American Federation of Teacher’s Blog:
I just took a look through Mike Podgursky and Robert Costrell’s latest on pensions. Mike is a state based right wing think tanker/professor who has attacked the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards as a cartel, and Costrell is at the Walton school of Every Day Low Benefits or whatever they’re calling Jay Geene’s gig, so you would think that their work would have some entertainment value. I got it, along with a blue pill which I just swallowed.bluepill.jpg
It turns out pensions are bad because they simultaneously help retain young teachers and allow experienced teachers to retire. Seriously. I’m suddenly concerned! Aren’t you? The report criticizes subsidizing the second careers of teachers who retire in their fifties and get a pension. Sometimes these people even return to the school district under rules to allow this to happen! It is true that these programs — called DROPs or deferred retirement option programs — are hard on pension funds. And while I wish Podgursky and Costrell would emphasize that the reason this system is hard on the pension fund is that it is subsidizing the employer’s salary costs, well, that’s a quibble! And I had no idea the whole thing was so immoral sounding. As to why Podgursky and Costrell are focusing on public school teachers who return to the school district, rather than say, retired soldiers who become Blackwater security operatives or retired public school teachers who went to work for the charter school down the street or sold insurance, well, that doesn’t really trouble me at all! Read more…
0 responses so far ↓
1 matineeidol // Nov 19, 2007 at 2:57 pm
So this guy read the paper? Because what I got from it was that a different form of pension plan might be in order in Maryland based on some problems that accompany a certain type of pension plan. A friend of mine has the one Podgursky mentions as an alternative, and it sounds fantastic. Te investments you make to you retirement now are SET. Nowhere does he say that “pensions are BAD”. The man is offering ways to improve pension plans, and Ed attacks because of some idealogical difference in another area. Ed says that Podgursky views pensions as an incentive rather than a deserved retirement security. Why can’t they be both? Pensions are something that works (or should work) for you, therefore you have an incentive to stay in a teaching position, and a way–if designed properly–for teachers to maximize their retirement savings. If the AFT was lobbying on my behalf, I’d fire them!
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