Improving Education -- A Proposed Solution to the LEARNS Salary Issue

It's July 3rd. Next month Arkansas educators will return to school the Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders' new LEARNS Act in place. The new law--a revolutionary overhaul of Arkansas's public education system--aims to guarantee access to a high quality education to every Arkansas student. Still, it is vehemently opposed by many Arkansas educators and the Arkansas Education Association (teacher's union.)

NOTE: I used the Vilonia School District salary schedules and the distribution of education and experience among Vilonia School District certified staff to build and evaluate these models. Though this post is not to advise or make suggestions to the Vilonia School District administration. I just happen to work at Vilonia, and I'm familiar with where this information is located and how to access it. These models would need tweaking for any other district to achieve similar goals to what I describe here. 

One of the biggest sources of LEARNS discontent I've heard from Arkansas educators deals with compensation of experienced Arkansas educators. Starting in August, many Arkansas teachers with 10, 20, or 30 years of experience in the classroom will earn the same salary as a first-year teacher joining their school, or barely more than that novice teacher. 

Talk to teachers and you'll likely hear other concerns with LEARNS, but this one is the most common when I talk to teachers about the Governor's new law. It's also a problem I thought I could come up with a way to solve. I've spent the last three weeks working on a project to do just that. You can read the full report that I created at the link below, or you can read on for a brief summary.

Improving Education -- A Proposed Solution to the LEARNS Salary Issue

Before you keep reading, know this. One superintendent I spoke with said he looked at raising all teachers in his district by the same amount the law mandated he raise the minimum. "It would bankrupt us the first year," he said. That said, there is likely no affordable solution to immediately and completely resolve this issue. My proposed solution immediately begins to resolve it, but takes several years to reach a point that most most educators will consider sufficient.

Here's a summary.

The Problem

Pre-LEARNS, a minimum salary schedule was written into Arkansas law. Many districts adopted salary schedules that compensated teachers much better than the minimum, but nowhere near the $50,000 minimum salary mandated by LEARNS. In fact, most districts' teachers didn't reach the $50,000 mark until many years into their careers, even those with graduate degrees. But...the mandated salary schedule included an annual step increase, that guaranteed every teacher a nominal raise every year. So a 5-year teacher was making at least 5 times the step increase more than a brand new teacher. 

Raising the minimum to $50,000 and raising every 2022-2023 teacher $2,000 left a lot of teachers with several years of experience at $50,000 or just a little more. I talked to one 32-year veteran teacher in a rural district who will be making $52,000 this year, while a 22-year-old brand new college graduate who's never had her own classroom will be making $50,000. Thirty years of experiences seems like it should be worth more than a mere $2,000.

LEARNS promises the state will fund the difference between last year's salary expense and this year's LEARNS-mandated salary cost. But districts cannot afford to increase all their teachers by the same amount their previously lowest paid teachers will get. So the problem...

How can we adapt the salary schedule to fairly compensate teachers for their experience?

Proposed Solution

My proposed solution is two-pronged. First, immediately try to put some space between experienced teachers and inexperienced teachers on the salary schedule. Second, look at ways to more fairly compensate experienced teachers over the long term. 

The first part is the toughest, and honestly, fails to come anywhere near the goal. Though it does address the problem immediately, it doesn't do so sufficiently. Whatever we propose, we must take into account the financial impact on the district. My solution has a minimal immediate impact on district finances.

I began with the premise that 44% of teachers leave the profession within 5 years. With that in mind, why should a district spend money it has budgeted for raises on teachers who will not remain in the classroom. I also considered the education bands in the typical district salary schedule, with the belief that more education should receive additional compensation as well. 

So my proposed model begins step increases at five years of experience for teachers with the equivalent of a terminal degree, and one additional year of experience for each lower rung on the education level ladder on the salary schedule. Again, one goal I had was to keep the district cost the same. Therefore, starting the step increases earlier meant a lower step increase than the district's current model. But it did raise more teachers' pay sooner in their careers.

The second part of my solution is to revise the way districts typically approach raises. Instead of raising the base pay, which is the most common approach to improving district salary schedules, I modeled taking the same (or close to the same) amount of money and increasing the annual step increase. This approach maintained the least experienced, less-educated teachers at the $50,000 level for the same amount of years, but increased the size of the annual step increase over the years, instead of increasing the base.

How Did It Turn Out?

To evaluate the models I created 30 years of salary schedules for three hypothetical teachers who will enter the profession in the 2023-2024 school year. I then tracked their salaries over their hypothetical 28-year careers. I also charted the difference in their annual salary and a new teacher starting at $50,000 for their 6th through 28th years of their career.

Truthfully, 28 years from now, $50,000 will be worth far less than it is today. So it's doubtful this model will stand for the next three decades. It will most likely be necessary to increase the base more than once over those 28 years. So, a hybrid of the increased base and increased step size might be necessary some years. 

Still, I believe this offers a reasonable approach to attack the salary issue that causes much disdain of LEARNS among educators. The 2023-2024 salary schedules are most likely set for every district in the state. But 2024-2025 is coming, and it might make LEARNS a lot more palatable for experienced educators to know their concerns are being addressed.

LEARNS is the law and a quality education for all Arkansas kids is a noble goal. To succeed, we will need Arkansas teachers to buy in. Adequately compensating experienced educators could go a long way toward securing that buy in.