Just how badly do we treat our teachers

This chart just showed up on my Facebook feed.

It's an odd chart, with no explanations. I think most of my friends will have the same reaction as I did, a resigned sigh over how badly we treat teachers in this country. Unfortunately, there were other reactions. Of the twenty or so comments I read, this is the stupidest.

Ryan Kaiser Lol just goes to show that all those extra hours they work do nothing for the outcome of our students and if they turned out more students with better skills I would opt to pay them more but until then keep slaving on teachers that are not producing and thank you to all those who are.

Mr. Kaiser's English and logic teachers need to hang their heads in shame, though perhaps there were extenuating circumstances, such as--oh, I don't know--overwork. I suppose he's one of those who think we need to kill their unions,raise the price of their insurance, take their pensions, and give them guns (logic teacher hangs head in shame second time).

The countries are selected from the members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), but several have been left out, Canada (if you want to comment on social metrics in the US, our slightly poorer, but culturally highly similar neighbor is usually a good data point to include), Sweden, Israel, and most East European countries. Why were those excluded? What's the deal with Sweden and Turkey? Is GDP per capita the best metric for pay? Why not compared to average or median income or some kind of cost of living index? We would do a little better on either of those measures. How did they determine hours worked? The 1500 hours they credit the US teachers as working is apparently based on nine months of 40 hour weeks. Most teaches I know would have a hearty laugh at the idea they only work 40 hours. Then they would reach for a glass of box wine and break down weeping. Is the hours estimate as unrealistic for other countries?

Who cares? As Mr. Kaiser says, "the floggings will continue until morale improves!