Working in education policy made me angry at teachers. Not because they aren’t worthy of praise, but because they constantly pretend to be above criticism. Every teacher is an angel from heaven doing a duty second in righteousness only to the lord Jesus dying on the cross. When you bring up the need for merit pay, you are usually rebuffed by comments about how we don’t want teachers joining the profession for the money, but for the children. The same simple teacher/savior complex is on display whenever a school district is pushing for a tax hike.

But mess with a teacher’s pension and things change real fast:

“My dream was to be a teacher of teachers, but no way would I encourage anyone to teach if this is how they’re going to treat you at the end,” said Casey, 56, who suffered a stroke in July and can’t work to make up the shortfall.

No I wouldn’t recommend being a teacher either, but it’s not because of the money. Now I am sympathetic to Casey’s condition. But in order to have any real sympathy for her, we have to forget for a moment that ONLY teachers can retire at 55 with $2,800 of tax-free money (the tax-free part may have changed) every month. And Casey is really on the low end of teacher pensions. According to The Champion there are plenty of Chicago teachers getting well over $100,000 per year (deservingly perhaps) which means they will have really fat pensions.