Title: Cost-of-living doesn't make up for Oklahoma's low teacher pay - Oklahoma Policy Institute
Headings: Cost-of-living doesn’t make up for Oklahoma’s low teacher pay
Cost-of-living doesn’t make up for Oklahoma’s low teacher pay
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Content: That certainly helps, but we have to be more precise to understand whether the low cost-of-living makes up for our low salaries. Fortunately, the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC) provides detailed numbers on how each state’s cost of living compares to the national average. MERIC, which is the research division for the Missouri Department of Economic Development, shows that Oklahoma’s ranking for cost-of-living is similar to our ranking for teacher pay. They show that in the most recent economic quarter (1st Quarter 2015), the cost-of-living in Oklahoma was third lowest in the nation, behind only Mississippi and Idaho. Combining estimates for groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, health, and miscellaneous expenses, Oklahoma’s cost-of-living was just 89.1 percent of the national average. What is less fortunate is that Oklahoma’s low cost-of-living does not make up for our even lower teacher pay. The 2014-15 average salary for classroom teachers in Oklahoma was $44,628, which was just 77.8 percent of the national average teacher salary ($57,379). It costs about 90 cents on the dollar to live here, but we are paying teachers less than 80 cents on the dollar compared to the national average. To bring our teacher pay and cost-of-living into balance, the average Oklahoma teacher would need a raise of about $6,500. Even that understates the problem, because we must compete for teachers against neighboring states with similar costs of living.