Teacher, Teacher, I Declare
Good hard data. It’s hard to beat.
The great thing about getting info about government is that much of what we are told about government spending isn’t quite true.
Friends of mine all over the country often relate their frustration. Does every state’s teachers’ union claim that pay for teachers in their state is “one of the lowest” in the country? Or just most?
Not every one of those claims can be true.
I guess that helps explain why the Evergreen Freedom Foundation of Olympia, Washington, publishes an annual database of the salary of each public school teacher in the state. The third annual report came out in late March, allowing curious voters to research and compare.
One friend there claims to have never before envied teachers their jobs, other than their vacation time. But, after looking at his neighbors’ incomes, he’s thinking of trying envy. He wouldn’t have, he admitted, had not the state’s union recently run ads about how little the state spends on teachers.
I advised him against this whole envy thing. But I saw his point. He’s a voter. People keep telling him that governments don’t spend enough. And, comparing the prevailing private-sector wages available in his depressed area of the state, and the wages of public employees, he doesn’t see how anyone with a lick of sense could buy the rhetoric.
Information has consequences. Maybe that’s why in the past it’s been so hard to get this information.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
(To listen to this edition of Common Sense online, click here.)
