Mississippi has the lowest-paid public school teachers in the nation, as it’s long been known and lamented.
Just last week, The Associated Press reported that teachers in the second-lowest-paying state, Oklahoma, are approaching the ranks of the working poor after a decade without a salary hike. Despite college degrees, in some cases multiple degrees, their pay has failed to keep up, so much so that some of them or their children qualify for need-based charity. Principals and superintendents in Oklahoma say they are losing their best teachers to other states and can’t fill the openings they have.
If the situation is that dire for the state ranked second from the bottom, how much worse might it be for the state at the bottom?
Yet, the person who oversees Mississippi’s 144 school districts is doing quite well financially. In fact, Carey Wright, with a salary of $300,000 a year, is not just one of the highest paid state superintendents in the nation. She is THE highest paid, according to an analysis by Education Week.
You can’t square that.
Mississippi got its pay for the state superintendent of education out of whack with a misguided law that linked the salary for the public schools’ chief with that of the higher education commissioner.
Whenever the higher education commissioner got a bump in pay, so did the public schools chief.
A few years ago, that law was repealed, but Wright’s salary was not rolled back.
So, in a poor, small state with some of the lowest marks on most every education standard — from per-pupil spending to academic proficiency — the state superintendent of education earns 72 percent more than the national average.
That’s absurd.
You can’t justify a $300,000 salary on student enrollment. You can’t justify it on performance. You can’t justify it on anything.
It should be reduced during the next legislative session. If not that, then at least for the next hire whenever that day comes.
— Tim Kalich
