Why teacher strikes are touching every part of America
Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN Urban, rural, suburban, red, blue and purple, American teachers from across the United States have been on strike. So far this year, teachers have picketed in one of the wealthiest states...
Urban, rural, suburban, red, blue and purple, American teachers from across the United States have been on strike. So far this year, teachers have picketed in one of the wealthiest states -- California, which has strong protections for public unions -- and one of the poorest: West Virginia, which has rolled back union protections in recent years.
They've gone on strike in Denver, Los Angeles, Oakland and throughout West Virginia this year. They walked out in Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma and West Virginia last year. They've rallied in Georgia and Virginia.
Donald Trump Jr., the President's son, seemed to invoke striking teachers during a speech last month in El Paso, Texas, when he dismissed "these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth."
While the strikes require solidarity, the reasons for them range from salaries and benefits to school infrastructure and class size to charter schools.
Each of these situations is unique and has its own local concerns, but each also shares the underlying issue of how America should compensate its teachers and educate its children.
The national takeaways, according to Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, are that schools have been underfunded for years, that teachers have had enough and that parents are behind them.
"Nobody believes that striking is a first resort," she said. "It is a last resort. Nobody is strike-happy. But they get to it."
Teacher salaries nationwide are down compared with recent decades. Adjusting for inflation, they've shrunk 1.6% nationwide between 2000 and 2017, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, which compared the average annual salaries of teachers since 1969. US wages more generally have risen in that time, according to a Pew review of BLS statistics.
In some states that saw recent strikes, such as Arizona and North Carolina, salaries are down more than 10% before teachers fought for increases.
Salaries are up in that time frame in California, but the cost of living is up much more in a place like Oakland, where teachers are currently striking and the theme in reports from the city is that teachers can't afford to live there anymore. It's not too far a leap from that frustration with inequality to the local backlash and activism that drove Amazon from its plans to build part of its HQ2 in Long Island City in New York.
But the average salaries do not tell the whole story, according to research from Sylvia Allegretto of UC Berkeley and Lawrence CONTINUE READING: Why teacher strikes are touching every part of America - ABC7 News
