Teachers Are Not the Enemy

Let me say this once again with emphasis - TEACHERS ARE NOT THE ENEMY!.

Yet, everywhere we turn, it seems teachers are the sole source of all the evils and troubles affecting school districts all over the US. And it really makes little difference what the political leanings are of the folks blaming the teachers as it is a seeming article of faith on both sides of the political aisle.

Pardon me, however, if I take the time to point a few things out to folks.

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post "Let's Play With Some Numbers Once Again (Teachers Style)" where I used this site to draw some figures for Wisconsin teaching salaries (it looks like it is through 2008). Using the same chart and some basic arithmetic and division (which I learned thanks to some good teachers pounding it into my thick skull), the average starting salary for new teachers across the fifty states is $30,950 with a high of $39,259 for Connecticut and a low of $24,872 in North Dakota. An average of the fifty state average teacher salaries is $46,227 with a high average being California of $59,825 and a low average of $34,709 in South Dakota. You might notice that both California with their highest average salary of the fifty states is also a high cost of living state (as is Connecticut which has the highest starting salary and the second highest average overall).

Now what do the states and their citizens in the individual school systems receive for these salaries? Well, outside of Detroit, where it looks like the teachers are going to be primed to become mainly baby sitters with class sizes up to 60 students per class, teachers are supposed to guide students to prepare for all that life has to offer, even when they are constrained about some of the things life offers as "inappropriate for young minds." Teachers teach the "3 Rs of Readin,' 'ritin', and 'rithmetic" (has anyone ever wondered about the Epic Fail of that phrase?) while making sure the students are prepared for and pass all the various state level achievement tests that have been brought around by "No Child Left Behind" yet doing so with increasingly larger classes and less funding?