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Appreciate teachers? Pay them better!

Posted on 05/11/23 by Tanisha Pruitt, PhD (she/her) in Revenue & Budget

Every day educators prepare lesson plans, gather resources, build relationships with and nurture Ohio’s kids, so our collective future is brighter and better than the present. But coming out of the pandemic and because of continuing attacks on educators from the statehouse, teachers across Ohio are exhausted, mentally, physically, and emotionally. Due to widespread staff shortages, they are doing more with less, acting as counselors, nurses, and support for their students.[1] They continue to grapple with the effects of virtual teaching and declining mental health. Now more than ever our educators are underpaid and burned out — and they need support.

In Ohio and across the nation COVID-19 exacerbated a long festering problem for public school districts: Educators have been leaving the profession in record numbers. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that nationally, school districts reported a steady increase of teaching vacancies between the end of the Great Recession and 2019. Between 2015 and 2019, the average vacancy rate increased by 60% to a monthly average of 1.7%. In February 2022, the average vacancy rate hit 3.6%.[2] Meanwhile, according to the National Education Association, since 2017, jobs have been opening more quickly than districts have been able to hire.[3]

Ohio Education Association (OEA) President Scott DiMauro stated last September that there were 17,000 fewer people working in public education in Ohio compared to before the pandemic. He attributes most of the decline to low pay, poor working conditions, and other economic factors.[4] EPI contends that the shortage is not due to a lack of educators in the workforce, but a shortage of qualified teachers willing to work at current wages and under current working conditions. Ohio teachers earn about 14% less than other workers with similar education.[5] This combination of low pay and high stress has, in recent decades, made teaching a much less attractive profession than alternatives available to workers with college degrees.[6]

To fix Ohio’s school staffing crisis, we need to recruit a lot of new teachers. Ohio is far from best place to get into the profession. According to a report published last year by the Learning Policy Institute, Ohio ranked near the bottom (40th in the nation) for teacher’s starting salaries.[7] Ohio’s average starting salary for teachers — $37,569 — was well below the national average of $41,163. Ohio falls significantly behind the top five states with the highest teacher salaries for teachers in the best-paying states, as illustrated in Figure 1.[8]

Figure 1

Policy Matters recognizes our educators as the foundation of our schools, and we believe they deserve the resources and support that they need to be excellent educators. In the proposed House budget, lawmakers increased the base minimum teacher salary from $30,000 to $40,000.[9] This would move Ohio closer to the national average but isn’t competitive with the best states for new educators.

This is a step in the right direction as it will move Ohio closer to the national average, but we will still lag behind and it is not enough to move Ohio towards the top of the rankings and recruit the many new teachers needed to fix Ohio’s school staffing crisis and make Ohio the best state for educators. As lawmakers develop the next budget, they should increase base teacher salaries to a minimum $50,000 as recommended by OEA.[10] Increasing the base pay across the board will help reduce pay disparities across race and district lines: Last school year, white educators in Ohio were on average paid more than Black and brown educators,[11] and teachers in suburban districts were on average paid more than their colleagues in urban and rural districts.[12]

Lawmakers must use the resources that the state has now to fully fund the Fair School Funding Plan (FSFP), so schools can provide supplies and other resources for their students, rather than expecting teachers to pay for them out of their own pockets — which happens all too often today. Fully funding the FSFP can also lead to even greater parity and support for teacher pay and will provide the ability to hire more support staff such as nurses and counselors, so teachers can focus on teaching.

The school staff shortage harms students, teachers, and public education, limiting our ability to equitably provide high-quality education to all students.[13] Everyone can agree that kids need educators in their classrooms and educators deserve to be paid what they are worth. Schools become better when we have a strong and stable educator workforce. Ohio lawmakers can use the state budget to address the educator workforce decline, give students what they need to succeed and make Ohio truly the best state to educate a child.