How much are these teachers actually making, though?

Labor is usually the most costly thing in any institution, anyways, unless you're handling really high-cost items (like real estate or something).

For a change of place, you might want to take your sarcasm and blame Bill Clinton for all this.  At least the sarcasm would come from a different viewpoint.

If you are with me here, what you can do is say there are very serious issues, of which schools going into this state. is a sign of things much larger, like the decline of the middle class.  America has this thing where apparently it throws a lot of money at things and gets mediocre results.  This also goes for healthiness of Americans.  Spend a lot, get mediocre results.

And yet, in any political thread here, you never seem to move past blaming Republicans for your bad life and every other thing under the sun. It is peculiar in the extreme how you can believe that Republicans are both a cabal of heartless Ayn Rand worshipers who want to gut the state and a bunch of spendthrift politicians who are somehow invariably more to blame for government gone wild than the Democrats.

Well, lets see....

They make less then the people with the same average amount of schooling.

They make more then people with the same average amount of schooling and results. (School teachers are overwhelmingly taken from the bottom 1/3rd of their highschool class.  Could be an issue I dunno.)

They make more per hour, possibly?  As if matters how much work you decide to do at home off the clock.  If it's little or none, a lot.  If it's a lot of at home work, you get paid less.... (Also probably an issue i would think.)

Sadly the only international figure I can find is the newest one which counts teachers pay vs college educated people in the same country.  Something that's largely worthless because it ignores the fact that the US has quite a lot of better paying college jobs then your average country.

The average Salary is about 56,069. 

Which Salary wise puts you in the 87% if your single,  34% if you have a stay at home spouse, and 59% in both groups.   87% seemed most important since we're talking about a solo income but it's interesting to put it all up there.  Honestly i'm shocked dual filing effects THAT much, guess that further supports the previous threads point of wealth dispairty growth being mostly systemic.

Of course that's JUST salary... not total income or benefits.

This is taking me longer then i'd like, so i'll just do some quick and dirty calculations for the rest.  Teachers salary is 67.1% vs 21.8% in benfits, so your average benefits for salary is a little more then 1/3rd your salary.

So your average teacher makes around.... ~75,000... in total compensation.

Which of course varies wildly state to state... as your average Wisconsin school teacher for example apparently makes 59K, and gets over 100K in benefits.

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/mar/04/maciver-institute/maciver-institute-says-average-annual-salary-and-b/

For the record, California's Average teacher Salary is around 68,531.   It's average Superintendent pay?  (167,000).

By the way, I think the real reason school systems are failing is.... like increases in wealth disparity.

It's demographics. Which nobody looks at... instead trying to throw money at the problem, which won't help. See the above chart with real spending, or by just trying to get teachers to work harder. (and not smarter.)

Just for a single example of demographics change...

In outliers Malcolm Gladwell showed that parent participation during summer breaks was possibly the biggest cause for the gap between children's intelligence during when it came to children. Those parents who had there kids do things like go to zoo's museums and do a library reading list far outpaced those who didn't. Regardless of the socioeconomic status.

I will admit i am biased towards such an idea thanks to my own childhood. Since, thanks to my parents, I could read, write, add, subtract and Multiply before I even entered Kindergarten. So I've seen how effective invested parents can be.

If they are that stuck for cash, why not just raise taxes by a little bit? They are public schools aren't they?

they already get more money per student than most of the rest of the US and probably the world. it's not really a lack of money, its a lack of proper spending.

The reality is that Ayn Rand worship had overwhelmed the GOP.  Romney's 47%, which echos the "We are the 53%" retort to Occupy Wall Street also echos that.  Combine this with the Tea Party mentality of "We are a Republic NOT a Democracy" and you have a mindset that there are people, the rich and successful, who are an entirely different species of humans, and worthy of all they get, than the slimy underclass who won't take responsibility for themselves.  This lies at the core of what you see in the Fox News Propoganda spin.  It doesn't mean ALL Republicans are this, just it is what is driving the GOP at the core.  Any deviation from this leads to candidates getting punished politically.  This happened where I am located, where a Republican state congressman, who had YEARS of tenure, and won easily prior to this past election, ended up getting a hard core conservative challenger in the primary who then ran and cost the seated congressman, in the general election.  The isssue that did him in?  Gay marriage.  The state congressman voted for a Gay Marriage law in NY state, and he was done in.  This is the rhetoric.  It is very much social Darwinism and praising success to a large degree and "don't punish the successful and job creators".

And the reality on spending is the opposite though:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/stoking-the-beast/304862/

The GOP, like the rest in congress, spend like drunken sailors and don't even cut anything.  They really can afford to.  More to blame than the Democrats?  Not really.  But about as much to blame, with a platform that is going to sentence them to extinction, built on talk radio and Fox News bile, to get everyone angry, wrapped up Tea Party paranoia over government.  It is odd how the GOP can do this, but it is what they are currently.  They made them that.  And it is going to result in repeated losses as they run out of angry white men to keep them getting elected.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/30/sen-lindsey-graham-republicans-not-generating-enough-angry-white-guys/

By the way, you can support pork and STILL be mean-spirited and hurt the poor. 

As for "blaming Republicans for my life", well, I certainly don't see squat to give them credit for, but the problems do lie deeper.  I can say totally tone deaf.  But I do have a job now and am trying to pick up the pieces.  My situation is certain better than it was 4 or even 12 years ago.  NO correlation of GOP anything resulting in a better life.  Doesn't mean that they are the core reasons, but pretty much irrelevant to myself being anything.  

I had mentioned, ok yes in a partisan shot, at how things are falling apart.  I believe what you said touches on this.  You get things in motion going bad, and a nation can unravel.  Wealth disparity playing part, but also a symptom of things deeper.  Thing going on now is increasing one family incomes and one parent, and parent working all the time (facing declining wages) and kids not getting attention.  And this leads to bad effects in the future.  And those effects make things get even worse.  It is not a good spot to be in actually.

I was googling a bit, and others can do the same to check what I am about to write. I am seeing all over America, you are seeing school districts going bankrupt. It is happening in California, Georgia, Pennsylvania and others. It isn't just California.