Does More Money Matter to Teachers? It’s Not a Simple Yes or No Question

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As a candidate for president in 2020, Kamala Harris introduced a plan to raise teacher salaries by $13,500.

Why that specific dollar amount? Harris was thinking along economic lines, and she sold the policy as one that would erase the teacher wage gap, as documented over the years by the Economic Policy Institute. As of the most recent report, with data through 2022, the institute estimated that educators earn 26% less in weekly wages than other workers with similar academic credentials.

Never mind some of the flaws with the institute’s calculations, like the fact that it uses weekly wages and teachers don’t work the same number of weeks as other employees. Is the economic argument for raising teacher salaries a good one?

It’s not as iron-clad as you might think.

Consider a recent policy change in Arkansas. In 2023, the state raised the minimum teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000 and guaranteed raises of at least $2,000.

According to a preliminary analysis from researchers at the University of Arkansas, the average teacher saw a salary increase of 6.5%. This cost the state $183 million, and much of the money flowed to poor, rural parts of the state that previously offered the lowest pay.

What happened to teacher behavior? The researchers found decidedly mixed results. They found that the additional money reduced the rate at which teachers left the profession overall — but those who got bigger raises became more likely to leave. There were also no clear patterns by experience level and no statistically significant changes in movement toward places with teacher shortages, despite the large financial investment in those areas.

The researchers offered several potential explanations for the negative results. It’s possible the law, which was passed in March, took effect too late in the academic calendar to influence teacher behavior in the subsequent school year, and that the money will have a bigger impact going forward. Or perhaps the salary increases just weren’t large enough.

But maybe the Arkansas results shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, when the National Center for Education Statistics asked teachers their most important reason for leaving, only 9% said they wanted or needed a higher salary. Pay trailed retirement, other life reasons (such as personal health or caring for a loved one) and the pursuit of other career options (many of which were other roles within education).

In other words, the economic argument around the teacher pay gap has some holes. It also assumes  that teachers could close the financial gap if they left the classroom and pursued another job, but that’s not the choice most educators actually face.

In fact, two recent studies looked into this question and concluded that most former teachers don’t earn as much as they did while they were in the classroom. Some do, especially the most highly rated educators and those working in STEM subjects, so there’s an economic argument for paying more money to the best teachers to get them to stay, and to help fill particular shortage areas. But the majority of people who leave teaching end up doing worse, financially speaking.

On the flip side, people who enter teaching tend to see salary increases over whatever they were earning the year before — think of teaching assistants or substitutes moving into full-time positions, or the large number of people who return to the profession after some time away. For them, a full-time teaching job offers a big step up in pay.  

Salary is perhaps the easiest lever for policymakers to pull to influence teacher recruitment and retention decisions, but there are others. For example, educators are also looking for opportunities for professional advancement, autonomy, control over their work and the ability to balance their work and personal lives. A recent study out of Illinois found that teachers there continue to report problems with working conditions, defined in terms of classroom disruptions, student responsibility and safety; improving such non-financial aspects of the job could be another way to make teaching more attractive.

Ironically, the political and media attention focused on teacher wage gaps may also be contributing to a sense that teachers are paid less than they actually are. People tend to underestimate how much teachers actually earn, and that could discourage would-be educators from considering the profession in the first place. Simple, clear messages about the financial benefits of teaching may help recruit more people, as it did in the case of a recent experiment around tutors.

As a reminder, the most recent data shows that the average public school teacher earned $66,397, and those in California, Massachusetts and New York routinely made $90,000 or more.

There might be moral or political reasons to support raising salaries for all teachers, but in strictly economic terms, the strongest arguments revolve around raising pay for highly effective teachers in STEM subjects, and as an incentive to fill particular shortage areas.

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