By LAURA HAMMACK, guest columnist
In February of 2019, Governor Holcomb convened a special commission to study teacher compensation and make recommendations on how to realize the same. The Next Level Teacher Compensation Commission recently issued a comprehensive report with their conclusions titled, “A Roadmap for Improving Indiana Teacher Compensation.”
The report is dense, totaling 97 pages with endnotes. (I love endnotes.) It’s an impressive document that evidences an extraordinary amount of work achieved by the 13-member commission. What I like about this report is that it isn’t a report for a report’s sake. It calls to task nearly every component of government and community, including the citizen.
The commission divides their recommendations into two sections. One section includes specific recommendations for school corporations and one section includes specific recommendations for state government.
Some recommendations make sense, where I find others troubling. However, I sincerely appreciate that its focus is action-oriented and serves as a sincere call to action.
And while I personally believe the call to action is regrettably late, I appreciate the call has been made. So now it’s time to act.
Because of the density of the report, I intend to use this space to unpack the findings of the commission over my next few columns. The timeliness of the report is important, as we are headed into a budget session with the Indiana General Assembly after the first of the year. We expect this report will be referenced throughout the session and I expected our readers would appreciate a deeper understanding of its contents.
Should you be interested in accessing the report in its entirety, it can be found on the in.gov website, in.gov/gov/files/Teacher-Pay-Report-FINAL.pdf. All of the data and conclusions highlighted in this column are the work of the authors of the report. It is important to understand that this research and resulting conclusions are not my own.
The authors of the report do a fantastic job of analyzing why competitive teacher compensation matters. They evidence that Indiana teachers are underpaid when compared regionally and nationally. And they express sincere concern about the consequences that underpaying Indiana teachers has in three specific areas:
1. A decline in the popularity of entering the teaching profession. The report cites a 29 percent decline in the number of teacher preparation program completers in just five years. A number of data points evidence significant challenges in attracting qualified teachers to schools across Indiana.
2. Quality of instruction. The report evidences that increased teacher compensation attracts an increased number of high-quality applicants. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) evidences correlations between average teacher salaries and student proficiency. As teacher salaries increase, so does student performance.
3. Retention and attrition. There is strong evidence affirming that teacher turnover negatively impacts student achievement, while paying teachers more results in less teacher turnover. Regrettably, Indiana’s teacher attrition rate was 13 percent in 2018 as compared with the national rate of 8 percent. The report highlights that this problem is not Indiana’s alone. Nationally, two times the number of educators left the profession in 2019 as compared with 2009.
Indiana ranks 38th nationally out of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., for average starting teacher salary ($36,498) and average teacher salary ($51,119). Indiana teachers earn less than all of our neighboring states and are in the bottom third of the Midwest region. Following their review of data, the commission determined that an average teacher salary of $60,000 per year evidences competitive compensation for Hoosier teachers.
To illustrate the disconnect locally, when our teacher contract was ratified in November, we had 123 certified teachers employed in Brown County Schools. At that time, the average base teacher salary in Brown County Schools was $51,000.
My next column will highlight the recommendations offered to local school corporations to advance increased teacher compensation.
I appreciate the opportunity to share the findings of this report as we work to collectively respond to its calls for action.
Laura Hammack is superintendent of Brown County schools. She can be reached at 812-988-6601 or [email protected].
