Being stupid pays!

   Watching the videos from Chicago of the teachers strike I have to say I feel completely and utterly depressed over the future of our country.  These are our children's teachers and they are about as moronic as they come.  You want to see why the state of education is so bad in our country then look no further than the level of quality that passes for a teacher today.  Teaching used to be an honored profession in our country but the unions have since drained it of all that used to make it honorable.  Teachers no longer teach because they love it for if they did they would not be destroying their kids lives by their petty union disagreement.

   The Chicago Teacher's Union is emblematic of what is wrong in education all across our country.  If you look at what these teacher's receive in pay and benefits it would make your head explode.   Take for example that the AVERAGE teacher in Chicago gets paid $76,000 per year and on top of that the average retired teacher is paid $77,000 per year with no contribution made by the employee at all (state must pay out 46% more for this) and full health benefits until Medicare kicks in (cost is 5% more).   This means that while the employee is paid on average $76,000, the state actually pays  $114,000 ($76,000 x (1 + 0.46 + 0.05) ) to cover the pay and benefits.  All this for 9 months of work!  In fact the average teacher works 180 days a year while the average non-teacher works 250 days per year (50 wks * 5).  Therefore  if you pro-rate the cost, the teacher is actually getting paid $158,000 per year.

   Not bad for a group that pulls students from the lower end of the SAT scale to its profession. As the old saying goes: "Those who CAN ... DO!  Those who CAN'T ... TEACH".   A 2005 study of students graduating from college in the teaching profession had an average SAT score of 965 while the overall average for all college bound students was 1026.  A NY Times article put it this way

 BELOW-AVERAGE STUDENTS Teaching attracts a "disproportionately high number of candidates from the lower end of the distribution of academic ability," says a report last year from the National Council on Teacher Quality. In 2004, the average combined SAT score for college-bound seniors was 1,026; the average for those who intended to major in education was 965. (Only home economics, public affairs and technical and vocational scores were lower.))

 NOTE: remember this is an average... so half of the group most likely had SAT scores well below
              the 965 level so they only got about HALF of the answers right on their test.

So unlike the rest of the world, being stupid pays!