Editorial Pay increase for teachers priority over tuition grant Even if no one imagined the circumstances under which a long-awaited teacher compensation report would be delivered, Indiana teachers knew its key finding: “Hoosier teachers earn less than teachers in all our neighboring states, and Indiana's $36,498 starting salary is more than $3,600 below the national average.” It took the Next Level Teacher Compensation Commission nearly two years to acknowledge what some educators have argued for a decade. If the commission's recommendations look even more challenging in a post-COVID-19 economy, its report at least makes a powerful case for implementing them, acknowledging “the high cost of making up for a 20-year regression,” as well as the fact that “some of these recommendations will not be possible without significant additional funding.”