During recent teacher walkouts in Oklahoma that captured national attention, many major media outlets reported misleadingly small figures for teacher pay. By failing to reveal all aspects of teacher compensation, these outlets hid the true costs to taxpayers—which now amount to an annualized average of about $120,000 for every public school teacher in the United States.
CNN, for example, published an article by Bill Weir claiming that in “most districts” of Oklahoma, “a teacher with a doctorate degree and 30 years’ experience will never make more than $50,000 a year.” That claim, which CNN neglected to document, is at odds with comprehensive data from the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Labor. This information for Oklahoma and the entire nation follows.
For the 2016–17 school year, the Department of Education reports that the average salary of full-time public school teachers was $58,950 in the U.S. and $45,245 in Oklahoma. Those figures generally exclude benefits, such as health insurance, paid leave, and pensions. These are typically much higher for government employees than private sector workers. Continue reading
Recently, I picked up a book at one of the local libraries called Killers of the Flower Moon—The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, written by a David Grann. Mr. Grann is a staff writer at the New Yorker so there would probably be some things he and I would not agree on politically, but he did write an interesting book about how a group of people in Osage County, Oklahoma killed off several Osage Indians in order to get the headrights to their oil leases and make lots and lots of money from that.
It’s 3 O’clock in the afternoon when little Johnny comes barging through the front door after school, throws his back pack into a corner and heads for the refrigerator. He yanks open the refrigerator door and pulls out a carton of milk. He gets a glass from the cupboard and fills the glass full from the milk carton. He gulps down the milk and heads for his bedroom where his play station awaits his anxious fingers. But before he can leave the kitchen, his mom says, “Wait a minute Johnny, I want to hear how your day at school went.” Johnny says, “Oh mom!” and returns to the kitchen. 
Teachers all over the country are going on strike. They say they want higher salaries and education funding and the tax increases necessary to pay for them. But there’s a bigger motivation underlying the strikes — mobilizing Democrats.
I’m having a fire sale on education stories this week. Also a parallel fire sale on quotes from my 2009 book We Are Doomed, because the education chapter of that book was the most fun to write and it’s pertinent to this week’s stories. Here’s a sort of keynote quote from that chapter:
I had a very restless night of sleep last night due to finding out that one of my great grand kids can’t read cursive. He will be 13 in October!!! How did I learn this bit of information?
California lawmakers are not only bulldozing classic liberal education, they are legislating more LGBT lifestyle and pornographic perversion in education curricula. At the same time, they are also trying to outlaw homeschooling, removing all doubt that the left is indoctrinating your kids, and using them as revolting sociological experiments. 
I started wondering about this recent movement of teachers and their attempt to change fiscal policies toward education. Why the association with this particular colour? There are other powerful colour associations. I was also curious about the reasons. I’m not a teacher, but I am interested. Why not choose one of these colours instead?
The PR announcement came out today: Columbia University has launched a new center to research failure and its role in learning, growth and success.
On July 5, 2010, on