Arizona moving up in teacher salary rankings
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KTAR News reported that pay for teachers in Arizona is trending upward.
“Arizona has traditionally been towards the bottom of teacher pay,” said Dan Hunting, a senior policy analyst at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy.
Gov. Doug Ducey’s promise to give teachers a 20 percent boost in pay by the start of the 2020 school year, including a 10 percent this upcoming school year, could continue to move Arizona up the rankings, said Hunting. But it depends on whether other states continue increasing their pay for teachers.
"If they continue to do that, even if we’re increasing our pay pretty substantially, we may not go up that much in the rankings,” Hunting said. “On the other hand, if they say, ‘We’ve already raised pay, we’re going to level off,’ then we could skyrocket up.”
The governor’s pay increase plan approved in the state budget in May gives teachers a 10 percent pay raise this year, followed by 5 percent raises in 2019 and 2020.
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