Giving Compass' Take:

• AEI examines the teacher strikes happening across the country and projects what the future could look like, which may require modernizing benefits.

• This article acknowledges low teacher salary is a problem, but that the problems are more systematic (and it's not necessarily the taxpayers' fault). How can funders help find solutions to outmoded compensation?

• In cash-strapped states, teachers are seeking more than higher pay.

This spring, in an unexpected turn, teacher strikes have dominated the education landscape. In March, West Virginia teachers seeking a pay increase walked out for nine days, and came away with a 5-percent raise. Additional walkouts rapidly followed.

Why are these strikes happening and what does it mean for schooling?

First, teachers in these states have a legitimate gripe. Their salaries are lousy and have fallen over time. Teacher pay declined by 2 percent in real terms (after adjusting for inflation) between 1992 and 2014. According to data tracked by the National Education Association (NEA), in 2015–2016, the most recent year for which data are available, average teacher pay nationally was $58,353 — hardly a princely sum for a workforce of college-educated professionals. Meanwhile, in the states where teachers have walked out, average pay trails the nation. Kentucky, at $52,134, ranked 26th among the states according to the NEA data; West Virginia ranked 48th at $45,622; and Oklahoma’s 49th at $45,276.

Some analysts, including the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, have blamed the bleak salary picture almost entirely on cuts in state education funding. The CBPP has estimated that Oklahoma cut the state’s inflation-adjusted per-pupil formula funding by 30 percent between 2008 and 2018 ...

While these cuts are real and significant, there’s more to the story. In Oklahoma, state aid accounts for a little less than half of education funding (the rest comes from local and federal sources). When all sources are taken into account, inflation-adjusted per-pupil school spending was down only about one-third as much as the CBPP suggests — declining 11 percent between 2008 and 2017, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

Read the full article about the motivation behind the teacher strikes by Amy Cummings and Frederick M. Hess at aei.org.