Strike Too

Following on from the recent teacher strike in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky walked out (on April 2) to demand better wages and to stop proposed changes to their pension plans.

One thing that I've noticed in some of the reporting on these strikes is frequent (though certainly not exclusive) reference to "below the national average" pay or "second lowest in the nation" or other norm-referenced comparisons. I always find these statements somewhat less convincing than criterion-referenced comparisons to e.g., median housing cost in the area, the federal poverty line, and the like. 

This is not to say that the teachers' demands are unreasonable (and stories of teachers working two or three additional jobs to make ends meet suggest that they aren't), but rather just to remind everyone that even if teacher pay were astronomical, there would still be, by definition, some state at the "bottom" of the list and many folks with "below average" compensation.