Why Hide the Numbers?

Last week, people were buzzing with talk of the salaries of local teachers, which the Courier printed in its May 13 edition. Some readers thanked us for shedding light on teacher compensation, although they asked that we not disclose their names. And, as anticipated, we received some criticism of both last week’s editorial and the publication of the salaries.

Employers, of course, know the salaries of their employees. Likewise, the taxpayers pay the salaries of public school teachers, and so they should be aware of how teachers are compensated. Yet some critics claim that by printing the salaries of local teachers, this newspaper was taking an “advocacy position” against the budget. This is an interesting suggestion: Is there something inherent in those numbers that would incline one to oppose the budget? If not, why keep the salaries hidden?

(In fairness, some detractors said we could publish the figures—but only after the school budget vote had taken place; in other words, first decide, then gather the facts.)

Naturally, had we not published the salaries, skeptics would accuse us of bias in favor of the budgets. But we did not make our decision based on how either side would respond: Our bias was a preference for complete transparency. We believe our readers are educated enough to process the information and make their own decisions.

Nevertheless, as we said pretty clearly in our editorial last week, the decision whether or not to support the budget should not be based solely on numbers. Other factors need to be considered, which is why we encouraged parents informally to quiz their students on American civics. Surprisingly, even this provoked anger from some quarters. We were not claiming that our sample quiz was a scientific test or that the sum total of human knowledge would be found in the answers to those questions. The point was that in a nation that is “one out of many” everyone should be familiar with some common elements of our past.

Notably, this newspaper did not take a position on any of the proposed budgets; we simply said that if parents do not think that their students know enough of the fundamentals, they should consider sending a message at the ballot box. The use of the conditional was not accidental—and not meaningless.

Among the liberties secured for us by our founders is the right to govern ourselves democratically, and public referenda on school budgets are especially democratic. But they are useless if the voting public doesn’t know the details of the budget—a large portion of which consists of teacher salaries.

Only in a sham democracy would the public have a right to vote on important matters so long as they were not provided with too much information. For whatever reason, there are people who prefer that some information be kept in the shadows. We should be grateful that we have transparency laws and the freedom of the press, or certain facts might never see the light of day.

And just because Congress votes for laws without reading them, doesn’t mean we should vote for budgets without gathering information.