Tag Archives: Teacher Pay

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Lakeland Makes Money Moves

District boosts teacher pay, new starting pay is $50,000/year

The Lakeland School District is investing in teachers.

This week, the district announced plans to move starting teacher pay to $50,000 and adjust the pay scale for all teachers accordingly.

Effectively, the plan moves every teacher up four spots on the pay scale.

This will mean raises of between $3000-$5000 for all teachers in the system.

Teacher pay matters. Investing in the people who have direct contact with students is a direct investment in student success.

When teachers get paid more, students do better. In one study, a 10% increase in teacher pay was estimated to produce a 5 to 10% increase in student performance. Teacher pay also has long-term benefits for students. A 10% increase in per-pupil spending for each of the 12 years of education results in students completing more education, having 7% higher wages, and having a reduced rate of adult poverty. These benefits are even greater for families who are in poverty.

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TEA to Lee: We’ll See You in Court

Tennessee Education Association challenges Gov. Lee’s attempt at union busting

The Tennessee Education Association is challenging a new state law that prevents local school districts from allowing teachers to have their association dues automatically deducted from their paychecks.

The move by the Lee Administration was tied to a teacher pay raise and widely seen as an effort to weaken the oldest and largest organization advocating for teachers in the state.

In recent years, TEA has been the source of the strongest opposition to Lee’s agenda of using public money to fund private schools.

Here’s more from Chalkbeat:

Tennessee’s largest professional teachers organization is challenging the constitutionality of a new state law that prohibits school districts from making payroll deductions for employees’ professional association dues.

The Tennessee Education Association filed its lawsuit Tuesday in Davidson County Chancery Court on behalf of its local education associations and 41,000 members statewide. The complaint names Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, which pushed for the change, and the state education department as defendants. Several local education associations have joined the suit.

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For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

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Teacher Shortage Crisis Continues

State does little to help attract, retain educators

Nashville’s Fox 17 reports that Tennessee is facing a teacher shortage that is growing worse by the year:

The report shows this school year started with more than 1,000 teacher vacancies state-wide, and about 3,000 positions filled by people with an emergency teaching credential. The vacancies are up 16 percent since last school year.

Low pay and poor working conditions are cited as reasons for the exodus from the profession. Likewise, fewer college students are seeking teaching credentials.

The Teacher Shortage Crisis is Here

I wrote recently about Gov. Bill Lee’s heavy spin around teacher compensation. While Lee claims Tennessee will soon be in the Top 10 in teacher pay, we currently rank in the bottom 7 – and even below Alabama.

“Tennessee teachers are the best in the Southeast, and we have the outcomes and data to back that up, but we are not paid as the best and are behind our peers in neighboring states,” said TEA President Tanya Coats. “Teachers, like other Tennesseans, have been affected by inflation and rising costs in the family budget. State revenues are strong, and we’ve seen record budget surpluses for many years. More can be done to improve the economics of being a professional teacher in our state, and TEA will continue to advocate for professional salaries for our dedicate educators.”

Coats noted that the proposed teacher pay increase will bring Tennessee’s minimum teacher salary to $42,000 a year. She then pointed out that Alabama’s minimum teacher pay is $43,358.

It’s also noteworthy that only 25% of Tennessee teachers earn more than $60,000 a year.

Bill Lee’s rhetoric on teacher pay doesn’t match the policy reality – and teachers are making that clear by leaving the profession.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @tnedreport

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Alabama Still Beats Tennessee

Sure, the UT football team claimed a big win over Alabama in football this year. However, teachers in Alabama still earn more than teachers here in Tennessee.

And yes, that’s even AFTER Gov. Bill Lee’s proposed teacher pay raise announced in last night’s State of the State address.

Here’s more from NewsBreak:

“Tennessee teachers are the best in the Southeast, and we have the outcomes and data to back that up, but we are not paid as the best and are behind our peers in neighboring states,” said TEA President Tanya Coats. “Teachers, like other Tennesseans, have been affected by inflation and rising costs in the family budget. State revenues are strong, and we’ve seen record budget surpluses for many years. More can be done to improve the economics of being a professional teacher in our state, and TEA will continue to advocate for professional salaries for our dedicate educators.”

Coats noted that the proposed teacher pay increase will bring Tennessee’s minimum teacher salary to $42,000 a year. She then pointed out that Alabama’s minimum teacher pay is $43,358.

Yes, that’s right – even with a 4% raise this year, Tennessee teachers will still lag behind neighboring Alabama in teacher pay.

This despite the state facing a significant teacher shortage AND having a surplus in excess of $2 billion.

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For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

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Should it be Easier to Become a Teacher in Tennessee

The Tennessee State Board of Education is looking at ways to smooth the pathway into teaching, including by eliminating a key hurdle faced by some candidates – a test of teaching aptitude.

NewsChannel9 in Chattanooga has more:

Currently, all teachers in Tennessee must pass the education teacher performance assessment, whether they have a degree in another field or they’re in the process of student teaching.

But some are looking to drop the requirement for this assessment.

If adopted, the exemption would only apply to about 800-900 teacher certification applicants a year – those who are already “job-embedded” candidates doing teaching under the supervision of a mentor teacher.

The idea, according to officials at the State Board of Education, is to eliminate a barrier to teacher certification for those with a high level of training.

However, as the story notes, schools of education and even recent teacher applicants say the certification process, including the testing, is a key element of preparation for the classroom.

It was about a decade ago when then-Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman pushed the State Board to increase the rigor of requirements to become a certified teacher.

This was supposed to dramatically improve education quality in Tennessee.

Now, facing both a teacher shortage AND a reluctance by policymakers to significantly improve teacher compensation, the State Board is seeking to lower requirements so more people will be eligible for these positions.

It’s noteworthy that in each case, the reform in question did NOT result in any increase in compensation or improvement in working conditions for teachers.

It’s as if investing in teachers is a bridge too far – instead, so-called education “reformers” will continue to try everything possible EXCEPT dramatically raising pay in order to address the issue at hand.

The Teacher Shortage Crisis is Here
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For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

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Nashville Voters Say Schools are Underfunded, Teachers Underpaid

Amid a global pandemic that is seeing an already troubling teacher shortage exacerbated, voters in Nashville are expressing concern that schools are underfunded and teachers are underpaid. These findings come as the result of a poll of registered voters conducted on behalf of the Nashville Public Education Foundation.

The poll found that voters (72%) believe teachers are underpaid – this in spite of a recent pay plan raising pay in Nashville some $7000 or more for most teachers. The pollster noted that previous results showed 80% of voters thought teachers were underpaid.

The findings on funding are not surprising in a state that had a $2 billion surplus in the past fiscal year and is underfunding schools by at least $1.7 billion.

According to the poll, 66% of Nashville voters feel public schools in the city are underfunded.

Meanwhile, Gov. Bill Lee is attempting to divert attention from his party’s dismal track record on school funding by pushing a statewide “review” of the school funding formula, known as the BEP.

Do We Really Have to Do This?

What Lee and legislative leaders are not (yet) talking about is a dramatic increase in state funding for schools. Of course, there’s a February court date that may result in the Tennessee Supreme Court ordering policymakers to properly invest in schools.

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The Teacher Pay Penalty

Economic Policy Institute is out with its annual look at the teacher pay penalty. Here’s more:

As we have shown in our more than a decade and a half of work on the topic, there has been a long-trending erosion of teacher wages and compensation relative to other college graduates.1 Simply put, teachers are paid less (in wages and compensation) than other college-educated workers with similar experience and other characteristics, and this financial penalty discourages college students from entering the teaching profession and makes it difficult for school districts to keep current teachers in the classroom.

Key findings

  • The teacher wage penalty has grown substantially since the mid-1990s. The teacher wage penalty is how much less, in percentage terms, public school teachers are paid in weekly wages relative to other college-educated workers (after accounting for factors known to affect earnings such as education, experience, and state residence). The regression-adjusted teaching wage penalty was 6.0% in 1996. In 2019, the penalty was 19.2%, reflecting a 2.8 percentage-point improvement compared with a penalty of 22.0% a year earlier.
  • The teacher wage penalty declined in the wake of recent teacher strikes but only time and more data will reveal whether teachers’ actions led to a decline and a turning point. The lessening of the teaching penalty from 22.0% in 2018 to 19.2% in 2019 may reflect pay raises enacted in the wake of widespread strikes and other actions by teachers in 2018 and 2019, particularly in some of the states where teacher pay lagged the most. Unfortunately, the data we have to date are not sufficient to allow us to identify the geographic locus of the improvements in teacher wages and benefits and any association with the recent wave of teacher protests and strikes. Only time will tell if this single data point marks a turning point in teacher pay.
  • The wage premium that women teachers experienced in the 1960s and 1970s has been replaced by a significant wage penalty. As noted in our previous research, women teachers enjoyed a 14.7% wage premium in 1960, meaning they were paid 14.7% more than comparably educated and experienced women in other occupations. In 2019, women teachers were earning 13.2% less in weekly wages than their nonteaching counterparts were—a 27.9 percentage-point swing over the last six decades.
  • The wage penalty for men in teaching is much larger than it is for women in the profession, and it too has worsened considerably. The teacher wage penalty for men was 16.6% in 1979. In 2019, male teachers earned 30.2% less than similar male college graduates who chose a different profession. This explains, to a large degree, why only one in four teachers are men.
  • While teacher wage penalties have worsened over time, some of the increase may be attributable to a tradeoff school districts make between pay and benefits. In other words, school districts may not be giving teachers raises but are instead offering stable or slightly better benefits, such that benefits make up a larger share of the overall compensation package for teachers than for other professionals. In 2019, nonwage benefits made up a greater share of total compensation for teachers (29.3%) than for other professionals (21.4%). In 2004, nonwage benefits share of compensation was 20.7% for teachers and 18.7% for other professionals.
  • The benefits advantage of teachers has not been enough to offset the growing wage penalty. The teacher total compensation penalty was 10.2% in 2019 (composed of a 19.2% wage penalty offset by a 9.0% benefits advantage). The bottom line is that the teacher total compensation penalty grew by 7.5 percentage points from 1993 to 2019.
  • The teacher wage penalty exceeds 20% in 21 states and in the District of Columbia. Teacher weekly wage penalties for each state, computed using pooled 2014–2019 data, range from 2.0% in Wyoming to 32.7% in Virginia. In 21 states and the District of Columbia teachers are paid less than 80 cents on the dollar earned by similar college-educated workers.

In Tennessee, the teacher wage penalty is 21.4%

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Why Should Teachers Work for Free?

Former teacher Kat Tipton writes in Education Week that free work is expected of teachers, and suggests it’s likely because a vast majority of educators are women.

When I was hired to be a 1st grade teacher, I was given absolutely no curriculum for reading or science. While my school did have a math curriculum, it was out of date from the brand new, controversial Common Core State Standards and did not match our assessments. Instead, I was told to plan with my colleagues.

This often led to me scouring the internet for good resources. While some coworkers were willing to share, they rarely sat down and explained what they were giving me, and I certainly never had the opportunity to observe them using it. I was in over my head and had no idea what I was doing.

However, there is a growing number of disdainful educators who are downright angry that teachers are daring to sell their materials on Teachers Pay Teachers. At a technology conference last summer, I heard a presenter loudly talking in the vendor expo center. I listened as he laughed and called TPT sellers the “whores of education.” In a session later that day, I learned about a website where teachers can upload their work for free for others to use.

Why are teachers expected to give away their hard work for free? The presenters in charge of the website explained that they were there to “help kids” and not themselves. I have seen this same sentiment on Twitter often. If you really cared about kids, you would just let people have the things you make rather than sell them!

But, is that fair? Do doctors who work with children give their medical advice away for free? Does Google look around, as it makes new technology for teachers, and say, “You know what? Let’s share all this with Microsoft. After all, it’s for kids!”? Can you think of a single other profession in which those in it are not given what they need to complete their job, are expected to make their own materials, and are then expected to just give those materials away to others?

No, the real problem here is that so many teachers aren’t given what they need in order to do their job—for kids—that they have to pay other teachers to get what they need. The lack of funding in our schools is shocking, and it’s no surprise that schools can’t afford up-to-date curriculum when many can’t even afford basic furniture or actual teachers.

More than three-quarters of public school teachers are women. Would we value the work done by teachers and sold online—and would we be less likely to call those who participate “whores”—if more teachers were men? The average public school teacher makes about $55,000 a year, and the majority have at least two degrees. If a teacher had a side job at American Eagle, would she still be a “whore”? Why is selling something related to teaching as a side job considered to be the worst thing a teacher can do?

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Math Problem

Hamilton County has a problem. It’s a problem that plagues school districts across Tennessee. It’s simple: Teacher compensation isn’t what it should be. NewsChannel9 has the story of a group of teachers collecting data to demonstrate the dollar value of uncompensated time and expenses:

Dozens of Hamilton County teachers say they’ve done the math, and what they’re making versus what they’re spending on school doesn’t add up.


“If those averages apply to the entire county, we’ve got about $2.5 million in uncompensated time and expenses that we’ve given,” said Brock.

This shortfall is occuring in a state where teachers earn about 30% less than similarly-trained professionals:

This year’s results indicate a national average teacher pay gap of 23.8%. Tennessee’s gap is 27.3%. That’s an improvement of two points for Tennessee, which had a gap of 29.3% two years ago.


Of 12 Southeastern states, Tennessee ranks 8th in teacher pay gap — that’s up one place from 9th two years ago.

The teacher compensation crisis in Hamilton County is similar to what’s playing out all across a state that has historically not invested in teachers. In fact, this year, Governor Lee made a big investment in charter schools and a relatively small boost to teacher compensation through the BEP. Additionally, Lee is fast-tracking his expensive voucher scheme, using funds that could be used to invest in public schools and teacher pay.

Will the Hamilton County legislative delegation continue to support a Governor whose policies are leaving teachers and public schools behind?

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Necessary

It looks like Nashville is finally getting serious about addressing their woefully inadequate teacher pay. Or, at least they are talking about it. The Tennessean reports that the Metro Nashville school board is taking up the issue of pay for teachers and all system staff.

Boosting the salaries of Nashville teachers to match the city’s median income would cost more than $100 million a year. 

Although just an example detailed in a pay study released by Metro Nashville Public Schools on Friday, it represents the high figure the district would need to fix a pay system educators say is flawed and causing teachers to leave.


For example, Majors presented a possible scenario in which the district would pay mid-career teachers about $64,000 a year — comparable to Nashville’s median income. The increase in salary for all teachers of all experience levels would mean an annual infusion of $100 million to fix the district’s pay schedule.

The discussion on teacher pay in MNPS is long overdue. Also long overdue: Actual action by the School Board and Metro Council to increase pay.

It’s been clear for some time now that teacher pay in Nashville is a crisis:

Attracting and retaining teachers will become increasingly more difficult if MNPS doesn’t do more to address the inadequacy of it’s salaries. The system was not paying competitively relative to its peers two years ago, and Nashville’s rapid growth has come with a rising cost of living. Does Nashville value it’s teachers enough to pay them a comfortable salary? Or, will Nashville let cities like Louisville continue to best them in teacher compensation?

That was written in 2017. The story notes a 2015 analysis of teacher pay in Nashville. That analysis found Nashville significantly behind similar urban districts in pay. The MNPS board and Metro Council did basically nothing with that information. We’ve seen Mayors Dean, Barry, and Briley barely touch the issue. We’ve yet to see Mayor Cooper talk about a plan to boost pay in a meaningful way.

IF the issue gets addressed in the upcoming budget cycle, it will be August of 2020 before Nashville teachers see a meaningful boost in their paychecks. That’s five years after teacher pay in Nashville was reported to be at near crisis levels. It’s after allowing things like this to happen:

Hundreds of parents with children in Metro Nashville Public Schools had letters sent home this week telling them that their kids were having to take online courses in the classroom due to a teacher shortage.

It’s after school districts like Williamson County have made consistent improvements to salary and districts like Sumner County have approved a big pay bump.

It’s great to see the district finally take a look at a problem they’ve known about for years. It’s absolutely necessary that instead of just talking about it, the School Board, Council, and Mayor actually do something.

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