Compensation - Salary

Although the details of teacher compensation are decided locally, nearly half of all states set the parameters for teacher pay (27 states give districts full authority over teacher pay), either by establishing a minimum salary or going so far as to dictate a schedule. Some states require districts to pay teachers who have advanced degrees higher salaries and others establish criteria for awarding credit on the salary schedule for a teacher's previous experience.

Spurred by Race to the Top, states are increasingly encouraging differentiated compensation that deviates from the traditional step and lane structure of teacher pay. Many reward teachers with additional pay on the basis of performance, for teachers working in hard-to-staff schools and for teachers of hard-to-staff subjects. Some states provide stipends for teachers with National Board certification. For more information on state level policies, see the compensation section of the state policy issue page.

While states frequently determine the basic structure of teacher pay, the specifics of teacher salaries are set at a district level. Even in states with salary schedules, the actual dollar amount and size of raises are decided at the local level. In addition to raises tied to experience and coursework completion, teachers often receive annual raises for cost of living adjustments (COLA).

Teacher Contract Database Our database uses information annually collected from salary schedules in each district and some data is extracted and derived from calculations to answer 23 questions about teacher salary. The database covers general and annual salary information, such as maximum and minimum salaries for a variety of experience and qualification levels, as well performance pay and other types of differentiated pay.

For a more in-depth analysis of teacher salaries, read our report Smart Money. The interactive map below shows how lifetime earnings for teachers from districts in our database compare.

What the research shows

While the most common pay increases in teaching are associated with the attainment of advanced degrees and years of experience, research shows that neither advanced degrees nor experience are linked to student achievement, with the exception of the first few years of experience.

Experience In the paper Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement, Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain concluded that there are "important gains in teaching quality in the first year of experience and smaller gains over the next few career years. However, there is little evidence that improvements continue after the first three years" (2005, pp. 449).

Goldhaber and Brewer in When Should We Reward Degrees for Teachers? found no evidence that experience matters after five years in the classroom, with most of the growth in the first year or two (1998).

Master's degrees In 2009, NCTQ commissioned a meta-analysis on the impact of master's degrees on student performance. Out of 102 statistical tests examined, approximately 90 percent showed that advanced degrees had either no significant impact or a negative impact on student achievement. Of the 10 percent finding a positive impact, none showed a statistically significant impact. These studies that showed a positive impact were notably for secondary students of teachers holding an advanced degree in mathematics; these students performed slightly better than students of teachers without an advanced degree or a degree in a subject other than mathematics (NCTQ 2010, pp 3).

Performance pay Much of the current research on performance pay focuses on its value to change teacher behavior, but increased attention is being paid to the importance of attracting higher caliber candidates through performance incentives.

Much of the current research on performance pay focuses on its value to change teacher behavior, but increased attention is being paid to the importance of attracting higher caliber candidates through performance incentives.

In his Education Next article, Ludger Woessmann, a German professor specializing in the economics of education, compares the achievement of students in countries that do and do not pay teachers based on performance (2011). Although the available data is from a relatively small sample of countries and focuses on observational, rather than experimental data, Woessman finds that, on average , students in countries with performance-related pay score roughly 25 percent of a standard deviation higher on the PISA math and reading tests.

Works Cited

Goldhaber, Dan D., and Dominic J. Brewer. "When should we reward degrees for teachers?." Phi Delta Kappan (1998): 134-138.

National Council on Teacher Quality. Restructuring Teacher Pay to Reward Excellence (2010).

Rivkin, Steven G., Eric A. Hanushek, and John F. Kain. "Teachers, schools, and academic achievement." Econometrica 73.2 (2005): 417-458.

Springer, M.G., Ballou, D., Hamilton, L., Le, V., Lockwood, J.R., McCaffrey, D., Pepper, M., and Stecher, B. (2012). Final Report: Experimental Evidence from the Project on Incentives in Teaching. Nashville, TN: National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University

Woessmann, Ludger. ?Merit Pay International?. Education Next (2011).