The Research on Teacher Pay
Overview
Although there is no clear research demonstrating that higher teacher pay leads to better student outcomes, there are reasons to believe they are related.
Photo by Allison Shelley, courtesy of Creative Commons
BACKGROUND
A great deal of research has been done in the past couple of decades on the effect of teacher pay on student outcomes.
The big picture is that there really isn’t a clear, straight cause-and-effect line between them. Working conditions, curriculum, and school leadership have all been tied more directly to improved student outcomes than teacher pay. (Source: How Principals Affect Students and Schools: A Systematic Synthesis of Two Decades of Research, Jason Grissom, Anna Egalite, and Constance Lindsay, Wallace Foundation, 2019) This includes efforts to differentiate pay among teachers, such as merit pay schemes, a few of which have been found to be associated with modest improvements in student test scores—mostly in math rather than reading. (Source: Teacher Merit Pay: A Meta-Analysis, Pham, L. D., Nguyen, T. D., & Springer, M. G., American Educational Research Journal, 2021.)
There is also no research that shows that higher teacher pay automatically results in higher teacher retention. Teachers leave their schools and the profession for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is the lack of administrative support. (Source: The Factors of Teacher Attrition and Retention: An Updated and Expanded Meta-Analysis of the Literature, Tuan D. Nguyen, Lam Pham, Matthew Springer, and Michael Crouch, 2019. And: ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’: unpacking teacher attrition/retention as an educational issue, Geert Kelchtermans, 2017.)
But there’s a big HOWEVER:
A large study of national data shows a strong correlation between higher pay and both improved achievement scores for all student groups and a reduction of achievement gaps between White and Black students and between White and Hispanic students.
“Our study finds that universal and unconditional increase in teacher base salary (i.e., across-the-board base salary increases)…is associated with improved districts’ academic performance.” (Source: Teachers’ Base Salary and Districts’ Academic Performance: Evidence From National Data, Emma García and Eunice S. Han, 2022.)
This is a finding of correlation, not cause and effect. But a fair amount of research establishes some background reasons that might explain the correlation. Some of it follows:
Higher base pay encourages more students to consider teaching as a career, improving the pool of new teachers eligible to be hired. (Source: Teacher Salaries and Teacher Quality, David Figlio, 1997, following a more-than-decade-long effort to improve teacher salaries—an effort that has long since faltered.)
Higher base pay encourages teachers to stay, particularly novice teachers and mid-career teachers. This means that higher base pay results in a more experienced teacher corps, which has been shown to improve academic achievement. (Source: Does It Pay to Pay Teachers More?, Matthew Hendricks, 2016.)
Higher base pay encourages novice teachers to stay in times of job growth and wage improvements outside of education, the situation we are in now. (Source: Reevaluating the effect of non-teaching wages on teacher attrition, Gregory Gilpin, 2016.)
When districts have higher pay relative to other districts in their area, teachers are less likely to leave the district for another. (Source: Teacher Salaries and Teacher Attrition, Jennifer Imazeki, 2016.)
Higher base pay encourages experienced teachers to stay in the profession. (Source: Teacher Salaries and Teacher Attrition, Jennifer Imazeki, 2016.)
High teacher turnover, which is a particular problem in schools that serve children from low-income families, is bad for student behavior, attendance, and achievement. (Source: The Hidden Costs of Teacher Turnover, Lucy Sorenson and Helen Ladd, 2020.)
National polling data shows that teachers are in general dissatisfied with pay, professional status, and working conditions. (Source: The Teacher Salary Project.)
Questions to Ask in Your School District
Ask district officials: What is the starting pay of teachers in your district? What is the average pay? What are the step raises? How does your district compare with neighboring districts? How many teachers left in the past three years? Does the district survey or interview teachers to know why they left?
Note: This is a living document that may be edited and changed from time to time.
