Education Week - March 15, 2023 - 14

Teacher Pay Raise
Proposals Are Gaining
Bipartisan Support.
What's in Them?
By Libby Stanford
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee
Sanders promised to raise starting
teacher salaries in her state " from one
of the lowest to one of the highest in
the nation " in her Feb. 7 Republican
rebuttal speech to President
Joe
Biden's State of the Union address.
The next day, she unveiled Arkansas
LEARNS, a major education initiative
that includes teacher pay raises
alongside a major expansion of school
choice; a policy to keep 3rd graders
who haven't met reading standards
from advancing to 4th grade; and the
repeal of the state's mandatory, graduated
pay scale for teachers as well as
a state law that requires that teachers
receive written notice of a suspension
or termination and allows them to
request a school board hearing to try
to get their job back.
That Huckabee Sanders' marquee
education initiative couples teacher
pay raises with other, more traditional
conservative education policies is one
example of the growing bipartisan
support for boosting teachers' pay, a
cause traditionally championed by
Democrats.
While a proposal from Democrats in
Congress to raise teachers' base pay to
$60,000 has gained some high-profile
support, governors from both parties
this winter have proposed teacher pay
increases as schools struggle to fill
key positions and fewer young people
show interest in the profession.
In Arkansas, Huckabee Sanders'
LEARNS-short
Readiness, Networking, and School
Safety-proposal has since passed the
state's Senate and House in the form
of a 145-page bill. Huckabee Sanders
signed the bill into law on March 8.
It raises Arkansas's starting teacher
salary from $36,000 to $50,000,
bumping the state's starting salary
ranking from 48th in the nation
to sixth, according to a National
Education Association report on
teacher salary benchmarks in the
2020-21 school year.
Huckabee Sanders labeled the initiative
" an education package that
will be the most far-reaching, bold
conservative education reform in the
country. "
Biden also called for teacher salary
increases in his State of the Union
speech, proclaiming, " Let's give public
school teachers a raise " to cheers from
the congressional audience.
In Congress, Rep. Frederica Wilson,
D-Fla., and Rep. Jamaal Bowman,
D-N.Y, introduced a bill to give incentives
to states to raise teacher salaries
to $60,000, and Sen. Bernie Sanders,
I-Vt., introduced a complimentary
bill that would triple Title I funding
for low-income schools and increase
wages for veteran teachers in addition
to instituting the $60,000 salary floor.
No Republicans in Congress have
for Literacy,
Empowerment, Accountability,
signed on to support the federal measures.
But an increasing number of
conservative state governors, such
as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Idaho
Gov. Brad Little, and South Carolina
Gov. Henry McMaster, have joined
Huckabee Sanders in proposing a
teacher pay increase.
But those policies aren't always as
simple as they may seem, and some
teachers and education policy experts
worry about whether pay increases will
be sustainable long term.
Why now?
The average public school teacher
salary in the 2020-21 school year was
$65,090, which is only $83 above the
average pay in 1989-90 when adjusted
for inflation, according to the National
Center for Education Statistics. It's also
more than $1,200 less than what teachers
made in 2009-10, and teachers are
underpaid compared with workers in
other professions with similar experience
and education backgrounds.
Low teacher pay has sparked
protests and walkouts over the past
decade, including the coordinated
national #RedforED movement to
improve working conditions for teachers.
But states are now facing pressing
regional teacher shortages and dramatic
drops in reading and math scores
among students.
Dan Goldhaber, director of the
Center for Analysis of Longitudinal
Data in Education Research, found
in a recent study that teacher attrition
and turnover are at historic highs in
Washington state. The state's attrition
rate in 2022 was 8.9 percent,
higher than the rate of any of the
past 37 school years, according to
the study.
" It makes sense that if it's hard to
hire teachers, one policy lever that you
might pull is teacher pay, " Goldhaber
said.
Many schools are feeling the pressure
of turnover and shortages as
they try to compete for teaching candidates
who can earn higher salaries
in other states.
" Right now the competition for
the best teachers in the region is
more intense than ever, " Delaware
Gov. John Carney, a Democrat, said
in his State of the State speech on Jan.
19. " So, we need to pay our teachers
more to win the competition with surrounding
states. "
Delaware's neighboring states had
some of the highest average teacher
salaries in the nation in 2020-21, with an
$80,659 average salary in the District
of Columbia, $74,006 in Maryland,
and $71,479 in Pennsylvania, according
to the NEA. Delaware's average,
meanwhile, was $65,141. Carney plans
to include a 9 percent raise for teachers
in his fiscal year 2024 budget.
Some proposals are more than
simple raises
Teacher pay is just one part of the
Arkansas LEARNS act. The law will
also expand school choice through
" educational freedom accounts " that
will provide public funds to help students
pay for private school tuition and
other educational expenses. The law
will eventually make school choice universally
available in the state.
It also prohibits " indoctrination " in
the classroom and requires that schools
allow parents to preview curriculum
materials before classroom instruction,
which is already allowed in many
districts for parents who ask. The law
also places literacy coaches in low-performing
classrooms and-emulating a
policy that has been in place for years
in neighboring Mississippi-requires
3rd graders to meet reading standards
before advancing to 4th grade.
The comprehensive nature of the
law worries Carol Fleming, president
of the Arkansas Education
Association, which has come out in
opposition to Arkansas LEARNS.
While the association is in support of
efforts to improve literacy and raise
teacher pay, it's against education
savings accounts because, it says, they
direct funds away from public schools.
That puts the chief union representing
Arkansas teachers in an
awkward situation in which it has to
campaign against pay increases for its
own members.
" Since it's all or none, it puts you
in a position where you do have to
advocate against it, " Fleming said.
" However, if they were to separate
sections out of that bill and make
appropriate amendments, it would
be much more palatable. "
Other teacher salary proposArkansas
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is hoping to increase starting teacher salaries to $50,000 under her
new plan Arkansas LEARNS.
14 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 15, 2022 | www.edweek.org
als are similarly complicated. In
Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt and State
Superintendent Ryan Walters have
proposed merit-based pay raises while
the state legislature has advanced a
bill that would raise starting teacher
salaries from $36,602 to $39,601,
according to The Oklahoman. School
districts would be tasked with determining
who receives raises based on
factors such as student performance,
classroom practices, and time spent in
professional development, according
to the Oklahoman.
Merit-based pay increases have long
been a point of concern for teachers,
who say they don't fairly judge their
work or account for students' different
circumstances.
Huckabee Sanders' plan also has a
merit-based pay component, making
bonuses of up to $10,000 available to
teachers through a newly created Merit
Teacher Incentive Fund Program.
" Ultimately, anything that would
tie a teacher's well-being and ability
to pay their bills to students'
test scores is never going to work
out well, " said Nínive Calegari,
co-founder of The Teacher Salary
Project, a campaign to raise teacher
pay across the country.
Where teacher pay policies are
sustainable
Districts need to be strategic in how
they allocate pay increases, Goldhaber
said.
He favors policies that raise starting
teacher salaries rather than salary
increases across the board. That's
because that kind of policy is more
likely to prevent young teachers from
leaving in their first three to five years
and motivate more college students to
enter teaching.
" If you're thinking about trying to
reduce teacher attrition, then I think
money allocated early in a teacher's
career is likely to do more good
across the board, " Goldhaber said.
" You can't lower attrition very much
for mid-career teachers because it's
not that high. "
Calegari agreed, noting it has
become more difficult to get college
students interested in choosing teaching
as a career.
But that kind of policy doesn't always
sit well with teachers' unions that argue
that increases should reward expertise
and experience. Fleming is particularly
worried that the Arkansas LEARNS
plan will make it difficult for mid- to
late-career teachers to get appropriate
pay increases.
As it's currently written, the plan
eliminates state-mandated teacher
salary schedules and instead gives
school districts the responsibility of
adopting an employee salary schedule.
It also provides a $2,000 pay raise for
current teachers across the board.
" Let's say you have a teacher who
has 15 years experience and in 2022-23
was making $52,000 a year. Moving
forward, they will get $54,000, "
Fleming said. " But a brand new teacher
with zero experience is going to come
in making $50,000. That 15-year gap is
a difference of only $4,000. Where's
the equity in that? "
Teacher salary policies can also go a
long way toward addressing shortages
by giving pay increases for hard-to-staff
subjects and schools that predominantly
serve students of color or
high-poverty students, Goldhaber said.
Ultimately, however, boosting
teacher pay is just one part of the
staffing challenge. Shortages won't be
solved unless there's better respect for
teachers, Calegari said.
" We've got to do something really
dramatic to change the perception
of what this job can mean because
there's a lot working against it right
now, " she said.
Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP

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Education Week - March 15, 2023

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