Minnesota teacher pay is broken. It’s time to refresh the entire system and pay teachers as professionals.
The average Minnesota teacher makes a salary of $77,655 (plus benefits), according to the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB). This number may be higher than many would assume, but it’s still not as high as what teachers could be paid if Minnesota restructured. Merit pay and salary floors are two high-quality reforms that should be considered.
There’s money in the budget for salary reform; the state is projected to spend $25.9 billion on education in 2026 and 2027, more than any other budget priority. But that money hasn’t been funneled directly to teachers in the past. As my colleague Catrin Wigfall has written,
Statewide, per-pupil dollars adjusted for inflation increased 25 percent from 2002 to 2020. But the average teacher salary declined nearly 4 percent (3.7 percent), according to calculations by the Reason Foundation.
So, if per student revenue is increasing, but teacher salaries are declining, where’s the money going?
One answer might be that Minnesota has been hiring far more staffers than in years past. My colleague Catrin Wigfall found that district administrative staff in Minnesota public schools is up over 132 percent since 2000, and principal and assistant principal growth over the same time period is up 50 percent. Student growth and teacher growth haven’t kept pace, at 2 percent and 5 percent.
Wigfall’s work shows that when school spending goes up, Minnesota districts don’t increase teacher salaries. They simply hire more staff. This creates an ecosystem of program coordinators, paraprofessionals, district literacy coaches, and other figures. Some of these are needed positions, but some certainly aren’t. The tradeoff of a new staff member that can make teachers’ lives easier is that those teachers then can’t be paid more.
The old Minnesota tactic of simply raising general revenue and hoping it’ll trickle down to teacher salaries doesn’t work. Reforming average teacher pay in Minnesota will require a targeted piece of legislature.
Changing tactics
When it comes to student achievement, research has said that teachers matter more than any other aspect of schooling. If Minnesota wants to get serious about reversing poor academic norms, the state will have to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. Efforts don’t need to focus on firing low-performing teachers, which has often proved unpopular and ineffective elsewhere. Instead, Minnesota should ensure that the best of the best are happy where they work. Just after the pandemic, one in three Minnesota teachers said they were considering quitting their jobs. In a low-trust, high-flux environment, it’s imperative that Minnesota hang on to quality instructors.
Salary reform retains quality teachers, but it could also attract different types of candidates. According to PELSB data, only one in four (25.5 percent) of Minnesota’s teachers are men. About 86 percent (85.7) of those male teachers are white men. It’s probable that the stigma attached to perceived low salaries causes men to avoid the teaching profession. That’s a shame; young men of all races thrive in an education system that provides male role models, preferably when those role models share life experiences.
Minnesota currently provides grant money for teacher preparation programs through the Grow Your Own (GYO) Grant. GYO programs are currently facing legal complaints for the requirement that 80 percent of awarded funds go to candidates of color or Indigenous candidates. Assuming that GYO will respond to the worrying complaints by removing race as a grant qualification, it’s not a bad way for districts to further the recruiting process. But a GYO Grant only covers a prep program. It doesn’t sell the teaching profession as a worthy career choice that rewards individual effort. Salary reform could do that.
To recruit high-quality, diverse candidates, it’s necessary to professionalize teaching —treating it as a rigorous, important job with opportunities for recognition, not a life donated to a missionary-esque charity cause. Treating teachers like professionals can go a long way for teacher recruiting and retention. In the long run, that improves morale, teacher quality, and the school system as a whole.
Professionalization requires a salary commensurate with professional skills, and consistent, high-quality professional development. It also requires a flexible salary schedule that rewards hard work. Professionals, of course, don’t just get paid based on how many years they’ve stayed in their position, but performance and excellence. That gives real bargaining power to competent professionals, who can and should demand better workplace treatment and bigger salaries.
Almost every other profession functions through merit pay. But teaching doesn’t do so. We can dream bigger for our teachers.
Minnesota has had a program initially hailed as merit pay, called Q Comp, since 2005. Today, it is “a voluntary program that allows local districts and exclusive representatives of the teachers to design and collectively bargain a plan that meets the four components of the law.” Districts receive funds to promote professional development, or to create a career ladder that rewards teachers that take on extra responsibilities (like becoming a grade-level lead). In the past, some districts have used Q Comp to provide bonuses for such teachers, but such efforts are sporadic.
The program gives up to $260 per student to participating districts. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but it’s nowhere close to a win. It’s not very effective at putting money in specific, deserving teachers’ pockets, and it’s certainly not merit pay in any real sense. A successful merit pay system across Minnesota will require state agency coordination and guidance.
Professionalizing teacher pay sounds complicated, and merit pay more so. How does one even begin to measure teacher excellence, considering that teachers educate students with vastly different academic baselines? Interestingly, several states have found solutions.
Arkansas and New Jersey raise the floor
Setting aside merit pay for the moment, one easy way for states to professionalize teaching salaries is to raise the salary floor.
In New Jersey, a union-led campaign established a $50,000 starting salary for districts across the state. A recent working paper found that when districts committed to the new starting salary, they made trade-offs in other areas. Generally, they chose to increase class sizes slightly and allocate money away from other staff positions. The choice seems to have been worthwhile. Math and ELA scores increased, and graduation rates were boosted slightly.
In 2023, Arkansas passed the LEARNS Act, which raised the floor from $36,000 to $50,000. Plus, it guaranteed all teachers a raise of at least $2,000 if they were above the minimum. LEARNS coupled the salary reforms with expanded school choice, literacy support, and cell phone bans. This was a huge, state-funded investment, and the salary boost cost Arkansas $183 million.
Researchers at the University of Arkansas have seen good fruit. The salary increases boosted teacher retention and lowered retirement and transfer rates. Poor rural districts benefited the most, with teacher salaries becoming essentially equivalent to other types of districts. Unsurprisingly, the pairing of increased salary floors and stronger professional development has boosted teacher recruitment.
Minnesota does not have a state mandated salary floor for teachers. According to MinnesotaTeach, the average teacher starting salary in Minnesota is $44, 995.
Fiscally speaking, the goal of the public education system is to give students as good of an education as possible at the lowest cost possible. That doesn’t mean that every cost has to be low, but that the overall cost to taxpayers should be as low as possible. New Jersey’s experience proved that districts can find a way to pay teachers more if they put their minds to it.
Paying one good teacher a higher salary is ultimately cheaper than paying a mediocre teacher, a reading therapist, and a district math interventionist. Districts shouldn’t be penny wise and pound foolish. Raising the salary floor doesn’t specifically benefit exceptional teachers, but it does increase the likelihood that quality candidates will enter the teaching pipeline, and eventually, the classroom.
Texas gives a good bonus
The best way for Minnesota to reform teacher salaries is to copy Texas, as the Lone Star State possesses a best-in-class merit pay system. The Texas Incentive Allotment (TIA) began in 2019, designed to give educators a path to a six-figure salary.
It’s an opt-in system. Jessica Poiner summarizes:
TIA gives districts and open-enrollment charter schools the option to create and use a local designation system to identify top educators and label them as “Recognized,” “Exemplary,” or “Master” teachers for a five-year period. Employing designated teachers generates additional state funding for participating districts, as they receive an annual allotment based on a teacher’s designation level. Greater funding is available for those who work at high-needs or rural campuses.
TIA has its own stream of funding from the Texas legislature, and there is no cap on allotment funds or the number of teachers who can receive a designation. Districts receive the funds directly when they employ a designated teacher, and 90 percent of the money has to be spent on teacher salaries. Think of TIA as a merit-driven bonus, given to teachers in addition to their regular bargained salary.
A locally-created teacher designation system allows districts to highlight teaching quality metrics that matter to their specific community. Teachers can earn their extra cash through student growth, which can be measured in four different ways, and classroom observation, which must be measured against an approved rubric. Districts have the freedom to add in other metrics like student surveys or teacher attendance, and can choose how to measure student growth and classroom observation.
There are checks and balances; TIA does have performance standards for teacher observation and student growth ratings at each designation level, established using statewide teacher performance data.
Teachers can earn designations if they’re considered in the top 50, 33, 20, or 5 percent of Texas teachers. All teachers earn a base bonus, but certain types of schools (like poor, rural schools) qualify a teacher for a bonus multiplier. A master teacher (in the top 5 percent of all Texas teachers) who works at a very poor, very rural school will earn an extra $36,000 per year.
Today, about half of Texas’ districts have opted into the program, with more on the way. Unsurprisingly, teacher retention, teacher morale, and student test scores have risen.
How can Minnesota support teachers?
Minnesota’s current union-pushed step-and-lane system isn’t a fully professionalized salary system. Yearly raises are calculated by the number of years teaching, and a raise is higher with the teacher’s level of education. The step-and-lane system can’t recognize hard work with a bonus or accommodate teachers who move from other, higher paid, districts. It’s an inflexible system. There’s no wonder that Minnesota teachers are calling for systemic change.
Salary reform will have to occur through an intentional program, like TIA. Throwing money indiscriminately at Minnesota’s education system, as has been the fashion, won’t help. Fiscally conservative legislators should remember not to be penny wise and pound foolish; as odd as it might sound, spending more on teacher salaries in a precise, targeted fashion will lead to a more efficient and less expensive school system.
While the numbers still have to be crunched for an estimate on how much a Minnesota version of TIA would cost, it’s helpful to keep in mind that Texas spent $480 million on the program in 2025, representing 0.46 percent of the total SY 24-25 education budget of $104.9 billion. The transformative program comes at a relatively small cost. Minnesota could easily cut unnecessary administrative roles to find the wiggle room in the budget.
A recent meta-analysis found that, while all teacher merit pay programs had some measure of success, programs that had clear teacher buy-in saw the biggest gains in teacher satisfaction and student academic achievement. It should go without saying that any new merit pay program will have to be well-designed and bespoke for Minnesota’s needs. One bonus of a potential merit pay program would be the inclusion of charter school teachers, who often are left out of other state funding boosts.
Reforming Q Comp to deliver real bonuses for teachers is another possibility. A 2014 Educators for Excellence report on Q Comp expressed hope that the program could be reformed and provided a roadmap, saying
Traditional “step and lane” pay scales…don’t reflect our work with or impact on our students. In addition to not recognizing performance, these antiquated systems have back-end salary increases, meaning it takes many years within a school district to reach competitive salary levels. In sum, “step and lane” systems do not recognize or reward high-quality teaching, teachers who take on leadership roles, or teachers who excel in our most challenging schools and positions…Q Comp provides an immediate opportunity to recognize performance and incentivize the retention of highly effective teachers.
The gold standard for Minnesota teacher salary reform is TIA, but there’s no harm in pursuing other reforms (like starting salary floors) simultaneously. Fearful legislators should remember that reform is well-proven in other states. Starting salary floors tend to be received well politically, and opt-in provisions for teacher merit pay systems allow for only interested districts to explore teacher bonuses. Pairing both reforms as dual pieces of legislation would be a winnable policy push.
Overall, the results are in: treating teachers like professionals leads to happier teachers, better teachers, and stronger schools. Minnesota should recognize teachers as professionals and reform salary systems.