Booker, Menendez Want To Give Teachers A Raise With Tax Credits

NEW JERSEY — A proposed federal law that would give teachers thousands of dollars in new tax credits has picked up support from New Jersey’s two U.S. senators.

Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Robert Menendez are among the lawmakers backing the Respect, Advancement, and Increasing Support for Educators (RAISE) Act. If it becomes law, the bill would give educators between $1,000 and $15,000 in refundable tax credits, depending on multiple factors, including the poverty level of their school.

Companion legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Here’s why the bill is needed, according to a statement from Booker:

“Currently, public elementary and secondary teachers earn about 20 percent less than similarly educated professions. Based on a worldwide comparison, the average salary gap between teachers and others with comparable educational backgrounds is greater in the U.S. than in any other OECD country with available data. Early childhood educators fare far worse, with a national median wage of $11.65 an hour, well below the national living wage threshold. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly every state in the nation reported shortages of teachers in high-need subjects like science, math, special education, and English language development. Additionally, low income and students of color are the least likely to have access to a stable educator workforce, with nearly 50 percent higher teacher turnover rates in high-poverty schools.”

“Educators are constantly asked to do more and more without any significant increase in their compensation, and often at their own expense,” Booker said.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these hardships, leading many teachers to leave the profession,” Booker continued. “This legislation would help support educators by using the federal tax code to put more resources back in teachers’ pockets. It’s time to reward our society’s unsung heroes by increasing teachers’ take-home pay.”

Menendez agreed, saying the bill would “support this long overdue investment in our nation's schools that will boost teacher compensation, diversify the teaching workforce, and level the playing field between teachers and other professionals.”

Specifically, the RAISE Act would:

• Provide all eligible early childhood and K-12 educators with a $1,000 refundable tax credit, regardless of the level of poverty in the school in which they teach.
• Create a refundable tax credit of up to $15,000 for eligible public elementary and secondary educators and for early childhood educators with a bachelor’s degree.
• Create a refundable tax credit of up to $10,000 for early childhood educators with an associate degree or a Child Development Associate (CDA) certificate.
• Encourage teacher recruitment and retention in under-resourced schools and communities most in need by utilizing a sliding scale for the tax credit, based on school and early education program poverty levels.
• Provide labor protections to prevent the tax credit from being used unfairly in labor negotiations.
• Increase the educator tax deduction from $250 to $500 to offset teachers’ purchases of school supplies, and expand eligibility to early childhood educators
• Provide at least $5.2 billion in annual mandatory funding for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s Title II (a nearly $3 billion increase), which supports educator recruitment, retention, professional development, and class size reduction, which can improve teaching and learning conditions.
• Create and fund a federal grant program to support and incentivize local educational agencies to increase teacher salaries, and provide related programs to strengthen, retain, and diversity the educator workforce.

The RAISE Act isn’t the only way that Booker and Menendez have tried to recently boost teacher pay with federal tax credits.

In April, the senators joined a group of colleagues in introducing the Educators Expense Deduction Modernization Act of 2022. The legislation would quadruple the amount educators can deduct from their taxes for out-of-pocket classroom expenses from $250 to $1,000 per teacher and continue to index it to inflation.

• See related article: Teachers Who Buy Own Supplies Need Larger Tax Break, Lawmakers Say

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