Dear Friends,
Misunderstandings About Teacher Compensation
In this revealing synthesis of research about teachers’ compensation, Evie Bald (July 31, 2025), shows how cash compensation to teachers fails to understand what actual compensation is from the employees’ point of view. For example, while a district may announce a 10% raise in teacher salaries, this is accompanied by state-mandated increases in employee contributions to retirement plans and medical insurance. These additional costs can transform what appeared to be a raise into a reduction in take-home pay. This challenge will be especially acute in school systems that used short-term COVID funds to provide teachers additional compensation without considering the long-term budget implications as the COVID funds expire. Blad explains that in national surveys of teachers, the clear response is that the districts should cut other programs before they reduce teacher compensation.
How do you think we could reconcile these challenges? First, make the case to governing boards and legislators that education, including teacher salaries, is an investment, not merely an expense. Here is a short guideline to make that case: https://www.creativeleadership.net/blog/return-on-investmentnbsp-how-schools-can-support-investments-in-professional-learning. Second, place the trade-offs in context. Unlike the federal government, neither states nor school districts can engage in deficit spending. In the face of fixed or declining revenues, school leaders must choose between maintaining higher compensation or increasing class sizes. Many districts have already reduced the size of central office staff and cut other expenses. There is not much fat left to cut, and leaders would be wise to include the entire community, including parents and teachers, in discussing how to deal with inevitable trade-offs. Third, critically evaluate legacy programs. Here we must let the data speak. In some systems, after-school and summer school programs may be effective, but in others, as Johns Hopkins research has reported, they are expensive and ineffective. The students who most need after-school and summer school programs do not come, as those students have jobs and family responsibilities. The most effective student academic support programs happen during the school day. In addition, there are curriculum units initiated years or decades ago that are no longer necessary. I know a principal who every year conducts a “dumpster day” in which irrelevant and useless binders, word searches, and other materials are placed in the dumpster and, as Marie Kondo would suggest, thank them for their service but send them into oblivion.
As I have argued elsewhere, money is not enough to restore the teaching profession. Teachers want respect, professional collaborations, and advanced learning. We won’t solve the teacher shortage with money alone. But without money, we are selecting teachers to take on crushing student debt for very little compensation.
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