Under Attack

It's strange. I sort of feel that, as a public school teacher, I'm under attack. With the current assault on unions, with the national budget crisis, with constant talk about the deficit, it feels like a lot of politicians and much of the public is coming after us. Supposedly we are fat cats, we've got bloated pensions and salaries, we're the excess and the drain on the economy.

Funny, I've been a public teacher for 17 years and I don't have enough money to buy a home or condo. Because I moved from Illinois to Massachusetts, I'm not contributing one dollar to any kind of pension this year. I have a very modest retirement ready for me when I turn 62. Many of my friends my age are earning six figures by now, and I'm far from from it.

The average teacher salary is so low that it prices us out of home ownership in THIRTY TWO metropolitan areas. The average Korean teaching salary is 250% more than an American's.

There's more

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html

I know lots of people think teachers are lazy, abuse tenure, and are a leech on the public system. All I can tell you is that most teachers I know work hard, care deeply, and have given up a LOT to stay in the profession. In this profession you regularly hear about some teacher that decided to leave field to get into textbook publishing (or some sort of bullshit consulting, etc.), and the story always ends the same: now they make 4 times the salary. Such a move is always available, and teacher after teacher never takes it. They just keep teaching with in an undervalued profession with low pay and (for some reason) the increasing ire of a nation.