Teachers didn't put us in this handbasket

So says S. Renee Mitchell in this morning's Oregonian. Here's the start of today's column, referring to a column last week in which she defended teachers against charges of unreasonable pay:

I wasn't surprised to get so much feedback about my column on public school funding.

I was surprised at the hostility against teachers -- who, by the way, have to work at least 14 years and get a master's degree before they reach the $60,000-a-year watermark.

And, one of the reasons they have great health benefits is because since 1993, on and off, the district negotiated for benefits in lieu of raises.

So, your salary and pension envy is well-noted, but misdirected. You shouldn't be angry about how much teachers get paid, but how little money most everyone else makes.

So in last week's column, she quoted a teacher named Laura, who is also an employee at a weight-loss facility and needs the extra income to make ends meet. The poor teachers, they're really underpaid -- the vast majority don't make anything close to $60,000 a year, and they have to take second jobs in the summer to make extra income. (Never mind that they have the time in the summer to do so; the rest of us work all year.)

Now, the story is different. Essentially, Mitchell says, the teachers make a decent income, but you shouldn't be mad at them -- you should be mad at society (and I guess, by extension, the big bad corporations), which doesn't pay the rest of us enough. She says we're "economically insecure" because we see the inequities of life:

You see how bureaucracies waste money. CEOs make a gazillion dollars a year. And developers can't build enough million-dollar penthouses.

So bureaucratic waste is an issue, but the real enemy is those evil CEOs and all those filthy rich people buying the plethora of million-dollar penthouses. The real enemy, Mitchell goes on, is the increasing disparity between rich and poor, which has led to children who can't learn. (What's George W. Bush's line? "The bigotry of soft expectations"?)

Well, Ms. Mitchell, I have a little beef with what you wrote, and it's this: we, the taxpaying public working in the private sector, are paid what the market will bear. We get paid what society (and those evil CEOs) is willing to pay for our efforts and our products.

Most of us don't have tenure. We don't have PERS or (in many cases) any sort of retirement plan. Most don't have unions berating our customers when we want a raise, or when we don't want to pay a ten dollar copay. The teachers are paid not what society dictates, but what the union is able to extract from school boards across the state, who are supposed to be representing us. The taxpayers. The customers. The ones who elected those board members.

And your comment that teachers have received great benefit packages instead of raises? I'm willing to bet my next insurance payment (every penny of which I -- as a self-employed American -- pay out of my own pocket) that the teachers didn't forgo raises for the last 13 years. Maybe they got a 2 percent raise instead of a 4 percent raise, but I dare you to look me in the eyes and tell me with a straight face that you haven't received some sort of salary increase in conjunction with those benefit improvements.

Bitter? Me? Maybe. I recognize that the vast majority of teachers are simply trying to make a living while pursuing the noble goal of educating the next generation. I recognize that my ire is properly aimed at a combination of teachers' unions, school boards, legislators, and external forces such as healthcare costs.

I guess I'm just tired of hearing how the teachers are underpaid and overworked. Or, if you listen to S. Renee Mitchell, they're not really underpaid and overworked -- the rest of us are. If public education were subject to the same market forces as the rest of us, and teachers received the same pay and benefits as they do currently, I'd be more comfortable with it. But they don't.

I've said before that a legitimate argument can be made that public schools are underfunded compared to five years ago, but something's gotta give. I see little indication that the people spending our money understand how the people paying the money feel; the taxpaying public is simply left holding the bill, and the calls for a larger bill -- despite the fact that my property taxes for local schools increased 36 percent since 2001 -- continue.