Bay City Education Association

By Julie Mack | Kalamazoo Gazette
October 12, 2009, 11:00PM
Last week, I blogged about a Mackinac Center report that suggested Michigan schools could solve their budget problems by pulling Michigan teacher salaries in line with the national average. I questioned the numbers on that report, which launched an online debate about the trends in Michigan teacher pay. (Scroll down to see the original item.)

My take on the data is this: While Michigan teachers continue to rank above the national average, they are not longer among the best-paid on the nation and that's basically because seven years of anemic state funding have resulted in anemic teacher pay raises. In fact, Michigan teachers rank last in the nation this decade among the 50 states in salary growth. Moreover, when adjusted for inflation, the average Michigan teacher earned 7.2 percent less in 2006-07 than in 1999-2000.

One reader suggested that sluggish growth is a result of a high rate of teacher retirements. I bounced this theory off Portage school officials. Nope, they said -- it really is about the pay raises. Portage teachers got a 7-percent pay raise in 2001-02, when their per-student foundation grant increased from $6,000 to $6,500. But since then, their raises have lagged inflation -- the biggest hikes in base pay occurred in 2006-07 and 2008-09 when they got 2 percent.

As for retirements, both Portage and Kalamazoo officials have said the economic benefit of retirements (and filling those vacancies with younger, less expensive teachers) is typically offset by step increases, or the automatic raises that teachers as they move up the experience ladder, so there's no net decrease in the payroll. In fact, with the economy tanking, many school employees have put off retirement, creating an unexpected cost for school districts.