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    Teacher Pay Is So Low in Some U.S. School Districts That They’re Recruiting Overseas

    Teacher Pay Is So Low in Some U.S. School Districts That They’re Recruiting Overseas

    By DANA GOLDSTEINMAY 2, 2018



    Donato Soberano, center, and his seventh-grade science students at Sunset Ridge Elementary School in Arizona. Budget cuts and stagnant salaries have prompted his district and others to recruit educators in his native Philippines to fill core teaching jobs. CreditDeanna Alejandra Dent for The New York Times

    GLENDALE, Ariz. — The latest wave of foreign workers sweeping into American jobs brought Donato Soberano from the Philippines to Arizona two years ago. He had to pay thousands of dollars to a job broker and lived for a time in an apartment with five other Filipino workers. The lure is the pay — 10 times more than what he made doing the same work back home.

    But Mr. Soberano is not a hospitality worker or a home health aide. He is in another line of work that increasingly pays too little to attract enough Americans: Mr. Soberano is a public school teacher.

    As walkouts by teachers protesting low pay and education funding shortfalls spread across the country, the small but growing movement to recruit teachers from overseas is another sign of the difficulty some districts are having providing the basics to public school students.

    Among the latest states hit by the protests is Arizona, where teacher pay is more than $10,000 below the national average of $59,000 per year. The Pendergast Elementary School District, where Mr. Soberano works, has recruited more than 50 teachers from the Philippines since 2015. They hold J-1 visas, which allow them to work temporarily in the United States, like au pairs or camp counselors, but offer no path to citizenship. More than 2,800 foreign teachers arrived on American soil last year through the J-1, according to the State Department, up from about 1,200 in 2010.
    “In these times, you have to be innovative and creative in recruiting,” said Patricia Davis-Tussey, Pendergast’s head of human resources. “We embrace diversity and really gain a lot from the cultural exchange experience. Our students do as well.”

    The district, which covers parts of Glendale, Avondale and north Phoenix, is a hotbed of activism in the teacher walkout movement, known as #RedforEd. Picketing educators say they have had to move in with their parents, apply for food stamps and pay out of pocket for classroom essentials like graph paper and science supplies. They argue that taxes are too low to adequately fund schools, or for teachers to secure a middle-class lifestyle.

    In response to the teacher walkout, Republican lawmakers introduced a budget that provides new funding for salaries and classrooms. But leaders of the #RedForEd movement said the bill fell far short of their demands, and would restore only about a quarter of the $1.1 billion in annual cuts that they say schools have weathered since the last recession.

    In Pendergast, where salaries of around $40,000 are a source of pain and protest for the district’s American educators, Mr. Soberano is thankful for the pay.

    Much like other foreign workers, he went into debt to find a job in the United States. He said he used savings and a bank loan to pay $12,500, about three years’ worth of his salary in the Philippines, to Petro-Fil Manpower Services. That is a Filipino company of Ligaya Avenida, a California-based consultant who recruits and screens teachers for the J-1.

    The payment covered Mr. Soberano’s airfare and rent for his first few months in Arizona, as well as a $2,500 fee for Ms. Avenida and a fee of several thousand dollars to Alliance Abroad Group, a Texas-based company that is an official State Department sponsor for J-1 visa holders. The J-1 lasts three years, with the option for two one-year extensions. For each year he works in the United States, Mr. Soberano will owe Alliance Abroad an additional $1,000 visa renewal fee.

    “You have to make some sacrifices to leave your family way back home,” Mr. Soberano said. Every night, he prepares lessons for his seventh- and eighth-grade science students, and every morning, he wakes up at 4 a.m. to video chat with his wife and two teenage daughters, who are ending their day in Manila. Despite their separation, he said the experience has been rewarding, “teaching in a different culture, but also, financially.”

    The school districts that recruit teachers like Mr. Soberano say that they have few other options, because they can’t find enough American educators willing to work for the pay that’s offered. They say that the foreign teachers are being given valuable opportunities, and that American students are enriched by learning from them. But critics argue the teachers are being taken advantage of in a practice that helps keep wages low and perpetuates yearslong austerity policies.
    Though J-1 teachers account for only a tiny share of Arizona’s 60,000 public schoolteachers, international recruitment has spread quickly in recent years, as sponsor companies market themselves to districts facing shortages and word spreads among administrators. According to the State Department, 183 Arizona teachers were granted new J-1 visas last year, up from 17 in 2010.

    “Rather than increase salaries, districts may once again resort to recruiting internationally as a way to solve the teacher shortage,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a national teachers’ union, said in a statement. She added that while her union “will fight for everyone working in our communities and educating our kids to have fair wages, rights and workplace protections regardless of where they’re from, the use of the J-1 visa program to fill long-term shortages is an abuse of an exchange program.”
    Photo

    Teachers and their supporters marched last week in Phoenix as part of a statewide walkout over education funding. CreditCaitlin O'Hara for The New York TimesAdministrators and researchers say experienced foreign educators can be a better option for students than the substitutes who would otherwise fill these positions. But research is clear that teacher churn negatively impacts academic achievement. J-1 teachers are, because of the visa’s limitations, temporary; and without higher pay and regular raises, administrators in these districts say it will be impossible to attract enough American teachers and keep them in the classroom.

    Recruiting in Manila


    During the recession, districts found it easier to hire American workers, since more of them were looking to teach. But as the economy picked back up, hiring became difficult in states like Arizona, which have pursued years of tax cuts that have dampened school budgets and teacher pay. The Pendergast district has lost $1.6 million over the past five years because of state and local cuts, according to administrators.

    The superintendent, Lily Matos DeBlieux, has sought private donations to fund a Spanish-English dual-language program, a monthly lunch discussion to help parents navigate their children’s education and many other efforts. “With the little we have, we have done an incredible job,” she said.

    But hiring remains a challenge. Even with 48 J-1 visa-holders teaching this year, Pendergast has still had to rely on 20 long-term substitutes, said Ms. Davis-Tussey, the chief of human resources.

    In addition to interviewing international candidates via Skype, district staff members have traveled to Manila several times since 2015 to interview teachers. Mr. Soberano met with the district there in June 2016, and just two months later, arrived in Arizona to teach at Sunset Ridge Elementary School in Glendale. The Philippines was the top sender of J-1 teachers to the United States in 2017, followed by Jamaica and China.

    The 15,000-mile round-trips made sense, Ms. Davis-Tussey said. Many short-staffed schools turn to Teach for America, which recruits recent college graduates and career-changers for two-year stints in the classroom. But to hire a Teach for America recruit, who may have no teaching experience or coursework in education, the district must pay $5,000 per teacher, in addition to salaries.

    For a similar amount, a single trip to the Philippines can net dozens of candidates, all of whom, as required by the J-1 program, have degrees in education or the subjects they teach, and at least two years of experience in a Filipino school.
    Mr. Soberano holds one bachelor’s degree in education, with a focus on physics, and another in philosophy. He has also studied theology. He has over 20 years of classroom experience.

    Mukul Bakhshi, director of the Alliance for Ethical International Recruitment Practices, in Philadelphia, said the Philippines purposefully trains teachers, nurses and other workers “in a way that it’s easy for them to pass muster from licensing authorities here. They obviously speak English, and they are willing to work.” Remittances from foreign workers account for about 10 percent of the Philippines’ gross domestic product.

    The Pendergast district did not owe any money to the companies that connected it with recruits in Manila. Those costs were borne by the Filipino teachers.

    James Bell, president of Alliance Abroad, the visa sponsor, said a financial arrangement like Mr. Soberano’s is just one of several models the company uses, and that in some cases, school districts pay visa3,5 renewal fees. Alliance Abroad sponsors several hundred J-1 visa holders each year, according to Mr. Bell, working primarily in Arizona, California, Nevada, Texas and Utah. He said the biggest demand was for special-education teachers, though districts also looked to hire in science, math and foreign languages.

    In Gila Bend, a small town 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, 11 Filipino teachers who room together in several shared apartments commute to work by van 100 miles round-trip each day, according to Peggy Perry, a secretary in the district’s central office. In Casa Grande, halfway between Phoenix and Tucson, about 25 Filipino teachers with J-1 visas are teaching science, math, special education and English, said Mary Ann Amerson, head of human resources for the Casa Grande Union High School District.

    The district works with Ms. Avenida, the California-based consultant, to find the teachers and interview them via Skype. “We don’t pay any money for it,” Ms. Amerson said. The recruits pay the fees.

    Ms. Avenida said her company, which uses the name Avenida International Consultants in the United States, recruited 250 Filipino teachers with J-1 visas in 2017. According to State Department data, that would account for more than half the total number of J-1 visa holders who arrived from the Philippines last year.

    Ms. Avenida joined union representatives in a working group, assembled by the Alliance for Ethical International Recruitment Practices, that drafted a 2015 code of conduct for international teacher recruitment. The code calls for districts to bear all recruitment and legal costs, and for foreign educators not to be charged more than a nominal application processing fee, under $150. It has not been widely adopted, and Ms. Avenida said she disagreed with the group’s conclusions.

    Photo

    Mr. Soberano said that despite the fees he paid to private companies for his teaching arrangement in the United States, he was grateful for the opportunity. CreditDeanna Alejandra Dent for The New York Times“Somebody has to foot the bill,” she said — and in a climate of tight school budgets, that somebody is the teacher.

    Lessons and Challenges

    In Mr. Soberano’s case, it was not until his second year on the job that he had paid back the money he owed and was able to begin sending some home to his family. He has had to live austerely. In his first year in Arizona, he shared an apartment with five other Filipino teachers, and he now rents a room in the home of a Filipino-American family. Still, he said he was nothing but grateful for the opportunity. “The district is very supportive,” he said. Pendergast created a welcome committee to assist the Filipino teachers, and colleagues pitched in by buying groceries and driving the newcomers to work.

    In addition to financial challenges, foreign educators face instructional ones. Administrators across the country who work with J-1 visa holders say the teachers must learn the federal requirement for inclusion, which requires that disabled children be taught alongside nondisabled peers, in the least restrictive environment possible.

    And classroom management techniques differ across cultures. “In the Philippines, the teacher there is really an authority figure,” Mr. Soberano said. “Once I stood in front of the class, everybody kept quiet.” That wasn’t the case in Arizona.

    “One thing I also learned is to be friends with the students,” Mr. Soberano added, “to know more about each one and especially their family. How are they doing? When you understand them, I remove that kind of problem.” State Department regulations require J-1 teachers to engage in cultural exchange activities with their students. The J-1 program was created by the 1961 Fulbright-Hayes Act, with the purpose of fostering understanding between nations. Mr. Soberano said that once a month, he teaches a lesson on Filipino culture, and that his students have been most interested in discussing the differences between the Filipino and American education systems. In the Philippines, Mr. Soberano tells them, school is stricter and more academically challenging.

    New regulations from the State Department, which went into effect in 2016, require J-1 holders to return to their home countries for at least two years after their visas expire before reapplying. Mr. Soberano said he may do that. But his wish is to reside legally in the United States and work long-term as a teacher. “I would love to bring my family here,” he said.

    Ms. Weingarten, the union president, suggested that the H-1B visa for high-skilled immigrants, which offers a pathway toward permanent residence, would be a more appropriate visa for a teacher like Mr. Soberano. But Pendergast and other school districts say long wait times and high legal costs can make the H-1B prohibitive. The Trump administration has also tightened oversight of that program.

    In Denver public schools, 20 bilingual education teachers hold H-1Bs and about three hold J-1s. But in the future, the district said, it may expand its use of the J-1.

    “We still don’t have enough people to fill the openings,” said Bart Muller, the managing director of employee and labor relations for the system. “The political environment has been a little challenging over the last year and a half. The bottom line is there are a lot more hoops to jump through with H-1B, while J-1 is fairly simple. You can do it expeditiously.”

    Lora Bartlett, an education professor who has written a book about migrant teachers, argued that there should be a new visa category that meets the needs of public schools while allowing effective teachers to achieve legal residency. But, she added, “there are people who have a vested interest in not finding a long-term solution. There is a whole industry that makes money every time a new teacher comes into the country. They don’t make money when a teacher stays.”

    And in Arizona, where many teachers are expected to improve test scores using aging textbooks inside buildings in need of repair, districts worry that a modest increase in teacher salaries and school funding won’t be enough to persuade more local candidates to enter the profession.

    “Quite frankly, for a lot of the teachers, some of the fun and creativity has been taken out of it with mandates,” said Ms. Amerson, the head of human resources in Casa Grande. “It seems like we spend the whole entire second semester testing kids.” In Pendergast, Ms. Davis-Tussey agreed that higher pay alone would not be enough to fill the empty jobs that have forced her to look to the Philippines.

    “That respect for the profession is just as important as the money,” she said. “And for a long time, teachers have felt, not only did they not have money, but what they were doing was being brushed aside and not respected.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/u...ilippines.html

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    I don't buy it. Their pay is three time what I get. Granted I am retired so I don't have commuting costs and other work related expenses. But I live in California where everything is expensive.

    The problem is probably the number of illegal aliens soaking the Arizona system which puts a high cost on school districts for the average cost per student that tax money can be collected for.

    Everybody wants more money for what they do. Hamburger-flippers want to be able to drive a Ferrari, live in a mansion, have a yacht, etc. But the incentive to move up to a better paying job must be the carrot.

    Recruiting teachers from another country should not be a viable option. If those teachers live here, they should be paid the same scale as U.S. citizen teachers, and will experience the same housing, commuting, and living costs as a U.S. citizen.

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    More cheap labor as the globalists mark another notch - why should we teach English second language and at $59.2 BILLION ANNUALLY.

    http://www.fairus.org/issue/publicat...blic-education

    Foreigners should pay for tutors to bring their children up to snuff. When I went to school, that was the norm. English is the language of USA. Studies have proven that multi-lingual is not more intelligent. In my experience, multi-lingual means you really don't understand other languages completely other than your native one. Nice to pretend....
    Last edited by artist; 05-03-2018 at 04:25 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by artist View Post
    Foreigners should pay for tutors to bring their children up to snuff. When I went to school, that was the norm. English is the language of USA.
    Absolutely. All government entities should publish only in English. Sponsors should donate to print translations and finance interpreters for all but police and judicial services where encounters with such authorities are compulsory.

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    Schools Look Abroad to Hire Teachers - The New York Times

    https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/education/15teach.html
    Sep 14, 2009 - Some American school districts have turned increasingly to overseas recruiting to find teachers willing to work in their hard-to-staff schools, according to a new report by a national teachers union. The report used government data to estimate that 19,000 foreign teachers were working in the United States ...
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    MW
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    These teacher recruiting firms are making big money pumping these immigrants into our country! As most things where immigration is concerned, it ends up being all about the green.

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" ** Edmund Burke**

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    Billboards aim to recruit teachers from Oklahoma to Texas

    Posted: May 09, 2018 11:25 AM PDTUpdated: May 09, 2018 11:25 AM PDT

    NORMAN, Okla. (AP) - A large school district in Texas has placed billboards in major Oklahoma cities in hopes of recruiting teachers across state lines for higher-paying jobs.

    The Norman Transcript reports that billboards were revealed Monday in Norman, Tulsa, Stillwater and Oklahoma City. The Fort Worth Independent School District is funding the billboards, which say, "Your future is in a Fort Worth classroom - teacher starting salary $52,000."


    Fort Worth district spokesman Clint Bond says the campaign is a means to tap into a pool of quality teachers and show that Fort Worth has something to offer.


    Norman Public Schools Superintendent Nick Migliorino says competition from neighboring states isn't new. He says Oklahoma has a ways to go before it can compete in the market for teachers.

    http://www.krgv.com/story/38151681/b...ahoma-to-texas

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    Increase your classroom size, reduce the number of teachers you need, deport the illegal aliens and raise your teacher salaries. It's so simple. Illegal immigration and this ridiculous little classroom size are your problems. SOLVE THEM. There were 47 students in my first grade class and remained so until we got to elective classes in high school, and we were smart, at the top of the world in education!! You'v reduced the classroom size to almost nothing and put near the bottom 50 in education world wide. THAT IS A FAILURE!!! Fix it!!!

    Idiots.

    GRRRR!!!!!
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    Class size and student achievement

    Reducing class size to increase student achievement is an approach that has been tried, debated, and analyzed for several decades. The premise seems logical: with fewer students to teach, teachers can coax better performance from each of them. But what does the research show?Some researchers have not found a connection between smaller classes and higher student achievement, but most of the research shows that when class size reduction programs are well-designed and implemented in the primary grades (K-3), student achievement rises as class size drops.

    Research findings: We identified 19 studies that met our standards. Most of these addressed reduced class size programs in grades K-3. Indeed, most programs in the past 20 years have targeted these early grades, in part because earlier research (see, for example, Glass and Smith 1978), suggested that these are the optimal years for such programs, and in part because of the more recent and comprehensive evidence from Tennessee’s influential Project STAR (Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio).

    (For more information on Project STAR, visit http://www.heros-inc.org/star.htm.)

    From this review of the research, we can scientifically document several important findings about reduced class size, which local school districts may find useful:


    • Smaller classes in the early grades (K-3) can boost student academic achievement;
    • A class size of no more than 18 students per teacher is required to produce the greatest benefits;
    • A program spanning grades K-3 will produce more benefits than a program that reaches students in only one or two of the primary grades;
    • Minority and low-income students show even greater gains when placed in small classes in the primary grades;
    • The experience and preparation of teachers is a critical factor in the success or failure of class size reduction programs;
    • Reducing class size will have little effect without enough classrooms and well-qualified teachers; and
    • Supports, such as professional development for teachers and a rigorous curriculum, enhance the effect of reduced class size on academic achievement.

    The following sections describe several reduced class size programs and examine the evidence.Statewide programs Tennessee’s Project STAR—commissioned by the state legislature in the mid-1980s—may be the most influential class reduction program in recent years.

    Project STAR found substantial evidence that reducing class size improved student academic achievement. . .








    http://www.centerforpubliceducation....nt-achievement
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    Republicans are giving raises to striking teachers — and making the middle class pay for them


    Tax hikes in Arizona, Oklahoma, and other states will burden middle- and low-income workers.

    By Alexia Fernández Campbell and Alvin Chang May 8, 2018, 9:20am EDT




    An Oklahoma City teacher protests outside the state capitol on April 2. J Pat Carter/Getty Images

    Arizona teachers returned to class on May 4 after ending a six-day strike that closed nearly all of the state’s 2,000-plus schools. Educators returned to work after the state legislature gave them a 20 percent salary raise over three years and some extra funding for public education.

    But there’s a catch: Lawmakers are going to make them and other middle- and working-class Arizonans pay for the raise.

    Teachers had wanted legislators to raise business and income taxes on wealthy Arizonans to restore cuts to public education and boost anemic teacher salaries.

    Republicans gave in to some of the demands for more funding — but they’re not paying for the salary hike with new taxes on the wealthy. Instead, the legislature passed a fee on motorists and shifted most of the cost of desegregating schools from the state to taxpayers in low-income school districts. Those levies will largely hit working- and middle-class taxpayers.


    The developments in Arizona fit into a broader pattern. Teacher unrest has roiled a handful of (mostly conservative) states: Arizona, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The protests are a response to decades of funding cuts for education and years of tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited businesses and wealthy taxpayers. In each of these states, teachers called on lawmakers to boost funding for public education with higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.


    For the most part, the strikes have proven effective in forcing Republican lawmakers in those states to restore some of that funding. But these legislatures have fiercely resisted efforts to raise any taxes. And when they have given in, they’ve done so in ways that would disproportionately hurt workers who are struggling to make ends meet.


    Arizona


    Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed a budget bill May 3 that gives teachers a 20 percent pay raise over three years. The plan will cost the state more than $600 million a year, and lawmakers don’t yet have a plan to pay for it all. Here’s how they agreed to pay for some of it:

    • A new $18 car registration fee that is expected to raise $149 million a year. Such a fee is, of course, regressive — it will cost low-income families more than higher-income families because such a fee represents a larger chunk of the former’s income.
    • A change in how the state desegregates public schools that should free up about $18 million a year in state money. Most of that cost will be shifted to homeowners, via higher property taxes in low-income school districts.


    These two changes will not be enough to generate the more than $600 million needed to cover the teacher raises and new funding for schools included in the bill passed last week.

    Ducey is counting on optimistic economic growth projectionsto bring in more revenue to pay for some of it — something Republicans love to promise but have little control over.


    In recent weeks, Ducey had proposed a plan to help pay for teacher raises that wouldn’t hike taxes but most likely would have taken money away from other parts of the budget, including aid for people with developmental disabilities and money to hire skilled nurses for Medicaid patients. Those potential cuts were not in the final spending bill. But if the economic boom doesn’t materialize, it’s pretty clear who will probably pay for the funding gap: not businesses or wealthy families.


    Arizona voters could change that. The state has not raised income taxes since 1990, and other taxes have only been raised through ballot initiatives. A coalition of teachers and parents have launched a petition to add one to the ballot in November. The initiative, spearheaded by a progressive public policy group, would hike the income tax rate for workers that earn more than $250,000 a year or households that earn more than $500,000.


    This tax increase would be the first time in nearly three decades that Arizona raised individual income tax rates. Top income tax rates have fallen since 1990:



    And in the past decade, the state has cut corporate taxes drastically. This, along with the recession, contributed to the state losing more than $600 million in revenue from businesses:


    Put together, the past 30 years of tax cuts cost the state about $4 billion in revenue annually — and education has been hit hard because of it:


    Since the Great Recession, $1.1 billion has been cut from the Arizona education budget.

    Oklahoma


    Oklahoma teachers got an average $6,100 raise in April after going on strike for nine days.Lawmakers also agreed to a smaller raise for school support staff and more than $60 million in extra funding for schools. But politicians refused to pay for the $479 million increase in education funding by eliminating the special tax deduction for capital gains investment income, as teachers had suggested, or by raising the tax rate on high-income earners. Instead, they agreed to:

    • A 6-cent tax increase on diesel fuel and a 3-cent increase on gasoline. Fuel taxes are considered regressive because they make up a larger share of a low-wage worker’s paycheck than a wealthier worker’s paycheck. (There is, however, some debate about how much a gas tax hurts the poorest workers, who are less likely to own a car.)
    • A $1 tax increase on cigarettes, which is also regressive.
    • Expanding the type of gambling allowed in tribal casinos, which would bring in an estimated $22 million annually in new tax revenue. Casinos had lobbied for this expansion.
    • A sales tax on online purchases from third-party sellers on sites like Amazon. Sales taxes are generally regressive, though some progressive groups argue that taxing online sales doesn’t hurt poor families as much because people who shop online tend to have higher incomes.
    • An increase in the gross production tax on oil companies drilling on public and private land. But the new 5 percent tax is still one the lowest among oil-producing states. (At least nine states have a similar tax, with Wyoming and Louisiana charging the highest rate: about 13 percent.)


    Oklahoma had already been shifting the burden of public services onto the lower and middle classes.


    In the mid-2000s, the Oklahoma state legislature approved several tax cuts that largely helped the rich. “That was a time when the economy was booming and oil prices were high, and for a time it looked like you could have it all,” said David Blatt, who runs the Oklahoma Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.


    But when the economy tanked in 2008 and oil prices plummeted, the legislature just kept cutting taxes — which helped the wealthiest residents.



    This spate of tax cuts hit education the hardest. The Oklahoma Policy Institute extrapolated how much these cuts cost education in the state each year and found that it’s more than $350 million annually.


    The top 5 percent of earners received about 43 percent of the cuts, and the top 1 percent received more than a quarter.


    West Virginia

    After a nearly two-week strike, West Virginia teachers and other state employees received a 5 percent pay raise as well as a hold on raising health insurance premiums.

    But West Virginia didn’t pass any new revenue measures to pay for the raises. Instead, Senate President Mitch Carmichael bragged that they were able to do this “without increasing any taxes at all.”


    Lawmakers say they’ll pay for the raises by not implementing planned spending increases on various projects, which include funding for economic development, tourism, and state building repair.


    But there are some measures that will squarely hit lower-income residents. The state won’t have additional funding for a free tuition program for students in community and technical colleges. In addition, lawmakers said they will need to take money from the general services and Medicaid budgets. This means residents who rely on social services are losing out.


    This stubborn refusal to raise taxes is part of a decades-long trend in West Virginia, which has been cutting taxes for decades. After the top individual tax rate climbed to 13 percent in the mid-1980s, the state cut it by half, and it’s stayed there ever since.



    Meanwhile, in the past decade, the state has cut tax rates for corporations:


    Put those two things together, and it means that wealthier West Virginians are paying a much smaller portion of their income to state and local taxes. Meanwhile, poor and middle-class residents shoulder a much larger load:


    Kentucky

    In Kentucky, teachers reluctantly backed a bill that boosted funding for education by raising taxes on everyone but the wealthy. (The alternative was an even more unappealing bill from Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.)

    Bevin vetoed the bill, but he was overridden by lawmakers.

    The legislature increased funding for education but passed regressive changes to the Kentucky tax code to pay for it:


    • There used to be six tax brackets for the individual income tax, with the top rate being 6 percent. That was changed to a flat 5 percent tax for everyone.
    • The amount of pension income you can exclude from the state income tax decreased, which means people who rely on pensions (like teachers) pay more taxes.
    • The corporate income tax used to have three brackets with a top rate of 6 percent, but that was also changed to a flat 5 percent for everyone.
    • Sales tax now applies to several services that were once exempt, which hurts middle- and lower-income people more.
    • The cigarette tax was raised from 60 cents to $1.10 a pack.


    Ultimately, this means the top 5 percent of residents get a tax break; the bottom 95 percent will face tax increases, according to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.




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