Arkansas LEARNS, the state’s new K-12 education law, has generated lots of headlines over controversial programs like using public funds for private school vouchers or the witchhunt into vague charges of “indoctrination,” which state officials claimed led to a decision to nix credit for an AP African American Studies class. But the law also represents a significant overhaul in the employment of teachers, who get a pay bump — but with a new salary structure that some veteran teachers view as unfair and unsustainable. LEARNS also repeals long-standing protections Arkansas teachers previously had if a school or district sought to fire them.
Here’s a rundown of the changes from the perspective of teachers.
Part One will focus on changes to teachers’ salaries. Part Two focuses on other changes, including the repeal of the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act.
How did teacher salaries work prior to LEARNS?
Minimum teacher salaries have long been set by the state, with amounts based on experience and education level. For the 2022-23 school year, a first-year teacher had to earn at least $36,000, or at least $40,650 with a master’s degree. These minimums increased incrementally for each additional year of experience, with a pay bump for a master’s degree at each level. The minimum for a teacher with 15 years or more of experience was $42,750, or $48,150 with a master’s.
The state’s pay schedule represented a salary floor for each level — districts could still pay more. Here was the schedule for 2022-23:
Because districts could elect to pay more than the minimum, in practice, teacher salaries varied quite a bit district to district. For example, Fayetteville paid teachers $61,682 on average in 2020-21; Dermott paid $39,263 that same year.
How did LEARNS change the system for teacher salaries?
The law raises the minimum starting teacher salary to $50,000 per year. It also provides a permanent $2,000 raise for teachers who were already making $50,000 or more (this has sometimes been described as a one-time bonus, but an education department spokesperson said that it would be ongoing; ultimately funding will have to continue to be appropriated by the Legislature).
The state no longer has a salary schedule for minimums at different levels of experience or education. That’s up to districts. The only rule is that each teacher must make at least $50,000.
This seems like a good deal for teachers — why are some skeptical of these changes?
Last year, Arkansas ranked 48th in the nation in average starting teacher salaries. The new minimum starting teacher salary moves the state into the nation’s top tier. As of 2021-22, only five states and the District of Columbia required a starting salary of at least $50,000, according to the National Education Association. According to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, more than 15,000 teachers are getting a pay bump this year.
While teachers generally applaud the increase in pay, some worry that the new system’s dismantling of seniority undercuts respect for experienced teachers and makes retention more difficult. And will districts with limited budgets be able to afford the required salary bumps in the long run given limited resources? Some aren’t so sure (see more below).
“Of course we are all for raises for teachers,” said April Reisma, president of the Arkansas Education Association. “That’s what we’ve been pushing for decades. But how it was gone about was horrible, not well thought out — and it’s going to crush small schools in the end.”
Though she is thrilled for new teachers getting a raise, the law failed to take the value of more experienced teachers into account, Reisma said. “I’m concerned that they’re just trying to get rid of veteran teachers,” she said. “That’s going to keep the performance of students down. Veteran teachers do have something to bring to the table.”
“More experienced teachers provide stability,” said Jacksonville North Pulaski School District superintendent Jeremy Owoh. “They’ve weathered the storm, they’re more comfortable in the field, their content and pedagogy has strengthened. They try new things, they’ve had years to see what works. Experience definitely matters. And financially, it’s better for a district because we’re not training teachers over and over.”
“It’s very important that we find a way to attract, incentivize, recruit and retain our teachers, especially in Southeast Arkansas,” said Star City School District superintendent Jordan Frizzell. “It’s hard to describe, but you can walk into a veteran’s classroom versus a new teacher and the majority of the time, you immediately know. You have to value your veteran teachers — and when you have new teachers coming in, they are mentored by those veteran teachers, and that takes time and labor. If you don’t have [veteran teachers] mentoring, then we’d be in a world of hurt.”
Okay, so what criticisms do veteran teachers have about the structure of the LEARNS salary bumps?
There are three main concerns for veteran teachers. The first is that districts that used to give raises that pushed salaries well above $50,000 for more experienced teachers will now be squeezed by the new minimum. LEARNS doesn’t prohibit raises for seniority, but some districts simply won’t be able to afford to be as generous on that front given the new minimum requirement. Circumstances will vary widely, but at least some veteran teachers may wind up financially worse off in the long run if the old raises become smaller or stop at a lower level. In a district that flattened the schedule to pay $50,000 for everyone, for example, teachers close to crossing the $50,000 threshold under the school’s prior schedule with raises would miss out; teachers in districts that previously continued incremental raises well past $50,000 could lose substantially on net if the new schedule was flattened and this year’s $2,000 bump is their last raise.
The second concern has to do with morale and solidarity among the teaching staff. For some teachers, even if they wind up better off in their own financial circumstances, the change may still seem unfair. Imagine a teacher who started with an extremely low salary a decade ago and slowly got annual raises over the years (perhaps with another bump from investing time and money into earning an advanced degree). All of a sudden, this year, that teacher will likely make the exact same salary as a brand new teacher with no experience. Is that fair? The experienced teacher still winds up with a higher salary this year thanks to LEARNS, but you can see how this might nevertheless still be frustrating.
“You talk about someone fresh out of college with absolutely no experience making $2,000 less than someone who’s been in there for 15 years — that’s insane,” said Reisma, a special education teacher with 19 years of experience. “And of course, the veteran teachers would be expected to mentor that person, and we wouldn’t get any extra pay for that.”
The third concern is retention, which has been a longstanding challenge across the state. For many districts, annual raises will be impossible. In fact, any raise at all may be impossible for years at a time. LEARNS funding covers the raise to $50,000 (or $2,000 more for those already at that level), but doesn’t cover any raises beyond that. Many districts have been paying the minimums set by the old state salary schedule — well below $50,000 — so if every teacher is bumped up to $50,000, there simply won’t be enough money in district coffers to pay anyone more. In those districts, new teachers, old teachers and everyone in between will be making roughly the same salary.
That could spell trouble for districts already struggling to keep teachers around for the long haul. Even if teachers wind up better off on net, there’s a psychological effect here: People feel encouraged to stay if their pay is going up. If they’re stuck at the same salary, they can start to feel … stuck. Some fear a failure to reward experience with salary bumps will set up a revolving door of inexperienced teachers.
Beyond the specific salary figures, many teachers feel their profession has been devalued. The structure of LEARNS emphasizes recruiting brand-new teachers, with less investment for teachers who are more experienced or pursue post-graduate degrees. This could create a lot of churn as new teachers come and go, and may reorient the relationship between districts and their labor force in the classroom. Critics of LEARNS argue that the law now treats teachers as fundamentally replaceable cogs, as opposed to valued professionals with unique talents, skills and expertise.
“These folks that were sponsoring the bill, when’s the last time they’ve been in a classroom?” Reisma asked. “Or had anything to do with planning a lesson or delivering that lesson? Everything seems backwards.”
What about extra pay for advanced education degrees?
LEARNS does away with the automatic pay bump that used to be in place for having a master’s degree. That’s bad news for teachers who already have or are pursuing a master’s, of course. It’s also a flash point in a broader policy debate: Advocates such as teachers unions place a high value on additional education or training for the teaching profession, whereas LEARNS backers represent an “education reform” movement that has generally been more skeptical, instead favoring metrics such as student testing to evaluate teacher performance.
That skepticism is not without cause. There is not much empirical evidence that a master’s in education for teachers leads to better outcomes for students — although the link between master’s programs and additional pay has made such programs financially attractive, so institutions offering such degrees have generally made a political push to keep that link in place.
But many teachers believe that additional education, and the professional development it provides, does lead to benefits in the classroom. The pay bump for a master’s was “motivation to grow and improve,” said Reisma, “and help us to become better teachers, which in turn would help those students to have better outcomes on their literacy scores and their numeracy scores. …I’d like to know, do you not want people to grow and thrive and become better for our students here in the state of Arkansas?”
Owoh agreed that it makes sense for districts to incentivize further education. Though not required to do so, Jacksonville is keeping its bonus for a master’s. “We tell our students that you need to be lifelong learners,” he said, “and we encourage and expect our educators to continue to enhance and hone their skills. Why wouldn’t we financially support it? We have a stronger workforce when we have educators who continue with their education.” It also sets up a better and more prepared pipeline for administrators, Owoh said.
For teachers frustrated with LEARNS, the elimination of mandated pay bumps for advanced degrees represents another way in which the law devalues the profession. The fear is that undercutting incentives for graduate degrees is part of a broader attempt to make teachers a more replaceable labor force, with less emphasis on qualifications. For example, Florida, often considered a bellwether for conservative policy in Arkansas, has a program allowing military veterans with no experience to teach in K-12 schools without going through the normal certification process and before they have completed a bachelor’s degree.
The issue also may be tied in with our endless culture wars: the governor and her allies in the Legislature often take a dim view of higher education, and might suspect that pursuing a master’s would only lead to more “indoctrination” that could trickle into classrooms.
Whatever their motivation, nixing the mandated raises for master’s degrees likely represents a financial hit for higher ed. If fewer districts offer pay bumps, that almost certainly means a reduction in students — and revenue — for these programs. “Not only is it taking away that motivation for a teacher to become more educated,” Reisma said, “but it’s also taking away those students from the classrooms of those higher universities and higher ed universities here in the state of Arkansas.”
How much variance is there between districts in terms of teacher pay?
Prior to LEARNS, the pay gap between wealthier and poorer districts could be quite substantial. It’s too early to know precisely how those numbers will evolve now that there’s a much higher first-year minimum but no directive beyond that.
Urban districts generally pay better than rural ones; larger districts pay better than smaller ones. In 2021, the districts in the bottom quartile in terms of salary paid an average salary ranging from around $39,262 to $44,322; the top quartile ranged from around $48,878 to $61,682.
What impact could LEARNS have on teacher recruitment and retention in less wealthy districts?
Teacher retention in rural, smaller or poorer districts has been a longstanding concern in the state, and ostensibly an issue that LEARNS aimed to address. But the law’s critics argue that the changes to the mandated salary structure are likely to exacerbate inequities.
For example, wealthier districts may continue to offer raises for years of experience or a master’s degree that poorer districts can no longer afford, setting up a scenario where the veteran teachers or those with a master’s wind up in the big, urban districts, while other districts are increasingly left with teachers newer to the classroom.
In the Jacksonville School District, thanks to a millage increase from some years back that was partly targeted toward raising teacher salaries in the long run, the district was able to implement a new salary schedule that kept stepped raises in place even with the first-year leap to $50,000, though the raise increments are now smaller. “It was a major jump for us, but we were fortunate that we had been working on increasing our salary schedule,” Owoh said. “For smaller school districts, it’s tough, and talking to them, it’s going to be a tough road.” For some districts, he said, any further changes to the salary schedule would send them into financial distress.
“They could lose their veteran teachers,” Owoh said. “Even though we’re in a pretty good position, it’s a horrible feeling when we have school districts that are serving their communities and are placed in this predicament. We’re all in it for the kids, and our heart goes out to them when you hear the challenges that other districts are having and the worry that’s there for future years. Beginning teachers now making $50,000 — that is a great thing. But we have to deal with the unintended results.”
“I don’t think anybody’s against paying the teacher a minimum salary of $50,000,” Frizzell said. “But it’s the domino effect of not addressing the back end of that with veteran teachers. It caused some problems that I don’t know were addressed.”
What do the changes mean for the old salary schedule?
LEARNS eliminates the statewide minimum salary schedule.
Instead, it tasks individual districts with creating their own minimum schedule. This schedule represents the floor in terms of salaries. Before LEARNS, an individual district could create its own schedule that had higher salaries than the state-imposed minimums.
However, as the minimums went up over time, many districts chose to use the state minimums as their own. By 2021, 97 districts used the same minimum salary for first-year teachers ($33,800 without a master’s) that was set by the state, whereas 138 districts had minimum salaries higher than the state-mandated minimum. Twenty-eight districts paid a minimum salary of $40,000 or more that year, with Springdale School District adopting the highest minimum salary at $48,282.
For a district like Springdale, the jump to $50,000 for first-year teachers isn’t much of a change (in fact, Springdale had already gotten to just over $50,000 last year), and they are retaining the experience-based raises they already had in place. But as noted above, in practice, some districts may struggle to afford raises beyond the $50,000 minimum.
The mandate that districts have some sort of schedule in place was a last-minute addition meant to alleviate the concerns about raises for experience and retention. But the schedule requirement has no teeth: There is nothing stopping a district from creating a new “schedule” that was something close to just a flat rate: around $50,000 for all teachers. That would create the dynamic described above in which teachers never got a raise.
For example, here is this year’s salary schedule at Dermott School District:
During legislative hearings, LEARNS backers disputed claims from district administrators that salary schedules would be flattened in this way, but it can’t be a surprise that this is happening given the structure of the law.
All that said, it’s worth keeping in mind that the state’s prior minimum pay schedule topped out at $42,750 — or $48,150 with a master’s — so while the law will typically flatten the difference between salaries at different levels of experience, even more experienced teachers are guaranteed a higher state-mandated minimum salary than under the old law. To use the Dermott example above, last year , the district used the state minimums for the first 15 years of experience; the highest available salary was at 18 years experience and a master’s, which paid $49,975. So at least in isolation, teachers are better off in that district at every year of experience.
Still, the question remains whether districts will have trouble keeping teachers for the long term if significant raises in future years are essentially impossible.
What do the pay bumps mean for districts? Will all districts be able to afford the raises?
Critics of LEARNS have complained that the pay raises are an “unfunded mandate.” The law does provide funding for the pay raises, but skeptics have questioned whether that funding might eventually dry up. Ultimately, because this funding is coming out of general revenue, it depends on annual appropriation from the Legislature. That’s enough to make district leaders nervous: If the state underfunds in the future, the minimum pay requirement will still be in place for districts, and they’ll have to find a way to come up with the money.
“We’ve been told that the funding will continue to be provided, but that is a concern,” Owoh said. “What happens five, 10, 15 years from now?”
In addition, some superintendents have objected that maintaining a stepped schedule with incremental raises — as mandated by the minimum pay schedule in state law prior to LEARNS — will now be prohibitively expensive. There is no LEARNS funding for additional pay bumps beyond the $50,000 floor and the $2,000 raise. If you imagine the pay schedule as a series of steps, LEARNS requires districts to set the very first step much higher — up to $14,000 more for those using the old state minimums. If the first step is that much higher, districts have to come up with their own money if they want to implement higher steps after that.
Some, like Dermott this year, simply can’t, so the steps are replaced with a flat rate. Other districts may feel like they have no choice but to keep some sort of raises for experience in place because of the expectations of their staff and their community, or in order to remain competitive with other districts. Without state funding to do so, some may face tough choices, cutting programs to keep up with labor costs.
“At least right now, we’re getting the funding to get to $50,000,” Frizzell said. “But we’re not getting anything over that. Then it falls back to the local-level decisions, where every school looks different because every school has a different tax base, every school has a different staff size, so it’s not one size fits all.”
For Star City, the first-year raise to $50,000 is a major jump — last year, the district paid $36,000 for starting teachers, and teachers with only a bachelor’s didn’t get to $50,000 until their 28th year of experience (or 18th year with a master’s). This left Star City in a lurch when it came to stepped raises, and this year, like many districts, budgetary constraints mean their salary schedule is essentially flat: A ll teachers at every level are now slated to make $50,000 (those already set for $48,000 or more under the old schedule get the $2,000 bump on top of that). Frizzell said that they are working to enact some sort of raises for experience and advanced degrees next year, though the amount of the raise for each step may be less than under the old system.
“It may be a smaller range,” Frizzell said. “We’re trying to get creative. We’re trying to show our veteran staff some love. But it’s difficult.”
Raises are crucial for retaining good teachers over the long term, Frizzell said. “In my experience, the majority of the time, the more experience a teacher has in the classroom, the better off our students are,” he said. “Time helps build their skillset.”
Like Owoh, Frizzell expressed anxiety about the lack of a guarantee that the LEARNS funding will keep pace with the new salary costs imposed by the law. “You’re trying to make long-term decisions without knowing the long-term funding, and that’s very, very difficult,” he said.
Olivia Gardner, director of education policy for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, said she was concerned about the financial impact LEARNS will ultimately impose, particularly on smaller or rural districts.
“We still don’t know how much this is going to cost and what the long-term effects will be, but schools are already struggling to adjust their budgets in many cases,” she said. “I worry that LEARNS will exacerbate the existing divide between urban and rural school districts, with larger urban schools continuing to be able to attract top educators with higher pay and benefits or provide more resources to students in ways that smaller rural schools aren’t able to match.”
Part Two, coming soon, will explore other impacts of LEARNS on teachers, including what the repeal of the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act means for teachers’ job security and due process rights.
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