Starting Teacher Pay

Higher Pay Expected in Next Year’s Report

Due to the scope and magnitude of the collection effort for this analysis, the reported data are necessarily lagged by one year; meaning salaries for 2021-2022 are reported in 2023. However, recently enacted legislation and anecdotal evidence suggest that 2022-2023 will in all likelihood produce historically large increases in teacher salaries.

For example, in 2022, Alabama’s record Education Trust Fund budget provided for raises ranging from 4% at the beginning of the state minimum salary schedule up to 21% for the state’s most experienced teachers.

Like Alabama, Hawaii also sought to retain experienced teachers by substantially increasing their pay. In consultation with the Hawaii State Teachers Association, the state developed a plan to address long-term inequities by paying salaries that are commensurate with a teacher’s experience. The average salary increase was about $6,000 for the 9,200 teachers, 72 percent of the teaching workforce, who were affected by the plan with the state's most experienced teachers seeing an $18,000 raise.

In Mississippi, HB 530 authorized the largest pay raise in a generation for the state’s public-school teachers. It provided teachers with an average salary increase of about $5,100 - a jump of more than 10%. The bill also included a $2,000 increase for teacher assistants.

New Mexico’s SB 1 provided historic raises, increasing starting teacher salaries to $50,000, while guaranteeing a 7% raise for all school employees.

In FY 2023, California’s legislature added 6.7% on top of the statutory COLA of 6.6% for the Local Control Funding Formula. Even though this funding did not go directly to salaries, it enabled local associations to negotiate significant increases in educator pay. For instance, the Lake Elsinore Teachers Association bargained a salary increase of 13% on-schedule and the Perris Secondary Educators Association negotiated a 13.4% on-schedule salary increase and $4,000 off-schedule.

In Washington, the legislature established a 5.5% increase earmarked but not required for salaries. The average salary increases in 2022-2023 surpassed 6.8% for teachers and other certificated educators and 6.6% for ESP. For example, the Seattle Education Association reached an agreement following a 6-day strike that included a 7% salary increase for the first year of the agreement followed by 4% for year two and 3% for year three. In addition to the raises, ESP receive a one-time $1,500 bonus. Teachers in Riverview negotiated a CBA that awarded an average 10.3% increase on base pay for 2022-2023.

In Indiana, the Governor’s teacher pay commission issued a report in 2020 that included a $40,000 starting teacher salary goal. The 2021 state budget included a billion dollars additional funding to public schools to help reach the salary goal. According to the Indiana State Teachers Association, only three of the state's 306 school corporations had not yet reached a minimum starting salary of $40,000 as of December 2022. In 2019, only 79 school corporations had a minimum starting salary of $40,000.

Some state affiliates have made organizing and bargaining for improved educator salaries a statewide priority. In the five years since Kansas NEA launched its $40K campaign, the number of school districts statewide offering a starting teacher salary of at least $40,000 increased from seven to 203. A targeted campaign involving bargaining trainings, resource development, member engagement, and staff support for our bargaining teams has produced an average starting salary among KNEA affiliates that is $2,721 (7%) higher than the average base salary of unaffiliated districts.

Since 2008, New Jersey Education Association has been pushing for a $50,000 starting salary through its “$50K Right Away!” program. By 2021-2022, 556 of New Jersey’s 584 school districts had a $50,000 starting salary. Building on the success of its $50K campaign, NJEA has set its sights higher and is working with its locals to fight for “$60K Professional Pay Means Teachers Stay.” As of November 2022, 120 local affiliates have negotiated a starting teacher salary of at least $60,000 in their current settlements.

Even in places where improving educator pay is not part of a formal statewide campaign, local affiliates are using collective bargaining to improve salaries. The Colorado Education Association reports that locals with CBAs negotiated an average COLA of 5.8% for licensed educators and ESP. The average COLA among locals that do not collectively bargain was 4.2% for licensed and 5.3% for ESP. As a specific example, the Alamosa Education Association negotiated a pay increase of 8% across the board for teachers and ESP, the most substantial raise in 20 years.

In Alaska, the Skagway Teachers Organization bargained for a 16% increase to the salary schedule for teachers over three years (8% for FY 2023, 4% for FY 2024, and 4% for FY 2025).

In St. Louis, most staff, including teachers, saw 8% raises starting in July 2022, the largest single-year increase on record. Raises for nurses were even larger. In exchange for increasing the workday to 8.5 hours from 7.5 hours and the work year to 11 months from 10 months, nurses received a 38% salary increase and an additional $10,000 bonus.

In Milwaukee, the district agreed to the Association's salary demands resulting in an approximate 7% base-building increase for Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association members for 2022-2023, representing the most significant salary win post-Act 10.

Good and Bad Ways States are Increasing Teacher Pay

This report and other NEA salary reports provide ample evidence that educators are grossly underpaid. Moreover, the Economic Policy Institute finds that the teacher pay penalty has reached a record high. Competitive pay is one of the common-sense solutions to addressing the educator shortage crisis, and several states are finally starting to take action to improve teacher pay

States like Mississippi and New Mexico are increasing educator salaries the right way. Each of these states passed legislation that provides significant increases in not just starting teacher pay but awards experienced teachers as well. For instance, the New Mexico Public Education Department estimates that the statutory increases in minimum salary levels along with guaranteed raises for returning educators drove up the overall average teacher salary by 17% in 2022-2023.

Likewise, states like California and Washington significantly boosted education funding enabling local associations to negotiate large raises across the board for all teachers.

Unfortunately, politicians in some states continue to rely on gimmicks and smoke-and-mirrors tactics to allegedly fix the teacher pay problem, or instead of tackling the shortage of educators, they remain fixated on attacking unions and collective bargaining, public education, and educators.

In Arkansas, the education overhaul LEARNS Act promises to increase the starting salary for teachers to $50,000 but blows up the state’s minimum salary schedule and makes it difficult to provide equitable salaries to veteran teachers and for those with advanced degrees. The salary provision of the LEARNS Act is reminiscent of the recent plan in Florida that increases the starting salary for teachers but fails to help experienced teachers. So, while Florida has climbed in the state rankings in terms of starting pay, it remains near the bottom (48th among the 50 states and DC) when it comes to the overall average teacher salary. Policies that focus solely on starting pay to recruit new teachers ignore the financial needs of experienced teachers and fuel the teacher shortage by failing to tackle the retention issue.

The new Arkansas law also diverts money from public schools to support private and religious schools and it repeals the state’s Fair Dismissal Act, which provided due process protections to teachers. Not satisfied with a recent law that stripped educators of their permissive bargaining rights, the legislature passed a bill prohibiting teachers from paying union dues though payroll deduction.

Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee are using the same play book as Arkansas to attempt to weaken educator unions by prohibiting the payroll deduction of union dues. In Indiana, the legislature wants to strip teachers’ rights to discuss concerns over student learning with school administrators. If the Indiana bill passes, school administrators would no longer be required to discuss important topics such as class sizes, curriculum, and student discipline with teachers and their union.

While these punitive measures and other attacks on unions and collective bargaining that are currently making their way through state legislatures may have no immediate negative impact on educator pay, the significant and positive impact that unions and collective bargaining have on teacher pay is undeniable. As a rule, salaries are higher, and the pay gap is smaller in states where teachers have access to strong unions and robust bargaining laws.

It has become abundantly clear that decisions regarding educator pay and other education polices have reached a dichotomy where states are either taking bold action to address the educator shortage and implement policies that support our system of public education, or they are doubling down on inherently flawed, tired, and punitive measures that serve the narrow interests of an extreme few.

For every state that is making wrong decisions there is one that is doing things the right way. For every Arkansas, there is a Maryland. Unlike Arkansas, Maryland, under the leadership of its new governor, is advancing a pro-public education agenda. Maryland’s new state budget includes historic levels of funding for public education, allowing the state to continue and expand the implementation of its Blueprint for education.

New legislation allows the state of Maryland to address the shortage by raising salaries and address the crisis in the pipeline of highly qualified and diverse educators. Legislation was also passed to improve labor relations and streamline the public employee labor relations boards.

The mishmash of three state labor relations laws were merged into a single, standardized, and modernized framework for public employee collective bargaining, and a new Public Employee Labor Relations Board was established from Maryland’s disconnected system of three separate labor boards.

Finally, union members in Maryland are now able to subtract their unions dues from their state income taxes.