Raising teacher and staff pay by 50 percent over seven years is "a big and bold idea," says the president of the California Federation of Teachers. A bill setting the pay-raise target, but not guaranteeing funding, has passed out of the Assembly Education Committee, reports John Woolfolk and Elissa Miolene of Bay Area News Group.
The pay increases wouldn't be limited to teachers with hard-to-find skills, such as special education, math or physics. Support staff, including bus drivers, cafeteria workers and custodians would be included.
Pay varies in California, but the average public K-12 teacher salary is $87,275 Woolfolk and Miolene report, third-highest in the U.S., behind New York’s $92,222 and Massachusetts’ $88,903. "Both those states boasted better 8th grade math and reading scores in 2022 than California, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress," they add.
Scores also are higher in Florida, where the average public school teacher earns $51,230. Texas, where average pay is $58,887, "had better 8th grade math scores than California last year, though reading scores were lower."
California's teacher shortage is easing, reports EdSource. The number of new teachers earning credentials increased by 35 percent from 2017 to 2021, according to the Learning Policy Institute.
It should be noted that the teacher pay in the charts are outdated. It's the 2021-22 school year. Most teachers have received an estimated 6% pay increase in the last year. On $90,000 annual wage, that's an extra $5,400 pay. Moreover, probably most districts already have pay increases scheduled in the next 3 years. LA Unified has a 21% pay increase scheduled in the coming 3 years. Sooo, is this state-mandated 50% increase on TOP of these other pay increases? Given the awesome power of the CA teacher unions, I suspect it IS on top of the other pay increases. Finally, consider this: Teachers get AUTOMATIC pay increases based on their time on the job (NOT their job performance). So wh…
And they'd like to go to a 4 day work week with professional development/happy hour on Wednesdays.
The first two paragraphs are from a teacher at Oakland Unified. Smarter Balanced Test results for that district show less than 1 in 4 Hispanic students reading at grade level, and less than 1 in 5 black students. In math, only 14.5% of Hispanics are at grade level, and 10.6% of blacks. If you add in Asian and White kids, the numbers aren't much better, overall 35.3% can read adequately, and 25.7% can do math adequately.
Other districts do worse. Of the ones listed on their salary chart, Ravenswood (San Mateo county: South of San Fran, West of San Jose, average salary $82,473) is the worst: Reading: 12.6% overall, 10.4% Hispanic, and 12.5% Black. In math, it's much worse. Essentially…
We Californians are already getting a terrible return on our forced investment in the state school system, and these raises are unmerited; instead, we should constitutionally devolve educational governance away from the corrupt crazies in Sacramento, towards regional municipalities and other local education agencies, whose staffing models should compete to attract physmath instructors and their peers, while bus custodians make what they can in the counties that require them.
Even if this passed and was signed into law today, it would take a couple years to implement. I would not benefit from this, as I'm not staying a single day past my retirement in 4 years. I'm *done* with this so-called profession.