After reading the recent opinion article by Mike Winder, where he said, “We (Utah) are the No. 2 best state in the nation for teachers, and Utah’s students have the second-highest SAT scores and highest ACT scores in the country.” I couldn’t just sit back and laugh. So I went to work checking on the facts.
To my surprise I found that he was not totally wrong. The World Population Review ranks Utah the second best state for teachers, and the third best state for teacher opportunity and competition; and they rank Utah 12th in academic and work environment. All of that is pretty good. But I wonder why they rank us so high when Utah’s starting teaching salary is 42nd in the nation, the average teaching salary ranks 27th and the teacher-to-student ratio ranks 46th.
And I wonder where he got his information on the ACT and SAT scores. Some states require all students to take the ACT, but not every state. So one can only compare our state with those who tested about the same percentage. Utah scored 19.9, just above the national average of 19.8. It is the best score for states testing more than 90% of their students. But there were 28 other states that scored better than Utah, who tested a lower percentage of students.
I don’t think any state requires students to take the SAT, and since COVID-19 interrupted everything, the number of students taking the test has dropped significantly. Utah students ranked 10th in the SAT scores, but less than 2% of the students took the test in 2022.
So, yes, I have to agree that Utah does pretty well in public education overall, and a lot of that is due to the kind of teachers we have, who choose to stay here in spite of the low wages and stressful classroom conditions.
Fred Ash
Legislative chair of the Utah Retired School Employees Association