Investing in Educators

Our nation’s schools are plagued by teacher shortages, especially in schools serving high proportions of students from low-income backgrounds, and in specializations like STEM, special education, and bilingual/English Learner education. Even though this results in unequal access to high-quality teachers and inequities in per-pupil spending, not nearly enough is being done to address it.

One possible model for solving this problem may be hiding in plain sight, in a parallel, unionized field: nursing. NPU and ERN have partnered on a first-ever paper comparing compensation systems in teaching and nursing. The contrasts are stark and our findings are eye-opening.

Nursing shares similar demographics and education requirements with teaching. There is also one other key similarity: the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is the second-largest collective bargaining unit in the U.S. for teachers and, within the AFL-CIO, for nurses. Yet, the union’s approach to compensation in these two sectors is worlds apart. Our first-ever analysis of 6 matched AFT teacher and nursing contracts in 3 different locales shows that while differentiated pay is rare, restricted, and meager in teaching, it is widespread, accessible, and far more generous in nursing.