Teacher pay grew over the last two school years. However, the average $2,000 raise fell far below teachers’ desired increase of $16,000, according to a recently released survey.
Addressing this discrepancy is key to easing the teacher shortages many K12 leaders now confront. “Teachers who received larger pay increases said they were less likely to intend to leave the profession,” asserts Elizabeth D. Steiner, the lead author of the new RAND Corporation report on educator compensation.
Two-thirds of teachers are trying to close the salary increase gap by taking on extra school responsibilities, such as coaching a sport or serving as a department chair. But those earnings are small, around 4% of teachers’ base pay, the survey found.
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Also, about 25% of teachers surveyed said they weren’t paid for additional work, with Black teachers more likely to lodge this complaint about teacher pay, the survey noted.
Teachers’ benefits packages make up a larger share of their compensation packages compared to similar professionals. However, other working adults are more likely to receive benefits such as paid personal time off, paid parental leave and tuition reimbursement. For instance, only one-third of teachers said they are offered paid parental leave, compared to about half of similar professionals.
That may be one reason teachers are less satisfied with their benefits packages than their workforce peers. Less than half of teachers who have paid parental leave find the benefit adequate compared to nearly 80% of similar working adults. Closing this gap could also help K12 leaders retain more teachers, the report contends.
“Offering a broader set of benefits and improving the quality of those benefits could improve teachers’ perceptions of their pay and improve retention,” says Steiner. “We found teachers who had better perceptions of their benefits also had better perceptions of their pay.”
