NBC discovered there are lots of jobs available in this economy after all – in this case, jobs for teachers. According to John Seigenthaler of the “Nightly News,” “200,000 new instructors will be needed this year” and “2 million over the next decade.”
Although reporter Michelle Kosinski showed how far school districts are going to attract teachers, she concluded that “teachers and students deserve better.”
Kosinski’s report left out that teachers already get better – better than the median household income in the United States. According to the left-wing National Education Association, teachers earn on average $45,891, or about $1,400 more than the U.S. median household income of $44,473.
Those facts never entered into the NBC report. Instead Kosinski interviewed NEA President Reg Weaver, who complained about salaries, urging schools to “simply pay teachers more,” Kosinski told viewers. “When this country decides that something is important then they find the money,” Weaver moaned.
Nowhere in the NBC report did it mention that teachers typically work nine or 10 months a year or that the teacher salaries usually include extensive pensions as part of the compensation.
Kosinski focused on the wild ways schools were trying to recruit teachers to fill the vacancies and compensate teachers even more from public funds. One Arizona elementary school went to school just four days a week. Other districts got “creative,” according to the report. “New York City offers a $14,000 housing subsidy. Several districts in Florida plan to build their own low-rent housing on school property,” Kosinski explained.