitute named Dawanna with webbed feet. My Principal would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the Jeb Bush teacher performance standards. Always he would accuse teachers of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My teaching career was typical. Summers in Remerton, luge lessons, fire-hosing picket lines. In the spring we’d make clubs. When I was insolent and bitched about things, like unions not being busted up fast enough, I was placed in a potato sack and beaten with pecan tree limbs. Pretty standard really.”
http://www.hark.com/clips/lyzlmxqljl-my-father-was-a-relentlessly-self-improving-boulangerie-owner-full-speech
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Forget the “wild guesses”, I will answer the question even though my opinion is based on the totality of my experiences, not any one sliver. I taught in a very unorthodox program in a prison for youthful offenders (15-21 years of age). It was a 12 month program and was customized to fit the needs of the individuals, not a generic curriculum. The inmates were tested when they came in, and re-tested every 2 months for additional evaluation and moved forward as warranted.
Although it was an accredited HS and a diploma could be earned, the primary purpose was to prepare the students for life by insuring they could read, write, and fit better into society when they returned. It gave them a better chance to succeed. Many students came in totally illiterate, even though they were in the 10th or 11th grade in public schools. Some of them did not know the alphabet or how to read a billboard/newspaper/menu, much less how to function in a workplace requiring math and reading skills. I saw some examples of students going from kindergarten reading level (or below) to a 7th grade reading level in two years. In this curriculum I taught everything from basic reading, spelling, and math to HS history and Civics.
My wife taught middle school in a lower, not lowest, income school district. Later I served in associations on the parents side of the process and on a school board. The collective knowledge would also include additional observation in the US, and from my business experience in Europe. I don’t deny there are many dedicated professionals who are outstanding at what they do in education but stand by my belief that we are failing our young people and educators, both teachers and administrators, should be held accountable. And my point that many would earn less if judged by the market is also valid. We may not like what coaches are paid, but they do get held accountable in a way educators do not. I might add that our society in total also bears a responsibility for the failings of our education system, I was not giving them a pass but that is outside the realm of the discussion.
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Nice work and even if it weren’t, it would be outside the realm for me to mess with anybody who has been anywhere close in any capacity to any prison, juvenile or otherwise. In fact, the mother of my many children that I know of made me go to PTA meetings too so whenever I use outside the realm, it’s always followed by this monologue which is sublimely embedded in my brain
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Wasn’t a juvenile facility, it was a state prison, just limited to those under 21. After 21 the ones who had additional time were transferred to an adult unit. Crimes were all felonies, armed robbery to murder. Quite an eye opener for someone just out of college, sure exposed me to a portion of society I had never interacted with before. The dialogue was fascinating.
The education program was quite progressive for that period of time, the Director of Corrections was responsible for bringing it to Georgia. The other portion of the day for students was a trade school which taught plumbing, upholstery, carpentry, auto mechanics, etc. I was certainly not qualified to teach any of that.
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“The education program was quite progressive for that period of time,”
No kidding. The closest I came to it was having a grandfather who was a chain-gang (because he didn’t like indoor work) guard at the Atmore Prison Farm. From what little I can recollect, he was not involved in any prisoner educational or vocational activities because he had no education and his previous vocation was being a Conecuh County dirt farmer. He was however proficient in shotgunnery and did receive Employee of the Month for having an explosive temper disorder.
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This may not be the place for an extended debate on education, but you did start it. And it’s awfully convenient for you to make a highly charged statement like “quality teachers and administrators are not the majority” and then try to quash any dissent with “Hey, hey, this isn’t the place for that.”
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Simply not true, I don’t care if others voice a different opinion. I just feel a debate on an issue that large would encompass months, maybe years, of dialogue. I stated that educators would not like to be held to a standard of pay based on results like coaches are. Spiraling away from the point of accountability is exactly what is happneing here from cheap, unfounded personal attacks to questioning whether I even have the credentials to state an opinion.
We can talk for many hours about what should be done about education, if any thing at all, but the discussion was on a marketplace setting value for a job and a major part of that is how someone is held to a standard. If you feel we should spend more on education, shout it from the rooftop. I will be on another saying let’s get what we are paying for first, and let’s not be afraid to make changes in philosophy, structure, or personnel.
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But if they are paid more, they will do a better job . . . , ?
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If we paid teachers more we might get better teachers in the long run, but the current teachers will most likely not try harder because their paycheck is bigger.
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Teachers are circuit breakers. And the currents they are having to manage over time exceed most human tolerance levels. My niece teaches in a 99% ESL/free lunch middle school near Stone Mountain as part of Teach for America. She’s off to med school on full scholarship in the fall. It really opened her eyes to the burdens teachers bear. I am not suggesting that all teachers handle it well or that some teachers don’t throw up the white flag at some point and just start mailing it in. But you can’t talk about teachers without an honest assessment of the real job description.
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+1. Teachers don’t get in the field for the money. The unpaid hours are endless. I have a daughter with a master’s in special ed with all the paperwork she works evenings in addition to being at school from 7 am to 5 pm. She buys supplies for her classes out of her own pocket. She teaches because she wants to make a difference. It always kills me when people want to base teacher pay on results when teachers have any control over who they teach. They also have little control over how they teach curriculum is mandated.
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“But you can’t talk about teachers without an honest assessment of the real job description.”
Not to mention the unabated bipartisan Global War on Teachers
“Who do teachers think they are? Why should they live so well on my tax dollars when I can barely keep my head above water? At the very least, they should feel some of the insecurity I feel every day and face the kind of performance assessments workers in the private sector deal with all the time.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-war-on-teachers-why-the-public-is-watching-it-happen/2012/03/11/gIQAD3XH6R_blog.html
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Just pay me what a babysitter makes, and I’ll be perfectly happy.
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And, by the way, don’t lump teachers in with those who rise to become bureaucrats in the field of education. Two separate animals. One serves a purpose and one likes to act like it serves a purpose.
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The Educators are right good, its the administrators that are the problems imo.
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Governors don’t have to recruit against other governors…
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Responding to the senator, I have questioned for years the tax exemption of athletic associations. Even for-profit corporations are not allowed a tax deduction for executive salaries over $1M, so whether to allow the use of tax free funds to pay multimillion dollar salaries for anyone is a reasonable question. Granted that if Saban et al were something other than football coaches it would be easier to look the other way but so it goes. If it’s true what they say about most AA’s operating in the red, then even as tax-paying entities they would not suffer a tax burden. And the lucky ones that do have a surplus would be able to erase the surplus by spending more on non-revenue sports (I know Delany’s head would probably explode over that). I’m oversimplifying, but that’s the gist. If they pay taxes – or at least live by the same tax rules – they would be free to pay 100 times what the governor makes.
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