How to lie with statistics.

One way is to throw out bare numbers and provide no means of comparison. The trick here is to let the audience make up their own numbers for comparison. If the audience is selected well, their choice is likely to be biased.

In this case, the audience is OmniNerd readers. Nerds, being smart, often get paid well - at least, the distribution is likely to be skewed that way. YMMV. So we throw out a number and say teachers make between around $30,000 to around $50,000. The well-paid OmniNerd reader responds, "is that all?". OTOH, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average income in the US to be around $37,000. So the teachers are making about average. Why is this "underpaid"?

Yes - teachers have a difficult job. On the other hand, they're surrounded by a bureaucratic morass that ensures that, should we decide to dump *more* money into education, the teachers won't see much of it. Instead, we'll see idiotic initiatives that ensure every fourth grader has a Palm Pilot (not a hypothetical scenario).

The article also lists the many things teachers do *besides* teaching. It negelects to mention that very many teacher seem to be satisfied doing *only* these non-teaching tasks. A relative of mine teaches in an area elementary school. She's commented on a number of her colleagues who can't do simple fractions. While I understand that a first grade teacher doesn't need to teach fractions, even a first grade teacher who doesn't know pretty much all the material through high school is, by any reasonable standards, incompetent.

A high school teacher I know has commented that one of his colleagues routinely disregards the county approved curriculum standards on the grounds that it's "too hard" for his students. Sorry - not his call. And it's a major failing of that school system that he hasn't been disciplined for it.

The *real* reason teachers are underpaid (IMnsHO) is that we don't have any confidence that giving the educational system more money will have any real effect. Sure, maybe if we doubled or tripled the education budget, we might see a noticeable change. But that's not realistic. Instead, we need to look for ways to cut the fat. Teachers need to be accountable. And the non-teachers in the educational system even more so.

The 60 Minutes segment "Stupid in America" made a lot of good points. Let's get a little competition in the system. There's a reason that companies like Kaplan and Sylvan make so much money. The school system fails to meet the needs of a whole lot of kids, while the commercial products do. They work. If they didn't work, the companies would go out of business. Compare this to school systems that get less effective with each passing year. With no competition, there's no real reason to improve.

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