Typical of today’s debates on many subjects, many people are poorly armed in regards to facts on the subject. They argue important points, in which upon our society is built and affects people’s lives in a dramatic way.
Take for instance, the debate on how effective our public education system is in educating our nation’s youth. We argue about test scores, and wax poetic on the importance of grades, graduation rates and attendance. Somehow, however, the argument always goes back to education funding, and the debate always seems to get hung up on this point.
In my experience, when someone is ineffective in a job, or a company you do business with is ineffective, you fire them. Here in America, with public education, we seem to buy more of it.
There have been many protests and marches around the nation regarding teacher pay, for instance. They are arguing that salaries are not keeping up with either the demands of the economy, nor the rigors of the job.
What’s not mentioned, is the actual numbers of the pay scales relative to the economy at large in a relative and meaningful way– only anecdotal evidence providing with isolated cases. In fact, using such methods, you could make the argument that almost everyone is underpaid on their job, by simply finding someone who is getting paid lower than scale, then saying that is representative of an entire industry.
Here are the real facts of one case in point: Arizona. In Arizona, teachers are actually arguing that the poor test scores and education rankings (AZ is ranked 49th) are a direct result of low teacher pay, and claim that teachers are leaving the state for higher pay elsewhere. 
1. According to the Census ACS 1-year survey, the median household income for Arizona was $53,558 in 2016, the latest figures available. Compared to the median US household income, Arizona median household income is $4,059 lower. So we pay lower in EVERY job here in Arizona, not just teachers. Low pay is relative to the economy at large and cost of living. The US Census numbers are not altered by inflation, job type or bias by gender, race or age.
2. The average public school teacher is paid at about that level of median income. Here are the median pay scales for Arizona by community https://www1.salary.com/AZ/Public-School-Teacher-salary.html. As you can see, Avondale ( a suburb of Phoenix), pays, on the average 54,595.00 for a middle school public teacher, which is slightly above the median pay of any job in Arizona. Phoenix itself, is at 54,761.00. Salary.com gets it figures directly from the HR departments of the public school systems. These are not just facts, they are evidence.
3. Most public school teachers in AZ make at or above the median income in the state. You’ll see that most of the Phoenix area pay scales are at, or above, the median pay for the state, the highest being Lake Havesu. These wages are competitive and are the prevailing wage in relation to what others are getting paid. IUt is therefore a ‘liveable’ wage.
4. The state of Arizona devotes a higher percentage of the state budget toward education that most other states (44 percent), although not all. If you put more money toward teacher pay, that would necessitate either cutting other funding or raising taxes, neither of which is palatable by the public. The highest state is close to 47 percent, the lowest is 42. There is NO relationship of spending either by percentage or volume to the efficacy of the states schools, nor teacher pay scales.
Arizona teacher pay is thus commensurate to what other jobs pay, and is customary and normal to private sector jobs. More importantly, public school teachers enjoy a superior benefits package, and better job security than your typical private sector job. In addition, a public school teacher also benefits from better working hours and conditions than many other private sector jobs. If you view the average benefits package of Arizona teachers, you’ll find if you factor that into the equation, they typically are get 75-80k in total compensation.
You can plug in numbers for your own state, by simply going to the main website and looking up your own state in comparison to government’s numbers on median pay. In fact, I couldn’t find a single state where the average teacher pay was below the median pay of the average citizen.
In short, we pay public school teachers just fine.
Arizona school products, however, are ranked some of the lowest in the nation. They don’t deserve a raise, and in fact, good argument could be made it should be cut.
On the whole, our kids are not learning the facts of history in an effective manner. They are not learning how this nation was built, the principles upon which our Constitution is founded , nor the definition of its terms.
In math, few can even master the simple task of balancing their checkbook, have trouble with long division to say nothing of advanced algebra. Science is the same way. We teach them that if we find so much as a bacterium is found on Mars, its a monumental event, but that a fetus- a human life- is merely a clump of cells to flush down the toilet. We teach them that patriotism is hate speech and that a nation has no borders. The result of this lack of metal rigor and moral compass, is mass shootings, disrespect for women and depraved bullying.
Now the people that run this sort of ‘education’ system, want more of the public’s money to fail.
Not on your life. Literally.
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