Embarrassing. People in the rest of world must think this country has lost its mind. Perhaps we should go ahead and eliminate all taxes and see what happens.
Being a (especially a young) teacher in Europe isn’t exactly great either.
As far as at least France, Germany and the UK goes it’s not uncommon to have supplemental income for most teachers or to work at multiple schools to make ends meat.
Sometimes democracies screw up but none of us think the USA is a shithole country. We do think it's awfully hypocritical of the president to say that though! hehe
One interesting bit of context that the article didn't mention is that the population of towns/cities/urban areas in Oklahoma grew on average 11.29% in just five years. The state has been seeing both a large move from country to towns and a decent net increase in total population.
A nice boost for employment statistics fans I guess.
What I don't understand is how things got to this point without the electorate making a stand? Or do the people who vote send their kids to private school instead?
Many Evangelical Christians (who make up about 47% of the adult population in Oklahoma [1]) consider public schooling to be mechanism of secular indoctrination. Such voters don't have much of a problem with a move that brings the public school system closer to collapse.
It's mostly people who don't have kids/old people who vote with the mentality of "I don't have kids in school, why should I pay for other people's kids to go?"
Until they realize that most businesses won't want to move some place with a bad education system where most of the highly educated will move away as quickly as possible and they can't get employees to relocate.
I would guess there is a lot of home schooling, since they believe that public schools either (1) provide low quality education [ironically due to lack of funding], or (2) brainwash their kids with liberal socialist values.
We, the people, need to address this. We mustn’t rely on government as government is always self interested with the interest being toward the top of the hierarchy.
Without education, our community will have serious problems.
> government is always self interested with the interest being toward the top of the hierarchy
That statement is correct except for the "always" part. Yes, that's the kind of government we have right now at the federal level and at the state level in some states. In other times that hasn't been the case. Even now, it's generally not the case at the local level and in some states not at that level either.
Self-reliance is great, markets are great, but a responsive government has its role too. Sometimes it's the fairest and/or most effective way to provide a service. This is especially likely to be true for services everyone needs, as universal demand tends to bring about the worst kinds of market failure. I contend that schools, police, and courts (mentioned in the story) are examples of such services.
The solution in cases such as these is not to abandon government but to make it responsive. They're supposed to be our agents and they've become someone else's. Unfortunately, when the state is full of voters who believe your "always" and the federal government has (via gerrymandering and other undemocratic means) come under the control of people who who hate education so much they're destroying the department devoted to it, it's the children who suffer.
What options do you have available besides running for office in Oklahoma or leaving Oklahoma? Making up the difference out of pocket? That reinforces the bad behavior of local government.
If your problem is with the government, coordinate to fix government through elected office.
Worst case scenario is other states (that can pay teachers a living wage) recruit teachers away en masse, which is unfortunate for Oklahoma residents but the best outcome for those teachers.
Agreed. The people voted for a party that has been going on and on about the government being the problem and that it should shrink and that private companies should have very low tax and not face almost any regulation. It’s not like they hid those views and people voted for them to the point where they control the entire state completely (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_Republican_Party).
The people who chose to support that party will have to realize that if they’re not happy with the consequences of their support, they have to get over partisan politics and either reform the party themselves or vote for someone else.
So frustrating when “the government” is referred to as some vague entity out of anyone’s control. They chose this and they can choose something else. Other people saw through the extreme right economics and didn’t chose it so that was a possible path too.
In states and cities yes. But federally, if you want to vote for a party that's fiscally conservative and focuses on the needs of the people, which party do you vote for?
I don't see the problem. The legislature was elected by the people. If the people keep voting for these elected officials, they got just what they voted for.
The teachers are leaving in droves and making better money.
Win Win - the people of Oklahoma got the horrible school system that they indirectly voted for and teachers get to either deal with it or move.
I can't feel bad for people who vote against their own interest.
Then what's stopping those teachers from moving? I moved from a small town where the only jobs for software developers were as military contractors doing mainframe programming, the week after I graduated from college.
