Arkansas K-12 education finance series: Teacher pay before and after the 2023 LEARNS Act

This column is the fourth in a series examining Arkansas’s K-12 funding system and the state legislature’s biennial adequacy review process. The series aims to analyze how Arkansas got its current education funding system, how it works, and what components policymakers should improve to achieve a modernized education funding formula that is better for students and more amenable to education choice.

Teacher salary changes from the 2023 LEARNS Act

While Arkansas’s overall public school funding system has changed little in recent years, the Literacy, Empowerment, Accountability, Readiness, Networking, and Safety (LEARNS) Act of 2023 introduced many consequential changes in areas outside of the state funding formula. Notably, the legislation enacted a universal school choice program that was implemented in the 2023-2024 school year. The law increased the state’s minimum starting salary for teachers from $36,000 to $50,000 and required that all teachers receive at least a $2,000 raise. These raises were fully funded by $183 million in new state funds. 

While Arkansas is not alone in recently adopting across-the-board increases in teacher pay, the LEARNS Act raises are larger than what other states have pursued. Consequently, this prong of the LEARNS Act will have a substantial impact on the state’s school finance system moving forward. 

Teacher pay before LEARNS

Full-time teachers comprise half of all public school staff in Arkansas’s public education system. One of the adequacy review reports published by the Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research (BLR) in August highlights trends in Arkansas teacher salaries up to the 2022-2023 school year—the year immediately prior to the enactment of LEARNS. According to the report, the average teacher salary in Arkansas in 2023 was $54,803, ranking it in the lower middle of the pack compared to other southern states and contiguous states. 

Prior to LEARNS, the BLR report finds that there were substantial disparities across Arkansas school districts and open enrollment charter schools in average teacher pay. Average salaries were as high as $68,421 (Fayetteville) and as low as $43,895 (Bradford). The report also examined how average teacher salaries vary across the state based on student and district characteristics. In 2023, teacher salaries were about $6,100 higher per teacher in urban districts than in rural districts and about $4,200 higher for district schools in comparison with charter schools. Districts with higher shares of students in free and reduced-price lunch populations (a proxy measure for family income status) had modestly lower average teacher salaries, but districts with larger shares of minority students had modestly higher average teacher salaries. 

For decades, Arkansas has set a statewide minimum salary schedule that all school districts must abide by. This schedule enforced minimum salaries for teachers that move up in steps based on their years of experience and level of educational attainment. These state minimums are exemplified in Figure 1:

Figure 1: State Mandated Minimum Salary for Teaches with Zero Years of Experience, School Years 2021 thru 2023

Notably, Figure 1 illustrates that the statewide minimums in 2023—even for teachers with master’s degrees and 15 years of experience—were less than the new statewide $50,000 minimum implemented by LEARNS in 2024. To be sure, school districts are allowed to supplement that minimum with their own salary schedules that pay teachers more. In 2023, 140 out of 234 Arkansas school districts offered salary schedules above the statewide minimum. 

A working paper published in June by researchers from the University of Arkansas provides additional information on where district salary schedules were situated prior to the LEARNS Act enactment. They report that 55% of school districts had all salary schedule steps below $50,000 in 2023 and that another 36% of districts had some of their salary schedule steps below $50,000. This fact will be important to remember when the discussion turns to the first year of the LEARNS raises. 

As a side note, Arkansas has a Teacher Salary Equalization Fund that directs additional funds to school districts with average teacher salaries “below the statewide target average annual salary.”  Importantly, the state’s “target” average annual salary, which is not the same thing as the average annual salary, is not met by nearly all school districts. Consequently, the fund does almost nothing to equalize salary disparities between districts because nearly all districts receive it as a flat distribution of $185 per student. 

In 2023, the last year before the enactment of LEARNS, more than half of Arkansas teachers earned less than $50,000. These differences stemmed mostly from differences in funding levels (as detailed in part two of this series), teacher experience and educational attainment, and district-level salary schedules.

Teacher pay after LEARNS

Researchers from the University of Arkansas found that, after the first year of the enactment of the LEARNS teacher raises, results are mixed, and many effects will require more time to assess. All Arkansas teachers received at least a $2,000 raise under the legislation, and the average teacher received a $6,000 salary increase. Districts at or near the state minimum salary schedule in 2023—often rural and high-poverty—received the largest benefits from the new law. This should put them on a more even playing field to find talent moving forward, although it’s too early to detect changes in recruitment and retention. By directing more funds to lower-salary, lower-funded districts, the law appears to have targeted more funds to higher-need students and likely improved funding fairness in the short run. 

However, early pushback to LEARNS raises revolves around two key issues: (1) the compression of most district salary schedules and (2) the uncertainty around how future funding increases will be allocated. 

In short, the LEARNS Act caused a radical compression of traditional salary schedules. The 55% of districts with salary schedules entirely below the $50,000 mark—even for experienced, highly educated teachers—began paying all teachers the same salary regardless of seniority. The additional 36% of districts with only some of their schedule steps below $50,000 compressed those steps in a similar fashion and then doled out $2,000 raises to all teachers above that benchmark. This has frustrated veteran teachers in Arkansas who had to work years prior to LEARNS to approach a $50,000 salary while their newly minted peers are now getting paid the same. 

To be sure, moving away from traditional salary schedules was the intent of the LEARNS Act. The new law established a single statewide minimum salary, throwing out the minimum schedule steps. But now, most school districts in Arkansas have an unclear path forward because the state only provided the ongoing funds to achieve the new minimum for everyone and provide one-time raises. District leaders, whether they wish to re-implement seniority-based pay or pursue a performance-based salary scheme, will have to adjust their budgets and staffing profiles over time to do so. Those adjustments are more difficult, though certainly possible, without clarity on what future state increases in funding will look like. 

Discussion

Proponents of increasing teacher pay have much to like in the LEARNS Act raises. The law guaranteed raises for all teachers, and higher-need, hard-to-staff districts got more assistance. Those skeptical of the rigid salary schedules (like this author) used by most school districts nationwide also laud the state for taking a big step away from seniority-based pay since there’s limited evidence that teacher experience or educational attainment is linked with improved student outcomes. 

However, a major concern about the LEARNS Act is that it is, by definition, not a student-centered funding reform. Funds were not doled out based on student enrollment counts or student needs. The concerns of district leaders over how future funds will be distributed are well placed because the LEARNS Act raises didn’t follow a reliable formula based on student needs or district property wealth. Even if the LEARNS salary increases directed more funding to lower-funded and higher-need districts, distributing benefits based on teachers instead of student counts and student needs (e.g., poverty, special education, etc.) is unsustainable if the goal is to preserve per-student funding fairness. For many reasons, districts with lower salary schedules don’t always have the highest-need student populations, and higher-poverty school districts don’t always have lower-paid teachers. 

State legislators should move forward with a renewed focus on improving the fairness and student-centeredness of Arkansas’s school finance system. The next and final installment of this series will examine policy reform options that allocate dollars more fairly on sustainable, student-centered terms and that maximize the portability of funds so that most dollars can follow students when they exercise school choice.

Arkansas K-12 Education Finance Series

• A short history of school finance reform and look at 2024’s adequacy review process
• Adequacy review findings and recommendations so far
• How Arkansas schools are funded
• Teacher pay before and after the 2023 LEARNS Act
• How to improve the state’s school funding system 

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Source: https://reason.org/commentary/arkansas-k-12-education-finance-series-teacher-pay-before-and-after-the-2023-learns-act/