Norfolk native and TV host and commentator Ed Schultz held his program Wednesday night at the high school he attended.
Vodpod videos no longer available.For more of the show, go to the Ed Show video page on MSNBC
16 thoughts on “Norfolk residents, teachers speak out”
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VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Nice 😉
The governor should have declared the Senate Democrats’ seats vacant and held elections the following week to their replacements. If the teachers strike, they should be fired. There are plenty of people ready to step in to replace them.
About 27% of adults over 25 have a college degree. I suspect that ALL of the Wisconsin public school teachers have college degrees, and many have postgraduate degrees. How are they “middle class” or “workers”?
In 2006, the NEA reported than less than 25% of teachers are men. Most likely, most of those female teachers provide the second income in the family, and their household income puts them well above the middle class and the working class households that pay them.
Warren,
The Executive doesn’t wield that kind of power, unless like Walker, you just do it anyway. There are three branches of government.
Are you really saying that pay from $27,000 (bachelor’s degree) to somewhere in the 60’s (Master/PhD)is not middle class? How do you figure that teaching is not work? If you sweat that work, but if you teach, that’s a cake walk?
Your guess that women have the second jobs and somehow that makes everything fine is disgusting. No facts, and not very well thought out.
My partner has nearly a PhD in education, and taught locally for 23 years.
She works at Lowe’s due to all that freedom she has to pick and choose jobs. It took 1.5 years to find that job. She has been there for two weeks now.
Look around you and actually think about what you are writing. Not everyone everywhere are the same. Your attitude towards women is appalling.
Try bringing some facts or experience next time.
The average of teachers in WI is 50K, plus a generous benefits package.
Two of those and you’re in the $100k range. The median household income in WI was $52,103 in 2008, according to the Census Bureau. Earning double the median household income is NOT middle class.
Considering your response to be for only a small portion of what I had to say, I find it lacking.
That’s ok, knowing that I will never get a straight answer will limit my frustration with what you wrote.
Cheers.
I answered what I thought deserved an answer. What subject would you like me address, specifically?
How about your assumption that all females are 1. married and 2. if they are, have a husband that works. It’s an extremely ignorant argument to make.
You seem to love those statistics on women, why don’t you look up how many are married and how many are single moms?
Five years ago, I was in the military (enlisted) and my wife has a master degree and I would have to put us just short of the middle class. Our combined income was will less than 90k. In fact our income was about 1/3 the income that the president tax plan which was to resume the taxes back prior to Bush’s tax plan. Two incomes does not make you middle class. My oldest has a BA and her husband income combined is about 60k. Remember the wealthy starts at 250k.
Max Shapiro excellent reply. Teachers are one of the most underpaid degrees and one of the most stressful.
And that, Max, is another problem with teachers. They did not teach you that MOST is not equal to ALL.
The fact remains that 75% of teachers are women, and that MOST are probably married, and if they are married MOST of their husbands are probably also working.
Well they obviously didn’t teach you to fact check. Statistics show there are more single women than unmarried women and with real unemployment around 20%, many of them, if they are married, don’t have a husband that works.
Your argument that just because teachers may be above a median income and may be married and may have a husband with a job means that they don’t qualify as middle class is just ignorant on the face of it.
Then let us ignore married vs. unmarried, and household income.
Go check the Census Bureau website: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032010/perinc/new03_019.htm
As you can see, the median personal in 2009 was $35,727 for everyone between the ages of 25 and 64. The median salary for a Wisconsin teacher is about $50,000 per year. That puts them in the top 25% — much higher if you include their benefits packages, which include TWO MONTHS of vacation every summer, plus another week or two at Christmas and New Year’s Day, and another week off for Spring Break. School is in session about 180 days — 36 weeks. Add another two weeks for teacher work days, and it’s 38 weeks of work each year. So they get 14 weeks — over THREE MONTHS — vacation every year.
So, a single teacher, has a median income in the top 25%, not counting their retirement and other benefits packages, and they get over three months of vacation. That is NOT “middle class.”
One more fact for you, 60.3% of women aged 25-64 have a spouse present in the home.
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2010/tabA1-all.csv
That is higher, of course, for College graduates, which teachers are.”
“College graduates, the highest earners, are more likely today to be married than are Americans with less education — 69% for adults with a college degree versus 56% for those who are not a college graduate.” –Pew Research Center, “Women, Men and the New Economics of Marriage” 2010
So now you are making the argument that having an income above the median is not considered middle class?
Get real man, you must really hate teachers and government employees to be stretching things this much. There is no job more important in our society than teachers and you are trying to demonize them because of their work schedule and pay scale?
That IS the definition of MIDDLE class — having an income somewhere near the median.
Correction: you’ve been making that argument since your first post, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s stupid and ignorant.
Just because they have a spouse doesn’t mean they have a job. Just because they have a job doesn’t mean that job pays well. Just because you are a teacher doesn’t mean you are some evil creature who makes way too much money like you keep talking about. Just because student performance is failing doesn’t mean we should blame the teachers. The blame lies more on parents and NCLB than anything. We don’t even let teachers teacher in America.
I never said teachers were evil, but Mr. Ed’s assertion that this is an assault on the middle class, when public school teachers generally earn much more than the median and get much better benefits, is simply not true.
Do public school teachers make too much money? That is up to the politicians to decide. In Wisconsin, they voted for legislators who think that the teachers’ benefits package is too generous. Teachers still retain the power to bargain collectively for salary, but not benefits.