Heartland Institute analyst Timothy Benson argued against Governor DeSantis’s “sweeping” teacher salary proposal in this morning’s Miami Herald, saying that Florida’s teachers are “adequately compensated” compared to other Floridians and that the state’s teacher shortage is confined to a few fields – ESE, math and science. He closes by saying that “legislators should look for other, truly effective ways to improve school outcomes,” presumably ways that do not include attracting more strong individuals to the teaching profession.
I’m no economist (and neither is Mr. Benson), but it seems to me that the real test of whether a high enough price is being paid for a good (in this case, high quality teachers) is whether the demand for that good is being met. In Florida, the answer is that demand is not being met. There were 3,500 teacher vacancies in the state’s public schools at the beginning of the school year. And the shortage of teachers isn’t just affecting ESE, math and science classrooms. As Florida GOP Chair and State Senator Joe Gruters pointed out in a recent op-ed, while one out of nine physics and chemistry classes were being taught by an out-of-field teacher, the situation was even worse in English classes, in which one out of eight is being taught by an out-of-field educator. The numbers of individuals entering Florida’s pipelines for teaching high school math and science by taking the state’s certification exams in those subjects are declining sharply, but that is also true in English, social science and even elementary education. (See plots below)
I’ll also note that Mr. Benson tosses an insult at teachers of French and drama by saying that math and science are “harder to teach” than French and drama. As a physics professor at FSU and the winner of national awards for research and teaching, I will say this: Teaching any subject well, whether it’s French or drama or physics or algebra, is intense and difficult work. We may eventually find that we need to pay math teachers more than French teachers to provide adequate supplies of educators in both subjects. But that is a market issue (as an analyst at a conservative think tank should understand) and is completely separate from the difficulty of teaching those subjects well and the intrinsic value of the individuals teaching them.
While Mr. Benson complains about the size of the governor’s proposal, the leadership of the Florida Education Association and other leaders in the teaching community are complaining that the governor’s proposal isn’t large and sweeping enough. Unfortunately, the most likely outcome of the Legislature’s deliberations about teacher salary increases is that the present Best and Brightest pot – at $285 million less than half of the governor’s $600 million request – will be put into a teacher salary pot. Then the really hard work of figuring out how best to spend that limited pool of funds will begin. If it is spread evenly over all of the state’s 200,000 instructional staff members, the resulting raises of $1,400 per person will probably not increase the supply of teachers enough to meet the demand. Figuring out how to set priorities – and how to execute those priorities – will be a painful and vexing problem for the state’s K-12 leaders.
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