<p>I have teachers in my family who work their butts off. I’ve also have seen some of my daughter’s teachers literally sit in class reading a magazine while the kids taught themselves. This is not a black and white issue.</p>
<p>Having said that - it’s often not fair to compare salaries. My husband, while going on revisit days with D in Mass and CT , asked passersby what the home prices were running in neighborhoods they were driving through. The frequent response was $2 million. That’s pretty shocking compared to housing prices in our city. So I suppose that $40,000 in the midwest might go a lot farther than $75,000 in CA or New England.</p>
<p>Can’t compare apples to oranges.</p>
<p>And no - I’m not a fan of teacher’s unions when they override the rights of parents and block terminations of bad teachers. But, like I’ve said, I understand why they exist. We also make good teachers the whipping posts for all things bad about education - and expect them to perform to pre-prescribed curriculums, don’t allow them to innovate, and then fill their classrooms with 35 students all with different learning styles and none on the same grade level in terms of performance. An African parent told me that his major frustration is that public educators put children in classrooms based on age. No matter that they came from Sudan and had no schooling at all but are thrown into middle school at 14. Or a Charter school so desperate for state dollars that they accepted a girl who spoke only Chinese and - when the 2nd grade teacher expressed being overwhelmed put the girl in a 3rd grade class. </p>
<p>Teachers don’t work part-time - a lot of work goes on behind the scenes and after hours. Some organize weekend excursions and coach sports or academic teams. Others put in the extra mile to help a kid who is struggling. For those who are coasting - then they should be fired to make way for someone passionate about their jobs.</p>
<p>Public education is messed up in so many ways but putting the onus solely on teachers would be like condemning everyone in the United States simply because Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma building.</p>
<p>Everyone involved has a stake in the game. But good teachers can’t rise to the top because of all the politics that leave them demoralized and unrecognized. And trust me - good teachers are worth more than their weight in gold even at today’s prices. Expenditures for education remind me a lot of healthcare - most of the dollars don’t go to the people who actually “touch” the patient (doctors, nurses, techs). It’s the infrastructure that is bloated, not the salaries.</p>