Giving Compass' Take:

· Teachers have been on strike throughout the US due to anger over low salaries and funding cuts for education. InsideSources analyzes these issues and what can be done to end the strikes.

· Cuts in funding are big issues for schools. How can money be returned to the school systems?

· Read more about the teacher strike in West Virginia.

Beginning in West Virginia, strikes have spread to Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, and Colorado. North Carolina’s teachers may be the next to hit the picket lines. The results have been a mixed bag, but the commonalities among the states have not gone unnoticed. With few exceptions, strikes are occurring in states where Republicans hold the trifecta of the governor’s mansion and both houses of the state legislature. Colorado’s Gov. John Hickenlooper is Democrat, as is Roy Cooper in North Carolina.

“It’s a lot easier for teachers to strike and agitate in a red state because they’re not worried about getting crosswise with their allies,” said Rick Hess, Resident Scholar and director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Indeed, the tone of the strikes have shifted from what Hess called “kitchen-table issues” in West Virginia to a much harsher political divide in Arizona where the organizing group #RedforEd is led by a former Bernie Sanders staffer.

That teachers have a legitimate grievance about low salaries and cuts in education funding is not in dispute. In Oklahoma, the average elementary school teacher earns about $17,000 less than the national average; high school teachers earn nearly $19,000 less than the national average. Education spending there is down 28 percent over the last 10 years, the largest cut of any state. Right before teachers went on strike, the state legislature approved a $6,100 pay raise.

Read the full article about teacher strikes by Jessica R. Towhey InsideSources