Red States vs Blue States – Teachers and Public Schools

 

Ask yourself a question: why has the MAGA GOP shifted its marketing to its constituents from facts to herd-oriented conspiracy theories? Does any of this relate to prioritizing religiously perceived doctrine of over empirical learning? Cutting taxes for the mythical job-creators to stimulate job growth (history is replete with an utter and consistent failure of reducing taxes on the rich to create good jobs)? To turn against doctors, medical professionals, educated and experienced scientists as “out-of-touch” elites? To prioritize manliness and physical strength over “woke” civil rights seekers, educators and minorities seeking equality? To cast teachers as “groomers” targeting children to sate their sexual appetites? To bring the nation back to the 1950s when white Christian voters, then the majority, set the rules, established the societal values and controlled our political system?

It's no accident that Americans who generate their perception of the world based on consuming news primarily from a cross-section of mainstream media or who possess college degrees overwhelmingly vote blue. Voters who limit their consumption of mainstream media to a very narrow cast, get most of their news from social media and lack a college degree tend to favor red candidates and policies. Understanding the world today requires an acceptance of complexity, a requirement of flexibility as change accelerates, and an openness and willingness to embrace that change and base decisions on facts… not unsupported theories proselytized by manipulative leaders seeking greater power, even at the expense of the quality of life to their own voters.

When folks are threatened with change, particularly when that change threatens what they know, if they do not have a process to adapt and learn “the new,” they are likely to outsource their opinions, without any empirical analysis, to leaders who tell them they understand those complexities but offer simplistic solutions that jibe with their hopes but not facts. While there are numerous factors at work here, I believe that the demise of the quality of public education – from a public school system that was once the highest rated on earth to one that falls, on average, to 19th… and sinking – just might be the primary basis of this unraveling political polarization.

The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 spurred a massive investment in American education at all levels, the new and highest national priority. In the 1980s and beyond, “education” became an expendable government expense, a category like most other government allocations, where “balancing the budget” and not raising taxes for the rich (second only to defense spending) were more important. The social unrest from the 1960s and 1970s also cast a giant shadow on colleges everywhere… and the rapidly rising tuition burden shifted from state funding to students and their families. By the 1980s, the pattern of loans against massive tuition increases began the toxic erosion of higher education we see today. Hmmm, are university protests over the Gaza war repeating that past?

Indeed, red states are far more concerned, on average, with culling lesson plans and books from their schools than they are with improving education for their own children. This “obsession against woke,” often required a highly edited revision of history, has risen to the level of firing or even adding criminal sanctions against teachers and public librarians for the books they have or the lessons they teach, however accurate. Add low pay, increased tuition and student debt to the equation, and it’s no wonder that red states – even rich ones like Florida – are losing teachers at warp speed with little hope of replacing them.

Reporting in the May 3rd Newsweek, Khaleda Rahman, hammers home the numbers: “The National Education Association's (NEA) 2024 report on educator pay in 50 states and the District of Columbia says the national average teacher salary for the 2022-23 school year increased to $69,544… California ranked as the best state for teacher pay, with teachers receiving an average salary of $95,150 in the 2022-23 year. New York dropped from first to second place from the year before, paying teachers an average salary of $92,696… Massachusetts came in third, with an average teacher salary of $92,307, followed by Washington, where teachers were paid an average salary of $86,804, while those in the District of Columbia earned $84,882 on average… West Virginia ranked at the bottom of the list as the average teacher salary there was $52,870. Florida was second from last, with an average teacher salary of $53,098…

“The NEA's report said average teacher pay has failed to keep up with inflation, with teachers on average making 5 percent less than they did 10 years ago… The national average starting teacher salary was $44,530 in the 2022-23 year. It was the largest increase in the average teacher starting salary in the 14 years that the NEA has been tracking the numbers, but salaries are still more than $4,000 below 2008-09 levels when adjusted for inflation, according to the report.” See the article for an interactive map of teacher pay. Red states do not fare well! The NEA report itself states:

• “Almost 38% of all full-time K-12 education support professionals earn less than $25,000 annually…
• For every dollar that a non-HBCU educator makes, Historically Black Colleges and Universities faculty were paid just 75 cents in 2023.
• The union advantage: Teachers earn 26% more, on average, in states with collective bargaining, and education support professionals earn 16% more. In addition, higher education faculty in unions make 16% more at comprehensive institutions and almost 28% more at community colleges than non-union faculty in the same states
• The starting salary of teachers in states with a bargaining law is $1,653 more than in states without a bargaining law. Top pay is $12,998 higher in states with bargaining laws. In states with bargaining laws covering education support staff, the average earnings are $38,167, compared to states where bargaining is prohibited, the average school support staff earns $32,308.

As rich folks have abandoned most of the nation’s public schools (except for “rich” school districts like those in the Silicon Valley or Beverly Hills), able to afford expensive private schools for their children, income inequality rises, upward mobility has mostly been relegated to history, and public education continues to sink, classroom size rises and fewer education-majors college grads are willing to make a career out of public school teaching. Teaching is viewed as a loser profession, and the result is the sinking academic performance of American students. Municipal trash collectors are often better paid!!!

I’m Peter Dekom, and in the United States we say, “those who can’t do, teach,” while in Japan teachers are revered with a special title applied only to those deserving of the highest respect in the land: sensei.