Cramer: Idaho Teachers Make Decent $$$

One of the Idaho Education Association’s goals is to have the legislature mandate a minimum starting salary for teachers of $40,000 a year. Look, I do think that teachers are generally underappreciated and often underpaid. But here’s a reality check. In Ada County (where the capital is located), and the median household income in 2004 was $50,754 per year , this would mean that a starting teacher would be making probably $10,000 a year more than the average worker (figuring that many but not all of those households have both husband and wife working). Okay, you could argue about this a bit I suppose; a lot of non-teachers here don’t have college degrees—although a lot do. But many of those non-teachers have filthy, disgusting jobs that involve significant risk of injury, don’t have health insurance through their employer, have no hope of tenure, and work twelve months of the year—not ten/ Clayton Cramer . More here

Idaho Blog Roundup:
* Mike Simpson Report: Proud, embarrassed, proud /Adam’s Blog
* Earth Day 2008: Is it really that long ago? /Left Side of the Moon
* When art collides /Political Game
* Pullman: The land Spokane forgot /Palousitics
* Yale student stages abortion-as-art hoax /Idaho Chooses Life blog

Question: Are teachers paid enough in Idaho?