By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

No one goes into education for the money, but Al Cade, head of Missouri Southern State University’s teacher-education department, doesn’t believe teachers should scrape by.

“Why do folks become teachers? Because they have a love for young people. They want to make a difference,” Cade said. “But you can’t pay the bills off of making a difference.”

The average salary for a beginning teacher in Southwest Missouri is $27,618; even after a lifetime in the classroom, maximum pay for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree averages $33,680, and with a master’s $41,229, the Missouri State Teachers Association says.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education reports that 36 percent of Missouri teachers leave within their first five years because of pay.

Cade said low salaries are just one obstacle facing education that candidates for state office need to address.

Their plans

Kenny Hulshof, the Republican candidate for governor, wants to offer $3,000 incentives to math and science teachers in an effort to attract 1,500 of them and so Missouri can keep the teachers that it trains, said Scott Baker, spokesman for the Hulshof campaign. Hulshof was unavailable for comment.

Hulshof is expected to reveal his plan for K-12 education this week, but Baker said the candidate is committed to fully funding K-12 education and some of the inadequacies in teacher pay can be addressed through that.

Jay Nixon, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, also was unavailable for comment last week, but Oren Shur, a spokesman for the campaign, said Nixon also will offer incentives to bring Missouri teachers’ salaries closer to the national average, but he didn’t offer any details.

“Right now, Missouri ranks 43rd in the nation (for teacher salaries), and that’s inexcusable,” Shur said. “There is no reason our state should rank near the bottom. We need to respect the very challenging job (teachers) do.”

Nixon supports forgiveness of state-funded loans for those entering education as well as incentives for teachers going into struggling school districts.

Higher ed

Bethany Humphrey, a junior psychology major at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, gets federal grants to help pay for school, but the full-time student from Joplin also has to work 20 hours a week and take out loans to pay for her college education. She wonders why she and other college students must go into debt to get a degree.