West Virginia Teachers Get Paid to Skip School (Guest: Tim Benson)

10/29/19 • 18 min

Policy Analyst Tim Benson discusses how over half of West Virginia teachers are chronically absent each school year and more than 10 percent miss more than 20 days. In essence, if students miss the same number of days parents can be fined or go to jail, while teachers continue to get paid.

This chronic absenteeism harms students education by reducing “‘instructional intensity’ by creating ‘discontinuities of instruction.’” Test scores bear this out with “only 46 percent tested to grade level in reading, while just 39 percent did so in mathematics.” When compared to charter schools, over a third less teachers were marked with chronic absenteeism.

For more information on this topic, visit: https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/research--commentary-west-virginia-public-schools-suffer-because-teachers-are-always-absent

For more information on this topic, visit: https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/research--commentary-west-virginia-public-schools-suffer-because-teachers-are-always-absent

Previous Episode

Chicago Teacher Strike: Rewarding Failure (Guests: Tim Benson and Chris Talgo)

The Chicago Teachers Union strike is a political gambit to reward the abject failure the CTU to educate the children of Chicago. Only about three in 10 district students are proficient in math and reading. They demand outrageous benefits such as affordable housing and a charter school moratorium. These completely skirt the democratic process around the democratic process on top of being completely unnecessary.

If Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools cave, average teacher salary would rise to $100,000 per year, force major tax hikes with the city, and a call for a bailout from every citizen across Illinois.

Next Episode

CLT: An Alternative to the Common Core Aligned SAT and ACT (Guests: Jeremy Tate and Keith Nix)

The Classing Learning Test (CLT) is an alternative to the Common Core aligned ACT and SAT. It is designed to be a rigorous test that measures quality of knowledge and understanding instead of being a watered down cursory review aimed at making students feel good about themselves. Jeremy Tate, president and CEO of CLT, and Keith Nix, head of the Veritas School in Richmond Virginia and CLT board member, discuss the importance of the test and the release of first Top 25 High Schools, ranked by median CLT scoring. See the list (https://blog.cltexam.com/2019-high-school-rankings/) and learn more about the CLT (cltexam.org).