Public School Teachers: The Stupidest Creatures on the Planet

American Thinker ^ | 25 Mar, 2025 | John Conlin

[MtnClimber]

Quite the statement, eh? Let me explain. I’m well into my 60s and for my entire adult life I’ve heard that public school teachers are underpaid. It has been repeated as a mantra for decades.

Ignoring for a moment whether it is true or not -- and the answer to that is generally, it depends -- let’s accept the mantra and analyze why public-school teachers are still underpaid after all these years.

It’s not spending. As most voters know, it seems that every stinking year there is some ballot initiative or measure or legislative move to increase spending for our woefully underfunded public-school systems. It never seems to end. There doesn’t seem to ever be a point of “we’re good.”

Total nationwide spending on public K-12 education is approaching a trillion dollars! In most states, public K-12 education consumes around 50% of the entire state budget. Nationwide, we now spend an average of $17,000 per student per year. In New York it is $33,000! Yet teachers remain underpaid.

The Department of Education’s spending has gone from just under $11 billion in 1980 to a high of almost $193 billion in 2010 to last year’s spending of $158 billion. Yet teachers remain underpaid.

The number of administrators versus teachers has exploded -- “The number of district administrators in U.S. public schools has grown 87.6 percent between 2000 and 2019 compared to student growth at 7.6 percent and teacher growth at 8.7 percent.” And many (most?) of the administrators make more than teachers. Yet teachers remain underpaid.

Remember when technology was going to transform public education? We’ve spent billions on classroom technology and what have test scores done? At best stayed flat, in many cases they went down.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Yup! Wow on those two brothers. That’s what throwing God out of our schools gets us. It’s easier to blame them on guns that way you don’t hurt the murderer’s feelings.

[Darth Gill]

Oh I agree. However they can’t be used to broad brush everyone. My mother is a public school teacher and is now 80 years old working part time because she loves the kids. She teaches them to read.

I’m against public school. I homeschooled my son. However, I can’t broad brush all teachers as social deviants. I know many good and bad teachers. And I refuse to paint them all as bad because they are working within a system that is not ideal.

[sport]

You do understand, don't you Cherry That the Powers That Be no longer desire the brightest and best. What they want, desire, and are getting are mindless drones, A/K/A slaves who will do what they are told when they are told, and how they are told. Without asking questions. And, courtesy of the Department of Education, they are getting them. Who are The Powers That Be? No one knows. They are also referred to as The Shadow Government, among other names. But the results of their work is evident. They tell the elected politicians what to do and when to do it.

[Albion Wilde]

[Varsity Flight]

Property taxes. ✖️

[Ikeon]

Ok, I may have gone a bit crazy. I had H.S. coaches and shop teachers I liked. But that was 45 years ago when teachers were there to teach the 3 r's.

I should have stipulated " as a parent in the 90's , the teachers I met were liberals and creepy.