Owing to the recent economic recession school districts across US have made substantial budget cuts due to receipt of lower funds from both the state and federal reserves. In the worst case scenarios, there have been downsizing of teachers in schools as well to keep them running. This clearly establishes that teachers take the brunt of the severe budget cuts brought into practice recently.
Eventually, this recession and its resultant budget cuts will lead to an adversely affected the economy in terms of knowledge creation and learning. Education is the sector that serves as the backbone of any economy because today's students go on to become tomorrow's workforce. Thus, quality education provision is imperative to turn around the future of any nation. This is only possible if there are experienced teachers on the pay roll who have the funds to make decisions according to cater to the scholastic needs of students.
Problems Faced by Teachers due to Budget Cuts
As a result of US' economic downtrend, the schools especially teachers all through the country are facing numerous problems. All because of the budget cuts now the teachers do not get an adequate amount of salary, along with having to manage larger class sizes and lesser classroom resources. This means a great reduction in the number of electives offered to students and no professional development for teachers. The budget cuts have had dire consequences on the education statistics of the country. Some of the biggest problems faced by teachers due to budget cuts are:
Pay Raises
A lot of states have cut down their school budgets. The direct impact of which is manifested on the teachers as their salaries are the first thing to be curbed. School districts try to save on their personnel costs. For this purpose, there has been no growth trend in the teachers' salaries to accommodate for as much as the cost of rising inflation. On an average, salaries of teachers throughout the country have been reduced within 1-5 percent, for all levels of teachers. Moreover, if these state and federal budget cuts continue downsizing of teachers will become unavoidable (www.lizda.lv, 2011).
Electives
Students especially those who are graduating when apply for a job are evaluated on the basis of the electives they had and prior work experiences. For any job description, a person is hired keeping in consideration ...