Here’s the way to give our teachers a raise
House Speaker J.D. Mesnard was right to withdraw his bill requiring schools to use half their annual inflation funding to increase teacher salaries. And he shouldn’t revive the proposal for next year, as he indicated he would try to do. Nevertheless, Mesnard has a point. More precisely, he raises a question that demonstrates a point.
Arizona’s low level of teacher pay is generally attributed to spending cuts enacted by the Legislature. That’s a fair assessment. Per-pupil state support for K-12 schools, adjusted for inflation, is roughly $1.2 billion less than it was in 2008, before the recession hit. But it is not the entire story. Even before Proposition 123, the Legislature had restored inflation funding to state aid calculated from 2000, the year voters mandated it as part of Proposition 301. The lawsuit was based on the fact that the Legislature had increased base funding by more than inflation for a stretch last decade. The schools claimed this reset the base, so they were owed more than what was necessary to keep them whole from 2000.
The settlement approved by voters with Prop. 123 provided most of the additional inflation funding the schools claimed. So, base funding for operations now exceeds what was necessary to keep pace with inflation since 2000.
Moreover, voters approved a sixtenths of 1 percent increase in the sales tax for education as part of Prop. 301. Approximately a third of this was supposed to be used to increase teacher salaries. This year, teachers should be receiving more than $300 million in additional pay.
Yet, according to a recent Morrison Institute report, median teacher pay, adjusted for inflation, has dropped roughly 10 percent since 2001.
Part of that is probably a result of hiring a greater proportion of younger, less experienced and less expensive teachers. That’s not a surprise in a fast-growing state.
Still, few dispute that teacher pay has fallen behind.
The question raised by Mesnard’s bill is: Why? If schools are receiving inflation funding and more for operations, why isn’t teacher pay keeping pace?
One answer is that the state cuts were disproportionately to capital funding. So, schools have had to devote more operational funding to buildings and physical assets, such as books and computers.
But that’s not a wholly satisfactory answer. Simply put, there doesn’t seem to be the upward pressure on teacher pay at the school level that would be expected if Arizona’s teacher shortage were as severe as depicted.
The answer isn’t to earmark more money for teacher pay, as the Legislature did and as Mesnard’s bill would do some more.
Proposition 301 illustrates the futility of that approach. Yet school Superintendent Diane Douglas wants to increase the tax and earmark even more of it for teacher salary increases, doubling down on futility.
Money is fungible. An earmark for A tends to free up money that otherwise would have been spent on A for B.
The surest way to boost teacher pay is to require schools to compete for students and funding.
Of the factors schools can control, teachers have the largest effect on student achievement and parental satisfaction. In a competitive education marketplace, they would have first claim on funding.
A competitive education marketplace consists of three components. First, parental choice about the schools students attend. Second, backpack funding so equal resources flow to the schools parents choose. And third, an accountability-through-testing regimen that documents differences in student achievement among schools, so parents can make informed choices.
Ironically, the teachers’ union, and I suspect most teachers, oppose all three elements of the educational marketplace that would place the greatest upward pressure on salaries for effective teachers.
Arizona does OK with school choice. But we’re still far from true backpack funding, and our accountabilitythrough-testing regimens have been jokes.
I’ve advocated an increase in consumption taxes to boost overall spending on the K-12 system. And that’s necessary for any real movement in teacher pay.
But that’s not sufficient. Only reforms that make skilled teaching the fulcrum of school success will maximize teacher compensation.