
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 15, 1995                   TAG: 9508150030
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

RETURN OF THE GAP IN TEACHER PAY

DURING the 1980s, Virginia lifted its average teacher pay to the national average - only to have the gap reopen in the austere '90s. But the slippage, suggest figures in a new report from the Southern Regional Education Board, isn't as bad as you might expect.

At $33,753, Virginia's average teacher salary in the 1994-95 school year was second only to Maryland's among the 15 SREB states. From 1985 through 1995, the average teacher salary in Virginia rose by 58.7 percent, compared with 56.5 percent nationally and 49.7 percent in the SREB states.

By 1994, Virgina's average teacher pay had dropped to 93.5 percent of the national average. But when cost-of-living differences from state to state are taken into account, the SREB reported, Virginia's average was almost (99.3 percent) the national average. This, too, placed Virginia second only to Maryland in the SREB region.

There are caveats.

First, using the statewide average can mask significant teacher-pay variations from place to place within Virginia. The statewide average is boosted, for example, by relatively high teacher pay in Northern Virginia, which is not wholly attributable to higher living costs there. (In the Roanoke Valley, however, both teacher salaries and living costs generally hover around statewide averages.)

Second, implicit in the '80s goal of raising Virginia's average teacher pay to the national average was the conviction that Virginia salaries actually should exceed the national average when cost-of-living differences are taken into account. For a time this occurred, but it is no longer the case.

Third, most of the gain in Virginia teacher pay - and all of the gain relative to regional and national averages - occurred in the first half of the 1985-95 decade. Indeed, Virginia lost ground relative to the region and the nation in the second half of the decade, though not by enough to negate the strong gains of the first half.

Clearly, then, teacher pay remains a legitimate issue in Virginia. Adequate salaries are important for attracting and retaining able practitioners, and for maintaining regard for teaching as an important profession. The trend since 1990 has not been good.

Nevertheless, statewide teacher pay in Virginia is not, yet, the critical issue it was 15 or 20 years ago. Nor is public education, yet, under the sort of fiscal pressure that has confronted Virginia's colleges and universities, which have lost far more state support in recent years.

That gives Virginia leeway to work on school issues other than teacher pay alone: accountability, more rigorous academic standards, improved instructional techniques and technology, and the like. If that leeway is to be kept, though, Virginia can't allow a teacher-pay slide to go unchecked indefinitely.

by CNB