Only pennies of new public-school dollars make it to teacher salaries
Teacher shortages have been a chief concern of public school leaders since the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020. According to an August 2023 surveyby the National Center for Education Statistics, 79 percent of public schools with at least one vacant teaching position reported difficulty filling slots for the 2023–24 school year.
The most commonly discussed solution to mitigating K–12 teacher vacancies is spending more on K–12 education so that teachers receive more competitive pay and the profession becomes more attractive to prospective hires. By this logic, the teacher shortage represents a failure of state legislatures to invest adequate dollars in education over the long run.
But for legislators hoping to improve teacher pay and attract more people to the profession, increasing education spending is surprisingly ineffective. Data published in Reason Foundation’s new study Public Education at a Crossroads indicates that states do a poor job of translating additional education investments into higher teacher salaries. Many states have lost ground on average teacher salaries over the past two decades despite spending more. Those states that do manage to raise teacher salaries largely do so only after investing exorbitant amounts in public education, with most of those dollars still being diverted to expenditures besides take-home pay for current teachers.
