New York More Teacher-Friendly Than Most States: New Study

With a teacher shortage causing consternation nationwide, the personal-finance website WalletHub conducted an in-depth analysis of 2016’s Best & Worst States for Teachers, and New York came out well — though with a caveat.

The WalletHub study looked at teachers' salaries — not just what they earn now but what they can expect to make over their professional lives. It looked at teacher-student ratios (one way of measuring class size) and it looked at overall spending for public schools. WalletHub also threw in its recent school systems ranking for context.

For residents of the Hudson Valley and Long Island, it's no surprise that New York ranked the second highest in terms of school spending per student. The state was only surpassed by Vermont, with New Jersey right behind us. The three states with the lowest per-student spending were Utah, Arizona and Indiana. The states at the top of the list spend three times, per student, what the states at the bottom of the list do, the study showed.

Here's the summary for New York.

Teacher-Friendliness of New York (1=Best; 25=Avg.)

• 10th – Median Annual Salary for Teachers (Adjusted for Cost of Living)
• 25th – WalletHub “School Systems” Ranking
• 4th – Teachers’ Income Growth Potential
• 30th – Projected Number of Teachers per 1,000 Students by Year 2022
• 6th – 10-Year Change in Teacher Salaries
• 10th – Pupil-Teacher Ratio
• 2nd – Public-School Spending per Student

While the study suggests that New York teachers have great income growth potential, it also shows they will be coping with larger numbers of students in the not too distant future.

An impending teacher shortage nationwide was the subject of a new report earlier in September from the Learning Policy Institute. Writing for The 74, two CALDER officials argued that the problem is rather the failure to enact systematic solutions to real problems in the teacher labor market.

A local expert quoted in the study, Fordham University professor Toby Tetenbaum, said it's difficult for local public schools nationwide to attract and keep teachers because the problems in education — which include heavy-handed standards and tests, old fashioned pedagogy (learning by rote) and alternatives such as charters and homeschooling — because the issues emanate from the federal and state level.

Learn about WalletHub's methodology here.