See Where Teachers Got Pay Raises This Year
Protests across the country swayed governors to push for salary bumps
More than a year after teachers across the country began walking out of their classrooms en masse to demand higher salaries, at least 15 states have given their teachers a raise.
And lawmakers in several more states are putting the final touches on plans to raise teacher salaries, according to an Education Week analysis.
Earlier this year, Education Week counted 22 governors who proposed raising teacher pay in their State of the State addresses. The proposals ranged from Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s ambitious plan to give teachers a 20 percent raise by 2020 to Delaware Gov. John Carney’s proposal of a 2 percent raise. Other governors, such as in Idaho and Pennsylvania, have proposed increasing their state’s minimum pay for teachers.
Now that the legislative sessions are largely over, most governors have seen their plans fully or partially realized. But there have been some snafus: For instance, because of a computer glitch, Mississippi Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law a budget that didn’t include enough money for the $1,500 raises the state promised its teachers this fall.
And the new money approved by governors in many cases now is negotiable with local unions. Already, teachers in Fargo, N.D., and Brevard, Fla., are at an impasse with their administrators over who will get raises this year and how much those raises will be.
For their part, teachers have mostly welcomed the raises, but some have said the increases don’t go far enough, especially after what they see as years of legislative inaction.
“It’s a great start, but they’re going to have to continue to come up with more in the next several years,” Lisa Ellis, a high school journalism teacher in Blythewood, S.C., and the founder of the grassroots teachers’ group, SCforED, said of the state’s plan to raise teacher pay. “Teachers are now awake and watching.”
Here’s what you need to know about each state’s plan (as of June 17) to raise teacher pay. (The average teacher salary for each state reflects the National Education Association’s estimate for the 2018-19 school year, which would not include these raises.)
Click a state in the dropdown to jump to that section:
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