Milwaukee has the reputation as being the worst school system in Wisconsin. Average pay is approximately $60,000 a year. I do not understand why people unhappy with their jobs in the public sector don't go to work in the private sector. In previous blogs I've given the real reason. Most of them are not qualified nor could they make this much money or be granted all the benefits doled out by weak school boards and demanded by smarter full-time union bosses.
Ranting Ravitch is correct on one thing. Walker may advocate tax breaks to the harassed private sector. Why? Because the private sectors are the prime taxpayers who pay educational salaries.
Locally, a relatively young retired #150 teacher complained in a comment on my blog site about her pension being only $40,000 a year and she receives no Social Security payments. She didn't mention that she didn't have Social Security deductions made from her paychecks either. Nor all the other benefits of tenure, vacation time, sick leave, personal days, mostly taxpayer paid health and insurance benefits, etc.
Why do people working in the public sector feel they are more "valueable" than those who work in the private sector? Most are already earning more and have considerably more benefits.
It is an oft repeated lie that most teachers have to pay for their own chairs and supplies. If they don't like the chair provided they can buy their own. Same for supplies. Most good teachers I know are not effectively teaching sitting on their butts.
Not all teacher fall under the radical union spell as a picture in Friday's WSJ confirmed. What role models these economically greedy teachers present for the kids they claim to care about deeply. Worse yet, most of these teachers take their left wing liberal Democrat approach to the classroom.
And we wonder why this great nation is in danger of both moral and fiscal bankruptcy in the not too distant future.
My wife is a former Wisconsin teacher. She stands firmly behind Governor Walker. I suggest the teachers who are shills of the fading power of union bosses are earning less respect for their claimed "love of teaching".
But then, recently teaching has become "all about the benefits, job security and money to a growing number of teachers. It's called "American Greed" and many in the educational system are not immune to the disease.
Merle
"Why America's teachers are enraged"
By Diane Ravitch, Special Consultant to CNN
Thousands of teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public sector workers have camped out at the Wisconsin Capitol, protesting Republican Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to reduce their take-home pay -- by increasing their contribution to their pension plans and health care benefits -- and restrict their collective bargaining rights.
Republicans control the state Legislature, and initially it seemed certain that Walker's proposal would pass easily. But then the Democrats in the Legislature went into hiding, leaving that body one vote shy of a quorum. As of this writing, the Legislature was at a standstill as state police searched high and low for the missing lawmakers.
Like other conservative Republican governors, including Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio, Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Rick Scott of Florida, the Wisconsin governor wants to sap the power of public employee unions, especially the teachers' union, since public education is the single biggest expenditure for every state.
Public schools in Madison and a dozen other districts in Wisconsin closed as teachers joined the protest. Although Walker claims he was forced to impose cutbacks because the state is broke, teachers noticed that he offered generous tax breaks to businesses that were equivalent to the value of their givebacks.
The uprising in Madison is symptomatic of a simmering rage among the nation's teachers. They have grown angry and demoralized over the past two years as attacks on their profession escalated.
The much-publicized film "Waiting for Superman" made the specious claim that "bad teachers" caused low student test scores. A Newsweek cover last year proposed that the key to saving American education was firing bad teachers.
Teachers across the nation reacted with alarm when the leaders of the Central Falls district in Rhode Island threatened to fire the entire staff of the small town's only high school. What got their attention was that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama thought this was a fine idea, even though no one at the high school had been evaluated.
The Obama administration's Race to the Top program intensified the demonizing of teachers, because it encouraged states to evaluate teachers in relation to student scores. There are many reasons why students do well or poorly on tests, and teachers felt they were being unfairly blamed when students got low scores, while the crucial role of families and the students themselves was overlooked.
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