Low teachers’ pay: a common complaint. We do not hear about it much from non-government school teachers, however. Private and church school salaries fall outside public awareness, for the public doesn’t contribute to them. Taxpayers hearing about public school teacher salaries, specifically, makes some sense.
This is cleverly addressed at the outset of a recent article in the Michigan Capitol Confidential.
“The superintendent of Port Huron’s public school system said that every year he must replace teachers who leave his district. He blames low teacher salaries,” we read. “But the superintendent was Harlan Davis, and he made his statement more than 100 years ago.”
For over a century we’ve been told “teaching does not offer a career.”
This is all a preface to the current situation, where “several Michigan newspapers” now report “that teacher pay is down 29% since 1995 after inflation is accounted for. . . .”
Thankfully, the Michigan Capitol Confidential, which the Mackinac Center for Public Policy publishes, provides context in addition to long-term inflation. “One reason why less money goes to teacher salaries may be that the state’s public school districts are hiring more and more people despite enrolling fewer and fewer students.” Michigan schools added 35,000 full-time positions while losing 113,000 students.
Now, taxpayers and parents might hope that it’s new teachers who constitute the bulk of that growth, but hopes aren’t realities. During the pandemic, for example, the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, pushed to hire “560 more school psychologists, school social workers, school counselors, and school nurses.”
If politicians thought teachers’ salaries were all-important, they’d forsake their schemes to hire more non-teaching employees. But it’s obvious: creating a pro-spending voting bloc is what they care about, not teachers.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Nano Banana
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