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Four-day school week: Research suggests impacts of a condensed schedule vary by student group, school type

Denise-Marie Ordway — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

We updated this piece on the four-day school week, originally published in June 2018, on July 15, 2023 to include new research and other information.

More than 2,100 public schools in 25 states have switched to a four-day school week, often in hopes of recruiting teachers, saving money and boosting student attendance, researchers estimate.

Small, rural schools facing significant teacher shortages have led the trend, usually choosing to take off Mondays or Fridays to give employees and students a three-day weekend every week. To make up for the lost day of instruction, school officials typically tack time onto the remaining four days.

In some places where schools made the change, school district leaders have marveled at the resulting spikes in job applications from teachers and other job seekers. Teacher shortages, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, have plagued public schools nationwide for decades.

“The number of teacher applications that we’ve received have gone up more than 4-fold,” Dale Herl, superintendent of the Independence, Missouri school district, told CBS News late last year.

The impact on students, however, has not been as positive. Although peer-reviewed research on the topic is limited, focusing only on a single state or small group of states, there is evidence that some groups of students learn less on a four-day schedule than on a five-day schedule.

A new analysis of student performance in six states — Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming — finds that students who went to class four days a week, as a whole, made less progress in reading during the academic year than students who went five days a week. Kids on a four-day schedule earned lower reading scores on a spring assessment known as the Measures of Academic Progress Growth, on average.

However, the authors of the paper, published last month, also found that the condensed schedule had little to no effect on the rural students they studied, on average. Schools located in towns and suburbs, on the other hand, saw student performance drop considerably after adopting a four-day week.

The authors also discovered differences among student groups. For example, Hispanic students going to class four days a week made less progress in math during the school year than white students on the same schedule. White students made less progress in math than Native American students during the 11-year study.

“For policymakers and practitioners, this study addresses previous ambiguity about the effects of four-day school weeks on academic outcomes and provides evidence supporting concerns about four-day school week effects on student achievement and growth, particularly for those implemented in non-rural areas,” write the authors, Emily Morton, Paul Thompson and Megan Kuhfeld.

In the spring before the COVID-19 pandemic, a total of 662 public school districts used the schedule — up more than 600% since 1999, Thompson and Morton write in a 2021 essay for the Brookings Institution. That number climbed to 876 during the 2022-23 academic year, they told The Journalist’s Resource in email messages.

In addition to studying the schedule’s effect on student achievement, researchers are also investigating its impact on other aspects of school operations, including education spending, student discipline and employee morale. To make the research easier to find, the University of Oregon’s HEDCO Institute for Evidence-Based Educational Practice has created the Four-Day School Week Research Database.

Anyone can use the interactive platform to sift through research completed as of May 2023. It’s worth noting that most research in the database is not peer-reviewed journal articles. Seventy of the more than 100 papers are student dissertations, theses and other papers.

If you keep reading, you’ll find that we have gathered and summarized several relevant journal articles below. To date, the scholarly literature indicates:

Some schools cut instructional time when they adopt a four-day schedule.
The impact of a four-day school week differs depending on a range of factors, including the number of hours per week a school operates, how the school structures its daily schedule and the race and ethnicity of students.
The condensed schedule does not save much money, considering employee salaries and benefits make up the bulk of school expenses. In a 2021 analysis, Thompson estimates schools save 1% to 2% by shortening the school week by one day.
Staff morale improves under a four-day school week.
Fighting and bullying decline at high schools.

Both Thompson and Morton urged journalists to explain that the amount of time schools dedicate to student learning during four-day weeks makes a big difference.

“It’s pretty critical to the story that districts with longer days (who are possibly delivering equal or more instructional time to their students than they were on a five-day week) are not seeing the same negative impacts that districts with shorter days are seeing,” Morton, a researcher at the American Institutes of Research, wrote to JR in late 2023.

In a follow-up conversation with JR in July 2024, Morton pointed out that parents like the four-day schedule despite concerns raised by education scholars. In interviews with researchers, she wrote, “parents mention that they appreciate the additional family time and perceive other benefits of the schedule for their children, and they overwhelmingly indicate that they would choose to keep a four-day schedule over switching back to a five-day schedule.”

Morton would not recommend schools adopt a four-day schedule if their main aim is saving money, boosting student attendance or recruiting and retaining teachers. Research findings “do not provide much support for the argument that four-day school weeks are delivering the intended benefits,” she wrote to JR.

Keep reading to learn more. We’ll update this collection of research periodically.

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A Multi-State, Student-Level Analysis of the Effects of the Four-Day School Week On Student Achievement and Growth
Emily Morton, Paul N. Thompson and Megan Kuhfeld. Economics of Education Review, June 2024.

Summary: This study looks at how switching to a four-day school week affects student achievement over the course of the school year in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. A key takeaway: On average, across those six states, students on a four-day schedule learned less during the school year than students who went to class five days a week. However, students in rural areas fared better on that schedule than students in “non-rural” areas.

Researchers studied the scores that students in grades 3-8 earned on an assessment called the Measures of Academic Progress Growth, administered each fall and spring to gauge how much kids learned over the course of the school year. The analysis uses 11 years of test score data in reading and math, collected from the 2008-09 to the 2018-19 academic year.

Researchers found that students who went to school four days a week, as a whole, made smaller gains in reading during the academic year than students who went five days a week. They also earned lower scores in reading on the spring assessment, on average.

When researchers looked at the data more closely, however, they found differences between students attending rural schools and students attending schools located in towns and suburbs — communities the researchers dubbed “non-rural.”

Although adopting a four-day schedule had little to no impact on kids at rural schools, student performance fell considerably at schools in non-rural areas. Those children, as a whole, made less progress in reading and math during the academic year than children attending non-rural schools that operated five days a week. They also earned lower scores in both reading and math on the spring exam.

“The estimated effects on math and reading achievement in non-rural four-day week schools are ‘medium’ and meaningful,” the researchers write, adding that the difference is roughly equivalent to a quarter of a school year worth of learning in the fifth grade.

Researchers also discovered that student performance at schools with four-day schedules varied by gender and race. At schools using a four-day-a-week schedule, girls made smaller gains in reading and math than boys, on average. Hispanic students made less progress in math than white students, who made less progress in math than Native American students.

“The estimated effects on math and reading gains during the school year are not ‘large’ by the developing standards used to interpret effect sizes of education interventions, but they are also not trivial,” the researchers write. “For the many districts and communities who have become very fond of the schedule, the evidence presented in this study suggests that how the four-day school week is implemented may be an important factor in its effects on students.”

Impacts of the Four-Day School Week on Early Elementary Achievement
Paul N. Thompson; et al. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2nd Quarter 2023.

Summary: This study is the first to examine the four-day school week’s impact on elementary schools’ youngest students. Researchers looked at how children in Oregon who went to school four days a week in kindergarten later performed in math and English Language Arts when they reached the third grade. What they found: Overall, there were “minimal and non-significant differences” in the test scores of third-graders who attended kindergarten on a four-day schedule between 2014 and 2016 and third-graders who went to kindergarten on a five-day schedule during the same period.

When the researchers studied individual groups of students, though, they noticed small differences. For example, when they looked only at children who had scored highest on their pre-kindergarten assessments of letter sounds, letter names and early math skills, they learned that kids who went to kindergarten four days a week scored a little lower on third-grade tests than those who had gone to kindergarten five days a week.

The researchers write that they find no statistically significant evidence of detrimental four-day school week achievement impacts, and even some positive impacts” for minority students, lower-income students, special education students, students enrolled in English as a Second Language programs and students who scored in the lower half on pre-kindergarten assessments.

There are multiple reasons why lower-achieving students might be less affected by school schedules than high achievers, the researchers point out. For example, higher-achieving students “may miss out on specialized instruction — such as gifted and enrichment activities — that they would have had time to receive under a five-day school schedule,” they write.

Effects of 4-Day School Weeks on Older Adolescents: Examining Impacts of the Schedule on Academic Achievement, Attendance, and Behavior in High School
Emily Morton. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, June 2022.

Summary: Oklahoma high schools saw less fighting and bullying among students after switching from a five-day-a-week schedule to a four-day schedule, this study finds. Fighting declined by 0.79 incidents per 100 students and bullying dropped by 0.65 incidents per 100 students.

The other types of student discipline problems examined, including weapons possession, vandalism and truancy, did not change, according to the analysis, based on a variety of student and school data collected through 2019 from the Oklahoma State Department of Education and National Center for Education Statistics.

“Results indicate that 4-day school weeks decrease per-pupil bullying incidents by approximately 39% and per-pupil fighting incidents by approximately 31%,” writes the author, Emily Morton, a research scientist at NWEA, a nonprofit research organization formerly known as the Northwest Evaluation Association.

Morton did not investigate what caused the reduction in bullying and fighting. She did find that moving to a four-day schedule had “no detectable effect” on high school attendance or student scores on the ACT college-entrance exam.

Only a Matter of Time? The Role of Time in School on Four-Day School Week Achievement Impacts
Paul N. Thompson and Jason Ward. Economics of Education Review, February 2022.

Summary: Student test scores in math and language arts dipped at some schools that adopted a four-day schedule but did not change at others, according to this analysis of school schedule switches in 12 states.

Researchers discovered “small reductions” in test scores for students in grades 3 through 8 at schools offering what the researchers call “low time in school.” These schools operate an average of 29.95 hours during the four-day week. The decline in test scores is described in terms of standard deviation, not units of measurement such as points or percentages.

At schools offering “middle time in school” — an average of 31.03 hours over four days — test scores among kids in grades 3 through 8 did not change, write the researchers, Paul N. Thompson, an associate professor of economics at Oregon State University, and Jason Ward, an associate economist at the RAND Corp., a nonprofit research organization.

Scores also did not change at schools providing “high time in school,” or 32.14 hours over a four-day school week, on average.

When describing this paper’s findings, it’s inaccurate to say researchers found that test scores dropped as a result of schools adopting a four-day schedule. It is correct to say test scores dropped, on average, across the schools the researchers studied. But it’s worth noting the relationship between test scores and the four-day school week differs according to the average number of hours those schools operate each week.

For this analysis, researchers examined school districts in states that allowed four-day school weeks during the 2008-2009 academic year through the 2017-2018 academic years. They chose to focus on the 12 states where four-day school weeks were most common. The data they used came from the Stanford Educational Data Archive and “a proprietary, longitudinal, national database” that tracked the use of four-day school weeks from 2009 to 2018.

The researchers write that their findings “suggest that four-day school weeks that operate with adequate levels of time in school have no clear negative effect on achievement and, instead, that it is operating four-day school weeks in a low-time-in-school environment that should be cautioned against.”

Three Midwest Rural School Districts’ First Year Transition to the Four Day School Week
Jon Turner, Kim Finch and Ximena Uribe-Zarain. The Rural Educator, 2019.

Juvenile Crime and the Four-Day School Week
Stefanie Fischer and Daniel Argyle. Economics of Education Review, 2018.

Abstract: “We leverage the adoption of a four-day school week across schools within the jurisdiction of rural law enforcement agencies in Colorado to examine the causal link between school attendance and youth crime. Those affected by the policy attend school for the same number of hours each week as students on a typical five-day week; however, treated students do not attend school on Friday. This policy allows us to learn about two aspects of the school-crime relationship that have previously been unstudied: one, the effects of a frequent and permanent schedule change on short-term crime, and two, the impact that school attendance has on youth crime in rural areas. Our difference-in-difference estimates show that following policy adoption, agencies containing students on a four-day week experience about a 20 percent increase in juvenile criminal offenses, where the strongest effect is observed for property crime.”

Staff Perspectives of the Four-Day School Week: A New Analysis of Compressed School Schedules
Jon Turner, Kim Finch and Ximena Uribe–Zarian. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 2018.

Abstract: “The four-day school week is a concept that has been utilized in rural schools for decades to respond to budgetary shortfalls. There has been little peer-reviewed research on the four-day school week that has focused on the perception of staff that work in school districts that have recently switched to the four-day model. This study collects data from 136 faculty and staff members in three rural Missouri school districts that have transitioned to the four-day school week within the last year. Quantitative statistical analysis identifies strong support of the four-day school week model from both certified educational staff and classified support staff perspectives. All staff responded that the calendar change had improved staff morale, and certified staff responded that the four-day week had a positive impact on what is taught in classrooms and had increased academic quality. Qualitative analysis identifies staff suggestions for schools implementing the four-day school week including the importance of community outreach prior to implementation. No significant differences were identified between certified and classified staff perspectives. Strong staff support for the four-day school week was identified in all demographic areas investigated. Findings support conclusions made in research in business and government sectors that identify strong employee support of a compressed workweek across all work categories.”

The Economics of a Four-Day School Week: Community and Business Leaders’ Perspectives
Jon Turner, Kim Finch and Ximena Uribe–Zarian. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 2018.

Abstract: “The four-day school week is a concept that has been utilized in rural schools in the United States for decades and the number of schools moving to the four-day school week is growing. In many rural communities, the school district is the largest regional employer which provides a region with permanent, high paying jobs that support the local economy. This study collects data from 71 community and business leaders in three rural school districts that have transitioned to the four-day school week within the last year. Quantitative statistical analysis is used to investigate the perceptions of community and business leaders related to the economic impact upon their businesses and the community and the impact the four-day school week has had upon perception of quality of the school district. Significant differences were identified between community/business leaders that currently have no children in school as compared to community/business leaders with children currently enrolled in four-day school week schools. Overall, community/business leaders were evenly divided concerning the economic impact on their businesses and the community. Community/business leaders’ perceptions of the impact the four-day school week was also evenly divided concerning the impact on the quality of the school district. Slightly more negative opinions were identified related to the economic impact on the profitability of their personal businesses which may impact considerations by school leaders. Overall, community/business leaders were evenly divided when asked if they would prefer their school district return to the traditional five-day week school calendar.”

Impact of a 4-Day School Week on Student Academic Performance, Food Insecurity, and Youth Crime
Report from the Oklahoma State Department of Health’s Office of Partner Engagement, 2017.

Summary: “A Health Impact Assessment (HIA) utilizes a variety of data sources and analytic methods to evaluate the consequences of proposed or implemented policy on health. A rapid (HIA) was chosen to research the impact of the four-day school week on youth. The shift to a four-day school week was a strategy employed by many school districts in Oklahoma to address an $878 million budget shortfall, subsequent budget cuts, and teacher shortages. The HIA aimed to assess the impact of the four-day school week on student academic performance, food insecurity, and juvenile crime … An extensive review of literature and stakeholder engagement on these topic areas was mostly inconclusive or did not reveal any clear-cut evidence to identify effects of the four-day school week on student outcomes — academic performance, food insecurity or juvenile crime. Moreover, there are many published articles about the pros and cons of the four-day school week, but a lack of comprehensive research is available on the practice.”

Does Shortening the School Week Impact Student Performance? Evidence from the Four-Day School Week
D. Mark Anderson and Mary Beth Walker. Education Finance and Policy, 2015.

Abstract: “School districts use a variety of policies to close budget gaps and stave off teacher layoffs and furloughs. More schools are implementing four-day school weeks to reduce overhead and transportation costs. The four-day week requires substantial schedule changes as schools must increase the length of their school day to meet minimum instructional hour requirements. Although some schools have indicated this policy eases financial pressures, it is unknown whether there is an impact on student outcomes. We use school-level data from Colorado to investigate the relationship between the four-day week and academic performance among elementary school students. Our results generally indicate a positive relationship between the four-day week and performance in reading and mathematics. These findings suggest there is little evidence that moving to a four-day week compromises student academic achievement. This research has policy relevance to the current U.S. education system, where many school districts must cut costs.”

Other resources

The Education Commission of the States offers a 50-state comparison of public school students’ instructional time requirements. For example, students in Colorado are required to be in school for a minimum of 160 days each academic year while in Vermont, the minimum is 175 days and in North Carolina, it’s 185.
The State of the American Teacher project offers insights into how teachers feel about their jobs and the education field as a whole. In early 2022, RAND Corp. surveyed a nationally representative sample of teachers, asking questions on topics such as job-related stress, school safety, COVID-19 mitigation policies and career plans. Survey results show that 56% of teachers who answered a question about their attitude toward their job “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with the statement, “The stress and disappointments involved in teaching aren’t really worth it.” Meanwhile, 78% “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with the statement, “I don’t seem to have as much enthusiasm now as I did when I began teaching.”
Opinions about the four-day school week vary among school board members, district-level administrators, school principals and teachers. These organizations can provide insights: the Schools Superintendents Association, National School Boards Association, National Association of Elementary School Principals and National Association of Secondary School Principals.

Looking for more research on public schools? Check out our other collections of research on student lunches, school uniforms, teacher salaries and teacher misconduct.

The post Four-day school week: Research suggests impacts of a condensed schedule vary by student group, school type appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Raising public school teacher pay: What the research says

Denise-Marie Ordway — Thu, 02 Jan 2020 21:57:49 +0000

In the lead-up to the 2020 elections, the Journalist’s Resource team is combing through the Democratic presidential candidates’ platforms and reporting what the research says about their policy proposals. We want to encourage deep coverage of these proposals — and do our part to help deter horse race journalism, which research suggests can lead to inaccurate reporting and an uninformed electorate. We’re focusing on proposals that have a reasonable chance of becoming policy, and for us that means at least 3 of the 5 top-polling candidates say they intend to tackle the issue. Here we look at what the research says about the benefits and limitations of increasing public school teacher pay.

Candidates favoring higher teacher pay

Michael Bennet*, Joe Biden, Cory Booker*, Pete Buttigieg*, Amy Klobuchar*, Bernie Sanders*, Elizabeth Warren*, Andrew Yang*

What the research says

While bigger paychecks don’t guarantee greater job satisfaction, academic studies indicate that when teacher earnings rise, public school districts and students can benefit in a range of ways. The impact seems to vary, however, according to the structure and implementation of school districts’ pay systems.

Research conducted in recent years in various parts of the country and world has helped clarify the role of teacher pay. Many of these studies have found that increased pay — whether through salary hikes, one-time bonuses, college debt-forgiveness programs or other new forms of compensation — is associated with:

Improved teacher retention.
Gains in student performance.
A larger percentage of high-achieving college students taking courses in education.
An increased likelihood of hiring teachers who earned top scores on their educator certification exams.

Key context

In 2018 and 2019, frustrated teachers in multiple states held walkouts and protests over the controversial issue of teacher pay. School districts generally pay their teachers based on longevity and education level — a system that has long drawn criticism from those who say it’s unfair to pay top-performing teachers the same salary as mediocre teachers who’ve been in the field the same amount of time and have the same type of college degree.

Attempts to differentiate pay with performance-based incentives, however, have met strong opposition from teacher union leaders, who often argue that there’s no definition of a “good” teacher and that it’s unfair to pay teachers based on student achievement because many factors outside the classroom influence learning, including children’s health and home environments. In 2019, Denver teachers were on the brink of striking for the first time in 25 years to fight the district’s performance-pay program, which offers teachers additional money for meeting goals such as completing a training course and demonstrating students have made gains in learning core academic subjects.

As policymakers and elected officials have debated the best way to compensate educators, who often use their own money to buy things they need for the classroom, average teaching salaries have fallen. When adjusted for inflation, full-time, public school teachers earned an average of $58,950 annually during the 2016-17 academic year, the most recent year for which data was available from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). That’s down from a national average of $61,804 in 2009-10 and $59,426 in 2015-16.

Average earnings for full-time teachers vary considerably from state to state, and even within states. Salaries are lowest in Mississippi, where educators made $42,925 in 2016-17, on average. New York paid the highest average salary — $79,637, NCES data show.

But comparing salaries by state doesn’t allow for an accurate comparison of how well teachers’ take-home pay covers their basic living expenses. Cost of living also can differ drastically from place to place. In some parts of the United States, experienced teachers are able to live within their means while in other areas, they work side jobs or commute long distances to make ends meet, a USA TODAY analysis in June 2019 determined. There are few metro areas where an entry-level teacher can afford the median rent, the news outlet reported.

Starting salaries fell below $40,000 in about 70% of the states during the 2017-18 academic year, according to the National Education Association, one of the largest teacher unions. The national average for first-year teachers: $39,249.

When comparing teacher pay across states, a team of researchers at Oklahoma State University found that differences narrowed once they adjusted salaries to take into account such things as cost of living, tax rates and teachers’ personal characteristics, including age, race and marital status. To better understand teacher pay and put it into context, it’s important to compare it against the earnings of other college-educated professionals in the same state, the researchers explain in a paper published recently in the Public Finance Review.

“The most meaningful comparison is that between the federal tax-adjusted pay of public school teachers and college-educated nonteachers,” they write, adding that state officials should monitor differences between these two employee groups over time.

Over the past year and a half, several national polls have found that a majority of the public thinks teachers are not paid what they’re worth. Nearly 60% of Americans who participated in a USA TODAY/Ipsos poll in August 2018 said teachers are not compensated fairly. An Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of NPR in April 2018 found that 1 in 4 Americans think teachers are paid fairly.

Meanwhile, a survey administered for Education Next magazine suggests Americans who have up-to-date information about how much their local teachers make are much less likely to support a higher salary.

In May 2019, a nationally representative sample of 3,046 adults answered a series of questions about education topics, including whether teacher salaries should increase, decrease or stay the same. When survey participants were informed of the average annual teacher salary in their state before they were asked whether teacher salaries should change, 56% said pay should rise. When adults were asked whether salaries should change, without being provided any salary information, 72% supported a raise, the survey found.

“The higher level of endorsement for boosting teacher salaries among the ‘uninformed’ respondents reflects the fact that most Americans believe that teachers are underpaid and earn far less than they actually do,” four researchers write in Education Next’s Winter 2020 edition. “When asked to estimate average teacher salaries in their state, respondents’ average guess came in at $41,987 — 30% less than the actual average of $59,581 among our sample of educators.”

Formative findings

Early studies of teacher pay attempted to gauge whether and how student achievement was impacted by teacher salaries and school spending more broadly. More than 30 years ago, researchers examined dozens of studies on the relationship between school expenditures and student performance but found conflicting results. They decided to analyze the data collected from 45 individual studies and synthesize the findings to determine whether the amount of money spent on education influences student test scores.

The resulting analysis, published in the Journal of Education Finance in 1986, indicates the relationship between student achievement and educational expenditures “is minimal, with the expenditures which relate directly to instruction, such as teacher salary and instructional supplies, having the most positive relationship to student achievement.”

A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, released in 1999, examines teacher pay in Texas in the early and mid-1990s and concludes that the relationship between salaries and student test scores is complicated and nuanced. When scholars restricted their sample of students to those who do not switch schools, higher salaries seemed to be linked to improvements in children’s math and reading scores. The research team found the strongest effects of salary in a limited number of schools that had no teacher turnover and no teachers with two or fewer years of work experience.

The study also finds that teacher mobility, teachers moving from job to job, is more strongly impacted by the characteristics of the student body — for example, students’ academic ability and demographics — than by salaries.

In the paper, the authors call the results “perplexing,” but explain that, overall, their analysis suggests that “as currently employed, salary policies do not appear to offer much promise for improvement in student performance.”

A study published in The Review of Economics and Statistics in 2000 finds that boosting teacher wages reduces high school dropout rates. That paper focuses on national school data collected from 1969 to 1989. After adjusting for labor market factors, the researchers estimate that boosting teacher pay 10% lowers dropout rates by 3% to 4%.

The researchers note that they were able to detect changes in student achievement tied to teacher pay by analyzing changes over time. “The magnitude of the estimated effects is quite a bit larger for 1989 than for the earlier years,” they write. “Most previous studies of teacher wage effects have used data from the 1970s and early 1980s, however, and our results for those years are consistent with the failure of earlier research to find robust evidence that teacher wages matter.”

Recent research

While earlier studies provide mixed results, those conducted in more recent years help clarify the role teacher compensation plays on public school campuses.

A 2010 working paper from the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, a joint effort of the American Institutes for Research and scholars at multiple universities, sheds light on how schools can leverage higher salaries to attract teachers with the strongest qualifications. The study examines data from North Carolina public schools between 1995 and 2004 and finds that offering better pay improves a school’s chance of hiring teachers who earned high scores on their teacher certification exams.

A paper published in 2012 in the Economics of Education Review also suggests higher teacher pay draws stronger job candidates. The researcher looked at the test scores of individuals entering teacher education courses in Australia over a span of 15 years. He matched scores from college-entrance exams with data on teacher salaries to gauge how changes in pay affect the quality of students entering the education field.

The study finds that college students with higher test scores take teacher education courses when average teacher pay increases. “The relationship between average pay and teacher aptitude is positive and significant: a 1 percent rise in teacher pay (relative to other occupations requiring a college degree) is associated with approximately a 0.6 point rise in the average percentile rank of potential teachers,” the author writes.

Also in 2012, a case study of teacher pay raises and teacher retention in San Francisco from 2002-03 through 2010-11 was released. The study finds that public school teachers were more likely to remain in their jobs after their salaries rose. However, the author also concluded that the change was most likely the result of an economic downturn that occurred at the same time.

A researcher who looked at teacher pay and retention in Texas around the same time found different results. That paper, published in the Journal of Public Economics in 2014, analyzes teacher and student data for a whole state over a longer period — 1996 to 2012. A key takeaway: An increase in base teacher pay reduces teacher turnover, a “pay effect [that] is largest for less experienced teachers, decreases with experience, and disappears once a teacher reaches about 19 years of experience,” the author writes.

A larger study involving dozens of countries, including the U.S., attempted to more clearly demonstrate the connection between teacher ability and student achievement and between teacher ability and salary. The study, which appeared in the Fall 2019 edition of the Journal of Human Resources, relies on data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an association of countries that assess reading and math ability among both adults and youth.

The researchers collected data from the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies to quantify differences in teacher skills in numeracy and literacy across 31 countries. They used that information along with student scores on the math and reading sections of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to estimate the relationship between teacher cognitive skills and student achievement.

The authors explain that teacher cognitive skills and student achievement levels differ substantially across countries. But their analyses show that student test scores are higher in countries where teachers have more advanced skills.

The authors note that country-by-country differences in student PISA scores could be narrowed if countries with lower student scores had a larger share of high-skill teachers. “Our results suggest that the dispersion in average PISA scores across our 31 country sample would be reduced by roughly one-quarter if each country brought its average teacher skills up to the average in Finland, the country with the highest measured skills of teachers,” they write.

When the researchers investigated the reasons some countries have a larger share of teachers with strong math and reading skills, they found that teacher pay is a primary factor. “We find that cross-country differences in women’s access to high-skill occupations and in wage premiums paid to teachers (given their gender, work experience, and cognitive skills) are directly related to teacher cognitive skills in a country,” they write. “The estimated wage differentials for teachers are directly correlated with student outcomes across our sample countries.”

Offering teachers bonuses and other financial incentives also is associated with improved student outcomes, studies show. A 2017 review of the existing research on teacher merit pay programs finds that when teachers have participated in these programs, their students saw modest gains in test scores. That report, from scholars at the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University, provides a systematic analysis of 44 studies published or released between 1989 and 2016 on the impact of giving teachers additional pay for achieving certain goals.

In the studies reviewed, some of which were conducted outside the U.S., merit pay came in the form of one-time bonuses, gifts and permanent salary increases ranging from $26 to $20,000.

“In substantive terms, the effect is roughly equivalent to 4.5 additional weeks of learning,” write the authors, who also note that effects differ according to a program’s design and implementation. “Our evidence, for example, suggests that group incentives result in larger positive effects on average than incentives given to individuals.”

In late 2018, the Economics of Education Review published a study that failed to find a link between student achievement and a financial bonus offered to Washington teachers who had earned certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and agreed to work in high-poverty schools.

In Washington, all teachers with National Board certification — an honor reserved for the most accomplished educators — receive a financial bonus. At the time of this study, they also got another $5,000 a year if they took positions at schools with a high percentage of students who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.

The additional $5,000 helped boost teacher quality at these campuses. When the bonus was implemented in 2007, 2% of teachers working in high-poverty schools were National Board certified. By 2013, 11.3% were.

While the researchers’ analysis shows that the bonus was associated with a slight rise in student math scores and a slight dip in reading scores per year, those results were not statistically significant.

Another study published in late 2018 investigates whether short-term bonuses and college loan forgiveness programs encouraged Florida teachers to take and remain in jobs that school administrators had difficulty filling. Among the study’s key takeaways: Both seem to curb teacher attrition in difficult-to-staff areas such as special education and high school science. However, direct payments appear to be more cost effective that loan subsidies, the authors note in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

“We find that relatively modest payments of $500 to $1,000 per year can reduce attrition in some high-need subjects, although in some subjects, such as special education, only payments on the order of $2,500 per year appear effective,” they explain. “A one-time bonus of $1,200 reduced teacher attrition more than loan repayments of comparable magnitude.”

A working paper the National Bureau of Economic Research released in 2019 offers new evidence that school districts will raise salaries for their most effective teachers when they no longer need to negotiate with local teacher unions — and those teachers, in turn, will increase their efforts in the classroom. For this study, the researcher determined teachers’ effectiveness based on changes in their students’ test scores.

The paper focuses on how school districts in Wisconsin responded after a landmark state law known as Act 10 took effect in 2011, limiting the influence of teacher unions and allowing districts to make major changes to their pay schedules. The author studied districts through 2015, after many had adopted “flexible pay” schedules, which allowed them to pay teachers based on their performance, and abandoned “seniority pay” schedules, which have been favored by teacher unions and compensate teachers based mostly on their years of experience.

The author learned that in a subset of Wisconsin districts, high-quality teachers left districts that maintained seniority pay to work in districts that began to use a flexible pay system. Lower-quality teachers, on the other hand, either moved to districts that kept the old salary structure or left public schools altogether. “As a result, the composition of the teaching workforce improved in FP [flexible pay] districts compared with SP [seniority pay] districts,” she writes.

In addition, the author found a moderate increase in student test scores in districts that implemented flexible pay systems — an indication, she writes, that teachers began to put forth more effort.

Subject experts

Barbara Biasi, assistant professor of economics, Yale School of Management.

James Cowan, researcher, Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research.

Li Feng, Brandon Dee Roberts Excellence Assistant Professor of Economics, Texas State University.

Dan Goldhaber, director, Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research and the Center for Education Data & Research at the University of Washington.

Eric Hanushek, Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Matthew D. Hendricks, associate professor of economics, University of Tulsa.

Marc Piopiunik, postdoctoral researcher, Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.

Dan Rickman, Regents Professor of Economics, Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University.

Tim R. Sass, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Economics, Georgia State University.

Matthew G. Springer, Robena and Walter E. Hussman Jr. Distinguished Professor of Education Reform, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Hongbo Wang, lecturer in economics, Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University.

Simon Wiederhold, professor of macroeconomics, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstad.

John V. Winters, associate professor of economics, Iowa State University.

*Dropped out of race since publication date.

Need more help covering teacher salary issues? Check out our tip sheet on covering teacher unions and our collection of research on how teacher unions affect school district spending and student achievement.

This image was obtained from the Flickr account of Alliance for Excellent Education and is being used under a Creative Commons license. No changes were made.

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6 tips for journalists covering teachers unions

Denise-Marie Ordway — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 22:01:36 +0000

Over the past year, public school teachers in different parts of the country have held strikes to increase salaries and push for other changes. Such protests often mark a breakdown in negotiations between the school district and local teachers union.

Unions play a key role in many school districts and within education policy broadly. The Journalist’s Resource’s managing editor, Denise-Marie Ordway, an education journalist for two decades, offers six tips to help reporters understand and write about these influential organizations.

A big thanks to journalists Samantha Hernandez and Dana Goldstein as well as Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, and Staci Maiers, a senior press officer with the National Education Association, for their help creating this tip sheet.

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1. Remember that not all teachers are union members.

Many public school teachers don’t join unions. In fact, the proportion of teachers who are members of a union or another employee association is dropping. Less than 70 percent of public school teachers were members in 2015-16, the most recent year for which the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) has data. That’s down from 76.4 percent in 2007-08 and 79.1 percent in 1999-2000.

Interesting fact: The teachers most likely to join unions, according to the USDOE, are middle school teachers and those working at schools in the wealthiest communities.

2. Get to know people in various levels of union leadership.

Develop relationships with people in leadership positions within the local teachers union as well as the statewide teachers union and national union. They can help you understand different perspectives on the same issue. For example, if you’re covering teacher salary negotiations in a local school district, local union leaders can talk about problems within the district, the changes they’d like to see and how smoothly contract negotiations are moving forward. They can also help you arrange interviews with local teachers. Meanwhile, someone in leadership at the state level can offer a broad view of how contract negotiations are going statewide and how the local union’s experiences compare to other districts.

Be aware that union leaders at the state and national level tend to receive more media training. They might be more responsive to reporters’ around-the-clock questions and have information ready before a reporter asks for it. But they also can be quite savvy about using the news media to promote a certain message or cause.

3. Familiarize yourself with teacher pay systems.

Teachers unions spend a lot of time and energy negotiating compensation. It’s important for reporters to understand how teachers make money so they can put union demands and the negotiation process into perspective. Reporters also need to understand key terms so they can differentiate between, for example, a “step increase” and an “across the board” salary increase.

Generally, teachers receive an annual base salary, but school districts also offer educators other opportunities to earn money. Depending on the district, teachers can receive raises — increases to their base salary — in multiple ways. A district can boost salaries, of course. This is sometimes called an “across the board” increase because it usually results in higher salaries for teachers at various experience levels. Districts also typically allow teachers, whose salaries are based on years of experience, to move up one rung of the salary schedule to recognize the completion of an additional year of service to the district. This increase in salary is a “step increase.” A third way a teacher can earn a higher base salary is by completing an advanced degree such as a master’s or doctoral degree.

In addition to raises, some districts offer teachers extra money if they earn optional certifications, including certification from the prestigious National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Some districts give more money to teachers who agree to take on additional roles and responsibilities. Some districts give performance-based bonuses. Often, districts also offer what’s referred to as “supplemental” pay to educators who coach a team sport or sponsor a student organization.

4. Find out if your state prohibits teachers from striking or puts limits on their ability to bargain with their school districts.

In most states, it’s illegal for public school teachers to strike. Alaska, California, Colorado and Ohio are among the states that allow it.

Some states prohibit public school teachers from bargaining with their employers. As of last year, six of them — Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — prohibited all public employees from bargaining with employers, according to the National Education Association. Meanwhile, 34 states and Washington DC have adopted laws that either allow or require school districts to engage in collective bargaining with their teachers.

5. Pay attention to how teachers unions wield political influence.

Teachers unions contribute to political candidates and spend a lot of money lobbying issues related to students, the teaching field and educator employment. Reporters should monitor how much their local teachers unions donate and spend on lobbying.

Teachers unions — especially the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers — have “steadily amped up their political involvement,” according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political spending and received the Society of Professional Journalists’ award for Public Service in Online Journalism in 2013. It reports that the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers “are consistently among the organizations that contribute the most money to candidates and political groups,” with donations totaling about $32 million in 2016.

6. Investigate the policies that govern teacher discipline, dismissal and tenure.

Make sure you understand what kinds of behavior can get a teacher disciplined or fired in your community, and how the rules may differ for inexperienced teachers, teachers who are new to the school district and veteran educators who have earned tenure. It’s also important to understand how the disciplinary process works, what role teachers unions play and which records and other documents are open to the public.

Check to see which, if any, government agencies post investigative reports and related records online. For example, the Florida Department of Education maintains a searchable, public database of records connected to actions the state has taken against a teacher’s professional license, including letters of reprimand, fines and permanent revocation.

Cowen, the researcher at Michigan State, says it’s also important for journalists to think about which parts of a teacher’s job are a direct result of union bargaining and priorities and which ones are shaped by state law. People tend to think of teacher tenure, for example, as being tied to union contracts, he says. But tenure is usually governed by state law.

If you’re reporting on teachers unions in the U.S., you might also be interested in our roundup of research, “How Teachers Unions Affect School District Spending, Student achievement.” We’ve also gathered research on how teacher salaries impact the types of educators working in local schools.

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How teachers unions affect school district spending, student achievement

Denise-Marie Ordway — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 21:16:22 +0000

Denver public school teachers went on strike Feb. 11, for the first time in 25 years, to push for better pay. The teachers union in Oakland, California has announced plans to strike after failing to reach an agreement with the school district on higher wages, smaller class sizes and other issues. In January, teachers in Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest school district, went on strike for the first time in 30 years to force district leaders to work with their union to address some of the same concerns.

While many educators credit their unions for helping them secure higher salaries and better working conditions, union critics accuse these organizations of hurting students by shielding low-performing and problematic teachers from disciplinary action or dismissal. At the national and state levels, teachers unions have become a powerful force, influencing both legislation and elections.

The two main teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association, are among the biggest labor organizations in the United States. Together, they represent about 5 million employees, officials from the two organizations told Journalist’s Resource.

Below, we’ve gathered a sampling of research that offers insights into the work of teachers unions, including their impact on teacher salaries, student achievement and teacher turnover. We’ve included several studies that look specifically at collective bargaining agreements, or the written contracts that unions negotiate with districts to regulate such things as teacher evaluation, compensation, grievances, class size and job transfers.

Toward the bottom of the page, we provide links to additional resources, including data on teacher salaries and union donations to political candidates.

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“The Impact of Teachers’ Unions on Educational Outcomes: What We Know and What We Need to Learn”
Cowen, Joshua M.; Strunk, Katharine O. Economics of Education Review, 2015.

In this study, Joshua Cowen and Katharine O. Strunk of Michigan State University examine 30 years of research to understand how teacher unions impact district spending, teacher pay and student achievement. They find that school districts with teacher unions spend more money and they spend it on different things. “The majority of studies find that unionized districts have higher spending and specifically higher spending on teachers’ salaries, and especially salaries for veteran teachers,” the authors write.

However, unions do not appear to help — and might actually hinder — student test scores and graduation rates. Early research suggests that students in unionized districts earn slightly higher achievement scores. But according to the authors, the most rigorous studies, which were conducted in more recent years, indicate that students in unionized districts have slightly higher dropout rates and slightly lower rates of math and reading proficiency. “It is as yet unclear the impacts of stronger unions on achievement,” they write.

“Public‐Sector Unions and the Size of Government”
Paglayan, Agustina S. American Journal of Political Science, 2018.

This study from Agustina Paglayan, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego, analyzes data collected between 1959 and 1990 to determine whether unions are associated with increased education spending. Paglayan examined school district expenditures before and after states passed laws requiring districts to engage in collective bargaining with their teachers unions.

Here’s what she found: States where districts must bargain with unions spend more than states where collective bargaining is not mandatory. However, these differences existed before the laws were enacted. “I document that in 1990, states with mandatory collective bargaining laws had more teachers per student, higher salaries, and higher per-pupil education expenditures, but I show that they already did so well before the emergence of collective bargaining rights or modern teacher unions,” Paglayan explains.

“Labor Union Strength and the Equality of Political Representation”
Flavin, Patrick. British Journal of Political Science, 2018.

Patrick Flavin, an associate professor of political science at Baylor University, looks at union membership and contributions to political campaigns to determine whether they help ensure that the opinions of lower-income Americans are given equal weight in the policy-making process. Flavin finds that union membership is strongly associated with equality in political representation. Political donations, however, are not. “The analysis,” he writes, “points to the conclusion that labor unions’ ability to promote more egalitarian patterns of political representation lies in their effectiveness in organizing and then mobilizing union members to political action as opposed to contributing directly to state political campaigns.”

“When Government Subsidizes Its Own: Collective Bargaining Laws as Agents of Political Mobilization”
Flavin, Patrick; Hartney, Michael T. American Journal of Political Science, 2015.

Flavin and Michael Hartney, an assistant professor of political science at Boston College, explain that teachers became more involved in politics toward the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s, when more than half of U.S. states started requiring school districts to engage in collective bargaining with their teachers unions. The scholars sought to determine whether collective bargaining laws actually cause teachers to become more politically active.

A key takeaway: Teachers participated in politics at higher rates after collective bargaining laws were mandated in their states. They were more likely to say they engaged in activities such as working for a political campaign, attending a political rally or donating money to a political candidate. “In the two subsequent elections following the passage of a bargaining law in their state, and especially the third and fourth elections after the law went into effect, teachers reported a sharp increase in their rate of political participation,” the authors write. In addition, teachers who identified as union members participated at higher rates than those who did not.

“The Myth of Unions’ Overprotection of Bad Teachers: Evidence from the District-Teacher Matched Panel Data on Teacher Turnover”
Han, Eunice S. Working paper, Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, 2015.

For this study, Eunice Han, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Utah and senior research associate at Harvard Law School, investigates the effect of teacher unions on teacher dismissals. Her findings suggest that school districts with collective bargaining agreements are more likely to dismiss under-performing teachers who have not yet earned tenure than districts that don’t have these agreements in place. “Teachers unions raise the dismissal rate of non-tenured teachers as they bargain for higher teacher salaries, giving greater incentives for districts to sort out better teachers,” Han writes. She notes that unions do not appear to have an effect on the dismissal rate of tenured teachers.

Han does find, however, that unions may encourage teachers to stay in the field. Her analysis indicates that teachers who work in districts where collective bargaining is allowed are less likely to quit teaching than those who work in districts that don’t negotiate with their unions.

Collective bargaining agreements

“The Long-run Effects of Teacher Collective Bargaining”
Lovenheim, Michael; Willén, Alexander. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 24782, 2018.

This paper claims to provide the first analysis of collective bargaining laws’ effect on the long-term outcomes of students. The authors examined bargaining laws for each state and year since 1955. They paired that data with data the U.S. Census collected between 2005 and 2012 via the American Community Survey, which gathers detailed information on American adults’ education levels and employment.

The authors find that attending all 12 years of elementary and secondary school in a state with mandatory collective bargaining laws reduced adult earnings by $799.73 dollars per year. “Across all 33 states that have a duty-to-bargain law in place, our results suggest a total loss of $199.6 billion dollars per year due to individuals having grown up in states that mandate collective bargaining between teachers’ unions and school districts,” write Michael Lovenheim, an associate professor at Cornell University, and Alexander Willén, an assistant professor at the Norwegian School of Economics.

While overall education attainment is only marginally affected, men and women who grew up in school districts with required bargaining laws are more likely to be unemployed. Those with jobs work less per week, according to Lovenheim and Willén. “Exposure to a duty-to-bargain law while in grade school lowers the likelihood a worker is employed by between 0.9 and 1.2 percentage points,” they explain.

Lovenheim and Willén find that the effects are larger for men as well as adults who are not white. “In particular,” the authors write, “yearly male earnings decline by $1,384 and hours worked decreases by 0.63 hours per week. We find some evidence of a small decline in educational attainment for men, who also experience a decline in wages due to growing up in a duty-to-bargain state. Among nonwhites, earnings decline by $1,986 and hours per week are reduced by 1.2.”

“It is in the Contract: How the Policies Set in Teachers’ Unions’ Collective Bargaining Agreements Vary Across States and Districts”
Strunk, Katharine O.; et al. Educational Policy, 2018.

Researchers looked at more than 1,000 collective bargaining agreements negotiated between school administrators or school boards and their local teachers’ unions in three states — California, Michigan and Washington — to determine how different or similar these agreements are. They looked at how contracts addressed 43 issues, including teacher pay, seniority rules, membership responsibilities, layoffs and transfers. The authors were particularly interested in whether contracts varied by district size and student households’ income levels.

The authors analyzed 492 California contracts from the 2014-2015 academic year, 516 Michigan contracts from 2013 onward and 268 Washington contracts from the 2014-2015 academic year. They explain that “the dominant finding of this article — and the one we argue should hold the attention of the research and policymaking communities alike — is that teacher contracts do vary considerably between and within states.”

Another key finding: In these three states, school district size is correlated with certain teacher contract provisions as well as contract length. For example, contracts in larger districts tend to include limits on maximum class sizes and are less likely to require the district to post all certificated vacancies before filling them. Contracts also tend to be much longer in larger districts.

“Collective Bargaining and School District Test Scores: Evidence from Ohio Bargaining Agreements”
Hall, Joshua C.; Lacombe, Donald J.; Pruitt, Joylynn. Applied Economics Letters, 2017.

This study focuses on the relationship between collective bargaining agreements and student test scores in Ohio public school districts. The researchers analyzed teacher contract provisions during the 2007-08 academic year, measuring the strength of each teacher union by the number of pages included in its bargaining agreement. The authors also looked at the percentage of ninth graders in each district who passed the state’s math proficiency exam in 2008.

The main takeaway: In Ohio school districts, the length of a union’s collective bargaining agreement was linked to lower math scores. “It would seem that more stringent negotiations lead to less productive education production,” the authors write.

Other resources:

In addition to national teacher unions, there are state-level affiliates — for example, the California Teachers Association and Florida Education Association. Some organizations represent specific educator occupations such as the National Science Teachers Association and National Association of Special Education Teachers.
The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics, monitors how much teacher unions spend on lobbying and donate to candidates and political groups. “From 2004 to 2016, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $32 million — an all-time high,” the center reports. “Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving Democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990, where our data begins.”
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) collects and reports teacher salary data. According to its most recent report, the annual salary for public school teachers averaged $58,950 in 2016-17, up from $55,202 in 2009-10.
The NCES, which also monitors changes in district enrollment, regularly ranks school districts according to enrollment. In 2016, the five largest districts were – in order from largest to smallest — New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dade County in Florida and Clark County in Nevada.
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 that it is unconstitutional to require public employees who are not members of a union to pay union fees. This includes public school teachers.

Looking for more research on teachers? Check out our collections of research on teacher misconduct, performance pay and how children benefit from having teachers of the same race.

This photo, taken by TMT-photos and obtained from Flickr, is being used under a Creative Commons license. No changes were made.

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Teacher salaries impact the types of educators working in schools

Denise-Marie Ordway — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 14:25:44 +0000

West Virginia schools closed for nearly two weeks during a statewide walkout over teacher salaries in early 2018. Days after state officials approved a 5 percent raise, the teachers union in Oklahoma threatened a strike if educators there didn’t receive a pay increase by April 2.

Teachers and local governments are continually haggling over salaries, especially in states where teachers earn much less than the national average. In 2015-16, public school teachers earned $58,064 a year, on average, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). But educator pay varies significantly across states, from an average of $44,921 in Oklahoma to $77,957 in New York.

Why should school administrators and government leaders care about teacher pay — beyond wanting their employees to be able to afford their living expenses?

Below, we present research that examines this issue. What scholars have found is that teacher salaries are linked to employee retention and that better pay seems to draw smarter people to the field and into the classroom. It’s not clear, however, whether higher salaries result in higher student achievement.

At the end of this page, you’ll find links to other helpful resources, including teacher salary data and a report on annual stipends for instructors who earn National Board Certification.

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“Towards an Optimal Teacher Salary Schedule: Designing Base Salary to Attract and Retain Effective Teachers”
Hendricks, Matthew D. Economics of Education Review, 2015. DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.05.008.

Summary: This study is the first to estimate the impact of teacher pay on the experience levels of teachers applying for jobs in public schools. The researcher examined data on teachers with bachelor’s degrees who worked in 165 Texas school districts between 1995 and 2012. He found that districts can target teachers of a certain experience level by altering their salary schedules. “Overall, a 1 percent increase in base salary for teachers of a particular experience level increases the proportion of the targeted teachers hired by 0.04–0.08 percentage points.” The researcher recommended giving newer teachers larger raises than veteran educators. “This more efficient salary schedule reduces a district’s payroll costs while it retains more teachers, who gain in experience and productivity over time …”

“Does it Pay to Pay Teachers More? Evidence from Texas”
Hendricks, Matthew D. Journal of Public Economics, 2014. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2013.11.001.

Summary: This study, which examines data on teachers in 165 Texas districts between 1996 to 2011, finds that a 1 percent increase in teacher pay reduces teacher turnover by 1.4 percent. Changes in pay have a larger impact on turnover rates among less experienced teachers and have no effect on teachers with 19 years or more of experience.

“Teacher Pay and Teacher Aptitude”
Leigh, Andrew. Economics of Education Review, 2012. DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2012.02.001.

Summary: This researcher examined the test scores of individuals entering teacher education courses in Australia over a span of 15 years. He matched college entrance exam scores with data on teacher salaries to gauge how changes in pay affect the quality of students entering the education field. The study finds that individuals with higher test scores take teacher education courses when average teacher pay increases. “The relationship between average pay and teacher aptitude is positive and significant: a 1 percent rise in teacher pay (relative to other occupations requiring a college degree) is associated with approximately a 0.6 point rise in the average percentile rank of potential teachers,” the author wrote.

“Teacher Mobility, School Segregation, and Pay-Based Policies to Level the Playing Field”
Clotfelter, Charles T.; Ladd, Helen F.; Vigdor, Jacob L. Working paper for the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, 2010.

Summary: This study, which examines multiple issues and data sets, suggests that better salaries increase a school’s chance of hiring teachers who earned high scores on their teacher certification exams. It also indicates that schools serving mostly minority students need to give very large raises to retain teachers with the strongest qualifications.

“Do Higher Salaries Buy Better Teachers?”
Hanushek, Eric A.; Kain, John F.; Rivkin, Steven G. Working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, 1999.

Summary: This study uses several data sources to investigate how shifts in teacher salary schedules affect the composition of teachers working in Texas school districts. The study suggests teacher mobility — or how teachers move from job to job — is more strongly impacted by the characteristics of the student body than by salaries. While the relationship between teacher quality and student performance is complicated, this study finds that “salary policies do not appear to offer much promise for improvement in student performance.” Teacher quality varies within schools, according to the authors, who suggest that school districts focus on other ways to improve teacher quality and student achievement.

Other helpful resources:

The NCES provides data on average teacher salaries in each state from 1969-70 to 2015-16. The NCES also offers data on the number and percentage of teachers with master’s degrees, who generally earn more than those with bachelor’s degrees.
The National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, is a lead advocate for higher teacher pay.
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards offers teachers the opportunity to earn National Board Certification. In many states, teachers holding this prestigious certification earn more money, often in the form of an annual stipend.
Journalist’s Resource has reviewed research on teacher performance pay and the relationship between teacher union contracts and school district performance.

Photo by BES Photos obtained from Flickr and used under a Creative Commons license.

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