Virginia second best for teachers

The best state for teachers is Massachusetts.

Kathy Maness, executive director of the Palmetto State Teachers Association, says she doesn’t believe the ranking, but says teachers’ salaries are relatively low in South Carolina.

The study looked at average starting salaries for teachers, median salaries, school systems’ rankings, teachers’ income growth potential, spending per student, and student-teacher ratios, among other things. West Virginia was last at 51st.

The reason in this happening is because of the teacher turnover rate that happens every year. And schools are having trouble filling the classrooms. Which likely explains some of the other rankings.

Jill Gonzalez with WalletHub said there are about 23 students per teacher in Arizona public schools, which makes meeting the strict grade requirements hard while tackling a large workload and making little pay. According to Madhabi Chatterji, an expert in education at Columbia University who weighed in on the study’s findings for WalletHub, a good teaching job is one where “teachers are free to act as trained professionals, with access to necessary resources and tools to best serve the needs of their students”.

That same list has Virginia ranked the second best state to work as a teacher, Tennessee 34th and South Carolina 46th.

The biggest issue facing teachers in North Carolina is pay, an issue that was a hot-button topic during the state’s budget debates.

Reputation matters. Unfortunately, when it comes to public education, ours is lousy.