WASHINGTON D.C. (NewsNation) — Teachers visited Capitol Hill Thursday to testify at a committee hearing focused on teacher shortages and other challenges plaguing K-12 education.
One of the attending teachers, Germayel Keyes, started his career in special education 18 years ago, he was making $16,000 per year in starting pay as a paraprofessional, or classroom assistant.
“I needed a second job,” Keyes told lawmakers. “I couldn’t survive off of just paraprofessional wages.”
Yet despite earning his teaching certification two years ago, Keyes said, he still works an additional part-time job to make ends meet.
Teachers “take on many roles in the classroom based on the needs of your students, all starting with a salary of around $45,000,” he said.
“Teachers are constantly putting money back into the classroom for everything from school supplies to snacks for hungry children,” Keyes also said. “In just this school year alone, I’ve spent over a thousand dollars on those things just so that I can be effective at what I do.”
John Arthur, an elementary school teacher in Holladay, Utah, told lawmakers Thursday he has also felt the financial crunch.
“You used to be able to raise a family on a teacher’s salary,” he said. “Now the only reason I’m able to be a public school teacher is because my wife makes much more money than me.”
The teachers were invited by Senate Democrats to testify Thursday.
Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are trying to pass legislation that would boost the starting salary for teachers to $60,000 minimum nationwide. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who chairs the Senate Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Committee, joined a group of Democrats to introduce the Pay Teachers Act.
“If we’re going to encourage teachers to teach in underserved communities if we’re going to improve teacher retention and morale, and if we’re going to improve student academic outcomes, then in my view, we need to pay teachers in America decent wages and decent benefits,” Sanders said at Thursday’s hearing.
According to data from the National Education Association and the National Center for Education Statistics, the national average for teachers’ starting pay is around $45,000 annually.
The Learning Policy Institute estimates more than 300,000 teaching positions were unfilled or held by people not fully qualified for the position from 2020 to 2023.
Republicans like Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., argue raising teacher pay to that kind of nationwide minimum won’t necessarily improve student outcomes and that lawmakers should examine how schools are spending their funds.
“I’m not sure throwing more money at the problem is the solution,” Cassidy said. “The committee needs to determine root causes concerning the state of public education and how to fix it.”
Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow in education policy at the American Enterprise Institute who was invited to testify at Thursday’s hearing by Senate Republicans, echoed that concern.
“By all means, raise teacher pay, but do not assume that it will solve teacher shortages or keep good teachers in the classroom,” said Pondiscio, a former New York City fifth-grade teacher. “Poor training, deteriorating classroom conditions, shoddy curriculum and spiraling demands have made an already challenging job nearly impossible to do well and sustainably.”
“Bluntly, we are asking teachers to do too many things for them to do any of them well,” Pondiscio also said.
Keyes also raised that point to lawmakers, citing the many duties, including “hours of paperwork,” that teachers need to take on in addition to instruction.
“If there’s no steady pipeline of teachers coming in… things won’t change in the profession,” he said.