HONOLULU — A new study ranks Hawaii as the least teacher-friendly state in the nation.
Hawaii teachers get the lowest annual salary based on the cost of living — about $24,000, according to the study published by WalletHub on Monday. The average salary for all teachers is about $30,000, the study said.
The Hawaii State Teachers Association agrees with the study’s findings. The rate of Hawaii teachers leaving the state for the mainland has gone up by 84 percent since 2010, said Corey Rosenlee, the president of the teacher’s association.
Because Hawaii teachers are the worst paid in the nation, about a third of Hawaii students don’t have a fully qualified teacher, Rosenlee said. “We had 19 openings for special education teachers in Nanakuli, Waianae area, and we could only hire one teacher this year,” he said.
Rosenlee called Hawaii’s ranking embarrassing.
The Hawaii State Department of Education is working with a national organization to compile comparative data and policy considerations that it can share with the Board of Education, legislators, unions, businesses and community members.
The first part of the review will be completed within about three weeks, and a more in-depth study will be available in the spring.
Wallethub’s study ranked New York as the best state for teachers. New York was followed by Connecticut, Minnesota, Illinois and North Dakota.
Wallethub determined the rankings by comparing all 50 states and the District of Columbia on two categories: “opportunity and competition” and “academic and work environment.”
Hawaii also has the nation’s lowest percentage of teachers who feel supported by their administrator, only 39 percent, the Wallethub study said.
But Hawaii did rank high for teacher tenure protections, teacher union strength and robust teacher rating system.
So what’s the new tax burden going to do about this? Nothing because the added revenues will be used for the bureaucracy (aka: DOE administration), not the teachers.
RG DeSoto
And to think that the DOE administration has just given their useless “complex superintendents” a raise, another layer of bureacrats on a bloated administration that is getting paid more than the governor while they outnumber teachers 13,500 to 11,000 teachers.
Makes you wonder why would you have more administration than teachers, so why not cut that bloated non-teacher positions and fire all those making more than the governor. The savings could go for raising the pay of teachers who actually do an honest day’s work instead of sitting in cool air conditioned passing the time surfing the net and doing practically nothing but getting 6 figure salaries.
Keeping the citizenry Dumb affords more Political and bureaucratic control of the voting public!