Where’d that teacher salary information come from?

In his State of the Commonwealth speech on January 4, 2023, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear covered a lot of ground; but much of the successes claimed, as Jim Waters’ syndicated column points out, was actually ground plowed by members of the legislature.

But, one area, at least, was all the governor’s. Towards the end of his presentation (transcript online here), Beshear claimed that, “Just over the last year, Kentucky dropped from 42nd to 44th in teacher pay.”

Really?

One of the most frequently cited sources for comparative teacher pay across the states is found in annual reports from the teachers’ own national organization, the National Education Association (NEA). The latest edition is titled “Rankings of the States 2021 and Estimates of School Statistics 2022.” This NEA report shows in Table B-6, which covers “Average Salaries of Public School Teachers,” that Kentucky’s average teacher salary of $54,139 in the 2020-21 school year ranked 36th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia schools. This is presented as a hard ranking, not an estimate

Table E-6 in the same report shows the NEA’s estimated average salaries of public school teachers for the more recent 2021-22 school year. I ranked the salaries shown in this table and found that Kentucky’s salary of $54,574 still ranked 37th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia schools in the NEA’s 2022 estimates.

That’s the latest data available. Looking backwards, the NEA’s Rankings of the States 2020 and Estimates of School Statistics 2021 in Table B-6 shows that in the 2019-20 school year, Kentucky’s average public school teacher salary of $53,907 ranked 36th, as well.

That’s what the national headquarters for the dominant teachers’ union in Kentucky says.

By the way, if you’re uncomfortable with union data, you should know that the US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics clearly has enough confidence in the NEA’s teacher salary figures that some of the NEA’s data is republished in the annual releases of the department’s Digest of Education Statistics. The most recent example is found in the 2021 digest, which covers 2020-21 and earlier teacher salary information in “Table 211.60. Estimated average annual salary of teachers in public elementary and secondary schools, by state: Selected years, 1969-70 through 2020-21.” The source of the digest’s data is clearly identified at the bottom of the table as the NEA.

So, even the US government finds reasonable credibility in the NEA’s teacher salary figures. The government is just a year or so behind the NEA in publishing the information.

In any event, the latest salary figures from both the NEA and Digest of Education Statistics don’t show Kentucky’s teacher salaries ranking as low as the governor claimed.

There is, however, another category of statistics where Kentucky does rank down in the low 40’s range. That’s in the latest listing I was able to find for per capita personal income for the states from the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. Kentucky’s per capita personal income of $51,266 in 2021 ranked way down in 46th place among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Here’s a nice summary of the information above:

Note that Kentucky’s teachers in 2021 were getting paid nearly $3,000 more than the state’s average citizen made.

So, Kentucky’s taxpayers are already paying teachers at a rate higher than those taxpayers’ personal incomes might indicate they can afford.

Legislators need to keep this in mind as they contemplate permanent, long-term expenditures hikes such as teacher salaries because the current, rosy budget figures are being boosted enormously by temporary money from pandemic recovery legislation. However, this situation isn’t going to last forever. After the temporary money is gone, Kentucky’s taxpayers will be left funding the whole tab for whatever the legislature decides to do.