Kamala Harris’ Big Plan for Teacher Pay Is Promising—But It’d Require a Major Change for How the Feds Handle Education
The 2020 presidential candidate has a plan to close the pay gap for educators.
California Sen. Kamala Harris wants to see teachers across the country get a massive pay bump, and she’d have the federal government take on an unprecedentedly large role in making that happen. Earlier this week, Harris, who is running for the 2020 Democratic nomination, proposed an ambitious plan that would target the growing pay gap between teachers and other professions, aiming to give educators a $13,500 pay increase on average.
In an op-ed in the Washington Post introducing the plan, Harris focused on recent teachers strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and California, noting that the demonstrations “reflect our national failure to value educators and pay them what they deserve.” Harris’ proposal represents one of the most ambitious plans toward investment in education by a presidential candidate. In a statement, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation’s largest teachers unions, praised the plan as “one of the most thoughtful initiatives we’ve seen in years” and encouraged other 2020 candidates to follow Harris’ lead in offer solutions.
Though specific in its intent, it’s hard to know how, exactly, the sweeping investment would play out on the ground.
A recent study from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found an 11 percent pay gap between teachers and their fellow college graduates. Under Harris’ plan, the goal is to completely erase that difference by the end of her first term in office if she wins the 2020 election. The federal government would invest $315 billion over the course of a decade in an effort to raise the average salary by 23 percent. The feds would contribute part of the initial investment and then, through matching funds, incentivize states to close the rest of the gap: For every $1 a state spends on boosting teacher salaries, the feds would chip in $3 until the pay gap in that state is closed. Though the average teacher currently makes $60,483, the average pay varies widely from state to state, as does the wage gap.
Dan Goldhaber, a professor at the University of Washington and director of its Center for Education Data & Research, applauded Harris’ proposal but questions whether a 23 percent pay increase across the board could realistically happen. Harris’ proposal, he noted, also represents a more “micromanagement role from the federal side” than usual. In 2016, the federal government spent about 8 percent of total K-12 funding, or $56 billion, covering Title I, special education spending, and other grants to states and school districts. Back in 2009, in response to the recession, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and injected$100 billion to help state budget shortfalls and prevent teacher layoffs. While the stimulus attempted to blunt the effects of the recession, Harris’ $315 billion plan would offer a targeted federal investment toward an issue CONTINUE READING: Kamala Harris’ Big Plan for Teacher Pay Is Promising—But It’d Require a Major Change for How the Feds Handle Education – Mother Jones