Average Wisconsin Starting Teacher Salary - 25,222 (Rank 49th)
UW Madison Tuition for 4.5 years - 40,424 (Rank 20th)
I went for 4.5 years because teachers are required to get a degree, plus do a semester of Student Teaching. Not everyone is able to finish in 4 years either.
The average salary eventually gets up to 46k, but it's not easy to pay off 40k in student loans (more if you took out for expenses, but less if you're fortunate to have a well off family or a very poor one to get grants) on the starting salary.
Remember the sacrifices the teachers in your students lives go through. With budget cuts, a lot of teachers are also personally subsidizing the materials used in classes too.
Teachers are not your enemy, and short-changing your kids futures now may help in the short term, but the long term expenses with increased incarceration rates and unemployment is not worth it.
This problem transcends Blue vs Red, Democrat vs Republican, Liberal vs Conservative; it's about putting your money where it can actually make a difference, and education is one of them.
Thanks for reading.
Sources
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/education/09dropout.html
http://teacherportal.com/salary/Wisconsin-teacher-salary
http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=1203&profileId=2
And my personal experiences.
