It’s been a stereotype for at least the last 50 years. Why has this never changed? Why has organized labor not had a substantial effect for such an essential part of the workforce?
Let me tell you a story about a man named Ronald Reagan.
Why are public school teachers so underpaid in the US?
Submitted 13 hours ago by glups@piefed.social to [deleted]
Comments
running_ragged@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
The GOP is fully to blame.
They sell the American public on the idea that any taxes are bad, no matter what they are meant to fund. When they are in power they cut public services, give tax breaks to corporations, and schedule tax raises to occur when they’re out of power.
When they aren’t in power they yell about taxes nonstop to make sure democrats are too scared to re-fund them, so they don’t get voted out.
Cycle after cycle, and now there’s no money to give the teachers.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
They’ve conditioned people to be so against taxes that you have a significant portion of the public saying things like, “why should my taxes fund public schools if my children graduated 20 years ago?”
clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
I’ve heard people say this with my own IRL ears. It’s completely indefensible.
ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
There’s also the feedback loop where they point at the broken underfunded public services and are like “see how shit public services are? They’re a waste of taxes. We could gut them to save you money”
preschool236@lemmy.wtf 2 hours ago
Agree with most of the other commentary I would say this isn’t super universal. The pay gap has gotten less egregious in states like New Jersey where you can make a relatively comfortable living when you factor in the benefits received compared to private sector workers (i.e. real pensions and good healthcare)
innermachine@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Being on my fiance healthcare vs paying private party is saving us 1k a month each. Not to mention dental, vision, and life insurance. She easily gets near 3k a month worth of benefits, although her take home pay isn’t great. My job has no benefits but pays more, she sometimes feels as though she doesn’t pull her weight and I have to remind her how much were NOT spending due to her benefits! If she lost her job I would have to quit mine and scramble to find one that would offer benefits to cover both of us.
preschool236@lemmy.wtf 50 minutes ago
it’s really the best of both worlds when you have a partner with state benefits
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 hour ago
Part of it not said in any of the other answers is that schools are managed at a very local level and get a significant amount of their funding through local taxes. So, you get a lot of towns that don’t have the local tax base to raise revenue or you have a local tax base where the wealthy few would rather pay for private school than the taxes to pay for a better public school.
The problem with organized labor in this case is that the organized labor is generally fighting the government and a lot of states don’t want an effective union network getting built or spreading.
theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
The others hit on big ones private school support, want for not too educated workforce and so on.
Xanthrax@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Republicans have taught Americans to resent public education. Also, most teachers are Women, so I’ll let fill in the blanks.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
George Carlin said it best. We want dumb happy obedient workers. Smart enough to runthe machines, but not smart enough to realize how badly they’re getting fucked by the system. So don’t count on the schools to do much more than basic math, and basic skills. Because what helps the elite class screws over the working class. It’s best to start screwing them in kindergarten. Teach them the pledge of allegence, so they feel endebted to our system, and keep them there for their entire lives.
Paraphrasing here, but that’s the jist of a routine he had in the 90s. The important thing to note is that Carlin was NOT a time traveler. He didn’t predict the future. It’s just that we as a society have had the same problems for 100 years, and we never fixed our shit.
Jack@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
Maybe because 98.1% keep voting for either evil or the lesser evil; but almost none of them vote for the good like Nader?
“Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses, and American universities - and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, […] you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public.” – George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBrbXOmnW70
“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.” - Eugene V. Debs, Appeal to Reason, 1900-10-13
“Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact.” - Eugene V. Debs, The Socialist Party and the Working Class 1904-09-01
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 4 hours ago
Please show me one time in the past 50 years that a third party candidate in the US helped the Left win an election.
The GOP constantly funds and pushes for the Greens and Libertarians because they know those candidates sap the Dems.
webkitten@piefed.social 4 hours ago
Because about 90% of legislators are rich and went to private religious schools.
Strider@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Not raising the education of the public is an easy control method and also easily keeps up the myth of the USA being such a great country while completely obviously contradicting itself.
AlecSadler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
All the other answers are correct.
Republicans / conservatives in the US are a poison. Delusional, evil. Either opportunist pieces of shit or certifiably the dumbest people in the world.
Their existence is a net negative, period, full stop. Their non-existence…well, take that as you will.
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
Knowing what you’re talking about is considered elitist by most Americans. Under-funding education is effectively a DEI program for idiots.
disregardable@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
In the US, public schools are funded by the local tax base. If the local tax base is broke as fuck, their services will be broke as fuck. That means you’ve got crumbling sewer systems to worry about more than having well paid teachers.
Nemo@slrpnk.net 13 hours ago
Because (public) education isn’t valued and we insist on the idiotic practice of funding schools primarily through local property taxes.
MrSelfDestruct25@fedinsfw.app 11 hours ago
Because if public education pumped out smart kids, no one would vote Republican.
evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
There aren’t always. There are plenty of places that pay teachers well. The problem is that the qualifications for a school that pays really well are pretty much the same as the qualifications for a school that doesn’t. Schools that pay well have 1,000 applications and never any vacancies, so new teachers have a hard time finding a well paying job. Public school employee salaries are public information, so you can actually look them up.
Average teacher salaries in Massachusetts dont look bad to me. profiles.doe.mass.edu/…/teachersalaries.aspx
Obviously, it’s not universal.
edgemaster72@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Why has organized labor not had a substantial effect…
Organized labor is working about as well here as funding public schools. Which is to say, not very well at all.
RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
HubertManne@piefed.social 9 minutes ago
I want to add that teachers unions often look for other things than pay because the members are actually concerned with the quality of education. So classroom size and classroom equipment or budget.