KERA short-changed Kentucky’s teachers – but not their union!

We promised that our “KERA @ 20” reports would be living documents with updates and expansion coming in the KERA Portal where you can access everything from one page.

One of those recent updates is titled “Teachers Didn’t Get a Fair Share of Kentucky’s Education Funding Increase,” and you can access it by clicking on this title in the “See Also” section at the bottom of the KERA Portal.

Here are some facts:

Between the 1989-90 and 2008-09 school terms, total expenditures in Kentucky’s school districts rose by 54.9 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars, but the average Kentucky teacher’s salary only rose 12.6 percent in real dollars.


Where did the money go?

I know where some of it went. Non-teacher staffing in our schools rose by 59.4 percent between the Fall of 1989 and the Fall of 2007, while the number of Kentucky classroom teachers only increased by 21.8 percent (Sorry, I don’t have more current figures right now).


So, teachers in Kentucky didn’t fare that well under KERA. But, I suspect the unions did better. A notable proportion of the non-classroom teacher positions are in areas like curriculum specialists, assessment coordinators, and other skills that often are unionized positions. All of those extra union positions generate dues money for the union, but they don’t do a thing for raising the individual teacher’s salary.

Think about it, taxpayer. You put up 54.9 percent more in real dollars, but teachers only got a 12.6 percent raise. Do you really think that is the way to attract high-quality candidates into teaching careers? And, do you think the creation of a lot of featherbedding non-classroom jobs does a lot to improve education where it matters – in the classroom?