Many states and districts are moving toward more targeted compensation policies as a way to attract higher quality candidates into the teaching profession and to encourage increases in productivity among current teachers. Rather than align pay increases only to level of education and years of experience, for example, many school systems have…

Evidence suggests that compensation affects teacher retention. In general, studies have concluded that higher teacher pay increases the likelihood that a person will continue to teach. Similarly, attractive earnings opportunities outside teaching encourage people to leave the teaching profession. While these findings are intuitive, researchers…