Report: Arizona teachers still among lowest paid in nation

PHOENIX — A recent report found that Arizona teachers are still among the lowest paid in the country.

The National Education Association report shows Arizona teachers on average make $49,892 a year. That’s below the national teacher salary of $61,782.

The report also shows Arizona ranks 45th in the country for average teacher salaries, an improvement of one spot from last year.

“We really still are in a crisis,” Noah Karvelis, an elementary school teacher and the former leader of the Red for Ed Movement, said.

“Arizona has improved, yeah, but we are still really, really lacking.”

The report follows the approval of Gov. Doug Ducey’s plan to give teachers a 20 percent pay raise by the year 2020. As part of the plan, teachers got a 10 percent pay raise this school year.

That could be one reason why teachers on average are making $1,000 more this school year than the last. However, their salaries have decreased by nearly 10 percent compared to a decade ago, according to the report.

“That’s a really shocking figure for anybody to imagine that 10 years ago we were paying that much more,” Karvelis said.

He added Arizona is losing teachers to school districts in other states “because of the simple fact that we’re still far behind.”

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