Tennessee Fails the Teacher Pay Test
State's teachers lag behind Southeast in compensation as teacher shortage persists
Tennessee loses to states like Alabama and Georgia and Kentucky and South Carolina. Yes, in football, but also in teacher pay.
Oh, and our teachers are paid less than those in North Carolina and Virginia, too.
A new report tells the story of school funding and teacher compensation across the country and in both investment in teachers and support for students, Tennessee scores a solid F.
Of course, Tennessee showing up at or near the bottom in the nation in terms of support for public schools is nothing new.
Back in 2021, I explored the dubious claims made by legislative leaders related to support for teachers.
So, the TN House GOP is all excited about spending $616 million plus over TEN years, while the state is sitting on a $3.1 billion surplus this year alone! That means we could spend $616 million in teacher salaries THIS YEAR and still have more than $2.4 billion LEFT to spend. Read that again. Republicans are bragging about taking an entire decade to allocate in total what is available THIS year and could be funded while still leaving $2.4 billion for other priorities.
Tennessee can afford to use state funds to make starting teacher pay $60,000 and raise pay for ALL teachers accordingly.
Our lawmakers and Gov. Lee just don’t want to.
While other public service professionals have received big pay bumps, teachers in Tennessee continue to lag behind teachers in neighboring states.
When states and local governments invest in teachers, the return is strong and almost immediate.
Turns out, paying teachers a professional wage attracts people to the profession:
In recent years, we generally would be lucky to have a single applicant for a position, fully qualified or otherwise. After announcing the salary schedule change, we had pools of qualified applicants to consider. It was a fun spring. Our administrators were having to have these rich conversations about best fit, really digging into things like, ‘Here’s a full table of highly qualified people; who is going to best fulfill the needs of our school? It’s a conversation that most districts don’t get to have right now.