Cummins: Teacher Pay — ‘Guesswork with Footnotes’

October 26, 2024

by Ryan Cummins

An open letter to state Sen. Greg Goode:

Your newsletter announcing that Indiana’s average teacher pay now surpasses $60,000 is Interesting. In  my opinion, though, your and the Indiana Republican Party’s take on teacher compensation is at best flawed, and more likely destructive. In an essay disseminated by The Indiana Policy Review in 2023, I asked the related question:

“Is going from $56,000 to $60,000 enough for teachers? Too much? Not nearly enough? Just right? No one knows, and in fact no one can know when the decision is made outside of the parameters of free and voluntary exchange.” 

The reality is that any data or claims put forth by the bureaucrats on the Next Level Teacher Compensation Commission is, to paraphrase another writer, “Nothing more than guesswork with footnotes.” If anything, it is another futile attempt at central planning by these apparatchiks and should be regarded as meaningless. 

The answer for the education of Hoosiers lies in the competition and voluntary actions of the free market. I would urge you and your Republican colleagues to move strongly in that direction.

Ryan Cummins, a business owner and an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, is a former chairman of the appropriations committee of the Terre Haute Common Council.

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