The Truth About Teacher Pay in AZ

How Arizona School Districts Have Held Down Teacher Salaries, Blamed Lawmakers and Continually Captured Public Sympathy -- By The Goldwater Institute

By Matt Geienburg

Overview

During the 2019-2020 school year alone, teachers received at least $170 million less from their school districts in salary increases than Arizona taxpayers provided for. In 2018, Arizona state lawmakers approved the “20×2020” plan to send hundreds of millions of new dollars to public school districts so they could raise average teacher salaries by 20%. But data revealed in Goldwater’s report suggests that most of that money never made it—at least, not to teachers. Unfortunately, school districts have established a decades-long pattern of this behavior. State lawmakers—and their constituents—may wish to rethink their participation in this cycle