JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Roughly 8,000 Missouri teachers make less than $35,000 a year, according to a report released by the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Blue Commission.
For months, the commission has been researching what can be done to combat the teacher shortage, and pay is an urgent priority.
On Tuesday, the Missouri State Board of Education accepted the handful of recommendations from the commission and soon will be asking the General Assembly to make immediate changes to help educator recruitment and retention.
“More pay for more work, which sounds like a simple concept but one we still need to work toward,” State Board of Education Vice President Carol Hallquist said during Tuesday’s meeting.
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It’s an expensive but necessary plan of attack. In a state that is suffering a teacher shortage crisis, causing some schools to pivot to four-day weeks. Under state statute, the minimum starting salary for teachers in Missouri is $25,000, that’s about $9,000 below the state’s average living wage.
“I don’t know what more evidence we need to suggest that we have a problem with resource deployment,” said State Board of Education member Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge. “If we attack the root cause in the structure and put earnest effort there, then we can see better outcomes overtime.”
The State Board of Education created a commission to study the shortage of teachers and how to keep them in the state. The Teacher Recruitment and Retention Blue Ribbon Commission is made up of 22 members from the business community, lawmakers and educators who were appointed in the spring by the board. After four months of research, the commission has finished its work.
“The commission recommends that the legislature amends the Missouri statute to raise minimum starting teacher salary to at least $38,000 annually,” the Blue Ribbon Commission chairman Mark Walker told the board Tuesday. “Acknowledging that there are many factors that impact retention and recruitment, the commission believes is to increase the starting salary.”
In July, the governor approved nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to increase minimum teacher pay from $25,000 to $38,000. Under the legislation, the state pays for 70% while the rest is on the district, which means schools have to opt into the program, but the funding from the state is only for one year. DESE Commissioner Margie Vandeven previously said that heading into this year, roughly 65% of districts are participating. The commission’s recommendation is to keep it permanent. In total, the commission offered nine recommendations to the board, separated into three categories: immediate, short-term, and long-term. At least half addressed teacher pay.
Immediate priorities:
- Increasing starting teacher pay to $38,000 and have an annual review from the Joint Committee on Education to ensure teacher salaries remain competitive
- Fund the Career Ladder Program which rewards teachers for extracurricular activities
- Establish sustainable funding for Grow Your Own programs, geared towards paraprofessionals, adults or high school students who want to become a teacher
- Encourage districts to implement team-based teaching models
Short-term priorities:
- Establish a fund to help local school districts pay for the increased minimum starting salary and to increase teacher pay overall
- Increase support for educator mental health
- Fully fund the scholarship program that offers tuition assistance to incoming teachers or to educators continuing their education
Long-term priorities:
- Offer salary supplements for filling high-need positions
- Fund salary supplements for teachers with National Board Certification
The commission also recommends that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) expand the annual teacher recruitment and retention report to include salary data for each local school district, teacher turnover broken down by student achievement and by race, a comparison of Missouri’s starting and average salaries with surrounding states, and openings that have been posted over the past year and the number of applications each opening received.
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“In preparing this report, we found that teachers are vital not just for student achievement but to the success of the state overall,” said Walker, CEO of TransLand, a trucking company near Springfield. “The strength of Missouri’s teacher workforce has a direct impact on the strength of Missouri’s economic development and quality of life.”
Missouri currently has the lowest starting teacher wage in the country with an average of $32,970. According to the National Education Association, the national average starting wage for educators is $41,163. The commission’s report compares teachers who make less than $35,000 to other wage earners like animal caretakers who make an average of $28,000 a year, bartenders who make around $29,000 and housekeepers who average $30,000.
“We cannot fall behind again like we have and play catch up, it’s just not healthy,” Walker said. “The biggest surprise perhaps for business people serving on the Blue Ribbon Commission is the lack of flexibility you all [the board] has for meeting high-need positions, it’s unbelievable inappropriate in today’s highly competitive market.”
Increasing the minimum starting teacher salary comes with a hefty price tag. According to the report, about 8,000 teachers make below $38,000. In order to increase their wages, it’s estimated to cost $29.5 million which does not address the salary schedule compression issues that might be included.
The cost to expand the Career Ladder Program, which rewards teachers for extra work like extracurricular activities or tutoring is projected to cost $56.2 million. The state statue has also been modified to lower the years of service needed to particpate in the program from five years to two which could increase the cost by $20,000.
For now, the state does not have a cost for increasing mental health resources for educators. The commission recommends additional paid wellness days which would require more substitute teachers.
Tuition assistance for roughly 100 educators would cost the state about $5.8 million, based on the average cost of tuition for higher education in Missouri for the 2020-2021 school year which was $14,564.
“The actual implementation of that, the funding piece, that iskind of going to be on your plate,” Walker told the board when asked when these recommendations will go into place and be funded. “You all get to decide the timing, utimately and what will work legislatively and which year.”
According to researchers at the Missouri State University College of Education, 141 districts in 2022 will have four-day school weeks, an all-time high.
Back in June, the State Board of Education voted to expand testing scores in hopes of getting more teachers certified. By tweaking the state’s qualifying score, more than 500 teachers could be added to the workforce.
According to DESE, roughly 550 teachers miss the qualifying score on the certification exam anywhere between one to four questions. Those candidates have already completed their accredited program but didn’t score high enough on the exam.
Back in April, the board approved to expand the test scores for elementary certification exams by a -2 standard error of measurement (SEM) after a new assessment was implemented in August and enough educators weren’t scoring high enough.
In June, the board agreed to change the qualifying score to -1 SEM starting immediately. This means someone that missing a handful of questions would be certified.
Teachers aren’t the only ones leaving the education field. During the 2022–2023 school year, the state faced one of the largest numbers of openings for superintendents in recent history. Of the state’s 518 school districts, 104 of them spent the summer searching for superintendents. More than 53% of those openings are due to retirements from the last school year.
According to the Missouri Association of School Administrators (MASA), 56 superintendents retired this past school year, that number is up from 43 in 2021, 41 in 2020, and 36 in 2019. Compared to years past, in 2019 there were 76 superintendent openings going into the school year. By 2020, when most districts finished the school year virtually, that number increased to 86 but decreased back down to 83 in 2021.
Of the 104 superintendent openings, all have been filled, but some with interims.
To view the map made by Jon Turner at Missouri State University showing the districts that are implementing a four-day week for the 2022-2023 school year, click here.
The Blue Ribbon Commission and the State Board of Education will host eight town halls throughout the state over the next month to talk about the report and get feedback from the community and school districts. All meetings start at 6 p.m.
- Knob Noster Middle School Cafeteria – Oct. 24
- Dix Road Education Center, Jefferson City – Oct. 25
- Maplewood Richmond Heights High School Auditorium – Nov. 7
- Osage Trail Middle School Cafeteria, Fort Osage – Nov. 9
- Gary Dickinson Performing Arts Center, Chillicothe – Nov. 10
- Parkway Welcome Center, Parkway – Nov. 15
- Nixa Junior High – Nov. 16
- Kay Porter Theatre, Poplar Bluff – Nov. 17
Click here to see the commission’s full report.