Raising teacher pay is once again a hot topic in Jefferson City, and once again the ideas being floated to address the issue are seriously flawed.
This year’s proposals focus on raising the minimum salary that teachers can be paid. There are several bills in each legislative chamber (see links here, here, and here), but they all take a similar shape. They raise the minimum salary that districts can pay new teachers from $25,000 to $38,000 (some go higher), then raise the minimum higher over several years. To help school districts afford the increase, the bills create a state fund that districts can request reimbursement to pay 70% of the increased salaries. The legislature has already been appropriating this higher minimum salary for teachers via the budget for several years—these bills would enshrine this change into statute, but also increase salaries even more down the road.
As my colleagues have written previously, the discussion surrounding raising Missouri’s “minimum” teacher salary is somewhat misleading. School districts set teacher salaries, not the state— but the state does set a floor for pay that districts must remain above. You often hear people claim that Missouri has one of the lowest teachers’ pay “minimums” in the country, but that is not an accurate representation of how much teachers are actually being paid, as my colleague James Shuls has outlined. For example, the average teacher salary in the district I live in, Affton, is more than $62,000 per year.
My biggest concern is not with the idea of the state raising minimum teacher pay, but the way the proposals go about doing it, and the perverse incentives they would enshrine into state law. By offering to permanently subsidize teacher pay for some school districts, especially at a time when the state’s budgetary outlook is so uncertain, Missouri will begin sending state dollars to cover what have previously been almost entirely local decisions.
The primary way the state funds schools is through what’s called the foundation formula. Though the formula may not be perfect, it offers an equitable method to distribute state funds, adjusted by a variety of agreed-upon criteria. The proposals that our policymakers are now considering seek to create an outside-the-formula funding source for a specific purpose (minimum teacher salaries). The problem is that these funds would not be distributed in an equitable way. If enacted, these proposals will represent a significant redistribution of state funds to school districts whose voters have chosen not to raise their taxes sufficiently to pay their teachers more.
Since state fiscal year 2023 when Missouri began piloting this approach, it’s become clear that many school districts would jump at the chance of additional state funding. Governor Parson’s budget recommendation shows that approximately 65% of the state’s school districts have already taken advantage of the state salary grants. It’s not unrealistic to assume that if this program is made permanent, more districts will begin participating. Of course, it makes sense, because once the state begins offering subsidies for teacher salaries, why wouldn’t districts take advantage? Or, perhaps more importantly, why would districts ever choose to raise salaries with their own money if the state would pay for them instead?
None of this is to say that the way Missouri funds its schools is ideal, or that teachers shouldn’t be paid more. But whatever the general assembly decides to do, it’s important that policymakers think through the unintended consequences. Incentives matter—Missouri’s voters and school districts have demonstrated as much, and it’s time our policymakers started acting like it. There’s no getting around the fact that the proposal to raise minimum teacher pay, as currently drafted, is a bad idea for Missouri.
