Bigger Salaries Aren’t Enough to Solve the US Education Crisis

With public schools across the US reporting difficulty in hiring and retaining teachers, progressives in Congress have proposed a solution: a standard minimum salary for educators nationwide. It’s difficult to think of a worse way to address the problem.

By nearly any measure, the US faces a worsening educational crisis. The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show alarming drops in student proficiency since the start of the pandemic. Reading scores for 13-year-olds are at their lowest since 2004; math scores are the worst they’ve been in more than three decades. The gap between successful and struggling students has widened. Other studies have shown similar failures across age groups, regions and subject areas.

Against this backdrop, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, among others, have sponsored legislation to give all public-school teachers at least $60,000 in base pay, regardless of ability or location. This would be achieved through a mix of incentives and new regulations imposed on states and school districts. Meeting the goal would cost taxpayers $450 billion over the next decade.

Such expenditure might be justified if teachers were systematically underpaid, as their unions and political allies assert — but they’re not. Their average pay is $65,090, more than 10% higher than the national average for all occupations. Teachers’ salaries are above the statewide average in all but six states; in some places, including New York, their pay outpaces the average by more than 20%. That’s not including the generous retirement benefits and months of summer vacation every year.

Supporters of a minimum salary point out that entry-level teachers make only $43,000 on average — and that raising the wage floor would attract more people to the profession and combat perceived shortages. To an extent, they have a point. Some poor and rural schools are struggling to recruit new talent, and might benefit from offering signing bonuses or other targeted funding. Higher wages likewise make sense in higher-cost cities.

But there’s little evidence that public schools nationwide lack adequate staffing. If anything, the system has a surplus: Since 2011, the number of teachers has risen by more than 10%, even as public-school enrollment has declined and student performance has worsened. That’s not a scenario that calls for an across-the-board raise.

Although the benefits of a national minimum wage are dubious, the drawbacks are plain. Such a plan would drive up costs for school districts, consume huge amounts of public resources and leave taxpayers footing the bill, while doing little or nothing to improve student performance. In all likelihood, this splurge would come at the expense of more effective interventions — such as intensive tutoring and summer-school programs— to combat pandemic-related learning loss.

Expanding the ranks of skilled, motivated teachers is crucial to helping US students recover lost ground. But rather than unilaterally raising salaries — regardless of a teacher’s talent or ambition — policymakers should focus on rewarding the best.

States should encourage districts to boost pay for teachers who raise test scores and offer bonuses to those who pursue credentials in high-need subject areas. Schools should identify outstanding teachers and offer them incentives to mentor younger colleagues and work with failing students. In districts across 30 states that have instituted performance-based pay, students have gained an extra three weeks’ worth of learning on average. In Dallas, which has one of the country’s most comprehensive merit-pay systems, compensation is based on student achievement as well as classroom observations. Over the past decade, the program has allowed some teachers to earn much higher salaries, while improving retention rates, boosting student achievement, and reducing the number of failing schools.

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that America’s future depends on the quality of its teachers. That’s all the more reason to recognize the best ones, and pay them what they’re worth.