"So let’s speak the truth: America’s teachers are drastically underpaid and they deserve a raise. That’s exactly what Kamala Harris intends to give them as President. We’ll make the largest investment in teachers in American history and provide the average teacher a $13,500 raise, entirely closing the teacher pay gap."
https://kamalaharris.org/teachers/ for those who want to read the rest of the statement including the plan.
Again, I state that someone is running for the wrong office. The POTUS has no direct control over local school systems and thus cannot follow through on a promised raise like this. The plan as stated relies on sending money to states with significant strings attached to do it Kamala's way. No mention is made of what happens when states decide the cost of dealing with the strings is more trouble than it is worth, as some states did with expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. No mention is made about how to deal with the looming pension crisis for teachers in many states:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmauldin/2019/05/20/the-coming-pension-crisis-is-so-big-that-its-a-problem-for-everyone . No mention is made of previous presidential efforts to affect K-12 change like Obama's Race to the Top (
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/education/k-12/race-to-the-top).
No mention is made of what happens when it turns out the problem wasn't just being underpaid. For example, many of the K-12 teachers who went on strike cited lack of support staff, terrible facilities, lack of supplies, and a growing bureaucratic burden for doing substantial weekly tasks that are unrelated to direct classroom instruction.
https://www.epi.org/publication/school-climate-challenges-affect-teachers-morale-more-so-in-high-poverty-schools-the-fourth-report-in-the-perfect-storm-in-the-teacher-labor-market-series/ puts some numbers on high-poverty schools related to teaching conditions: "In this paper, we look at the shares of teachers who face barriers that impede teaching (such as student poverty and poor student health), threats to their safety, a lack of voice and influence over school policy decisions, and a lack of autonomy in the classroom" (ibid). A disturbing pattern in the data is how little gap there is between low-poverty schools and high-poverty schools in some areas reflecting many teachers being dissatisfied with teaching conditions even at low-poverty schools.
No mention is made of the shortage by specialty since not all fields are experiencing shortages the same way. The American Physical Society did a study related to the teacher shortage in certain STEM subjects and found that teaching conditions were a huge concern for students who didn't opt into teacher education programs in their area of STEM (
https://www.aps.org/newsroom/pressreleases/stemeducation.cfm for the press release and
https://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/upload/POPASTEMReport.pdf).
One caveat in the APS survey is the bias is probably towards propensity to teach based on how the samples were selected. Even then, "The main concern about teaching is the worry of dealing with disrespectful, uncontrollable, or uninterested students. This concern showed up four times as often as the next-largest concern, which was low pay. Nearly tied with low pay were dislike for working with kids, and worries about lack of control over curriculum" (ibid, p. 11).
As for salary itself related to STEM teachers: "Lower salary is only one of the reasons that supplying qualified teachers for non-metropolitan areas poses special challenges. STEM teachers in rural areas can be responsible for teaching many different subjects, and find themselves a long distance from any professional support networks" (ibid, p. 12)
and
"Nevertheless, it is striking that students consistently underestimate what teachers actually earn, and when asked what they would want to earn as teachers, students indicate a desired salary very close to the current actual salary. Only in the case of computer science do students express an interest in higher salaries than the market is currently providing"(ibid, p. 15). For those who didn't go read the report, the salaries being discussed are in the mid-50k to mid-60k dollars, still lower than the salaries for people using their degrees outside of academia in these fields (ibid, Figure 5 on p. 13) by perhaps as much as $25k. This are averages that include mid-career, not starting salaries.
Again, focusing on what people think about the realties of the teaching job:"While non-teachers overwhelmingly singled out worries about uninterested, misbehaving students, this problem was not at the top of the list of actual teachers. The teachers were more concerned about hostile or nonresponsive school administration and excessive non-teaching activities" (ibid, p. 20).
So, yes, higher teacher pay in some locations may help with some recruitment and retention, but pay alone is not the overwhelming driver for teacher shortages.
