Strategic Design of Teacher Compensation

This series of memos explores typical goals of compensation redesign and implications for five main design considerations: base salary, district priority incentives, school roles, rewards and responsibilities, and fiscal sustainability. Given the national focus on revitalizing the teacher evaluation and support/development process, many districts are in need of reviewing how teachers are compensated, how that compensation is related to attracting and keeping the teachers they need, and how to make the new system sustainable. This publication is intended to provide teachers, districts, Charter Management Organizations, and states with a starting point.

These guidance memos are part of a series of publications and tools devoted to Teacher Compensation and Career Path. The rest include:

• Misfit Structures and Lost Opportunities: The Urgent Case for Restructuring Teacher Compensation and Career Path: This white paper focuses specifically on teacher salaries and details two urgent reasons for reform: misfit structures of current teacher salary schedules and lost opportunities to impact student achievement.
• Teacher Compensation Workshop: This "do-it-yourself" workshop brings stakeholders together to explore the costs and implications of different compensation structures. The workshop includes pre-reading materials, a narrated Powerpoint presentation, and all the items needed to play the interactive exercise "What Price is Right?"
• Rethinking the Value Proposition to Improve Teaching Effectiveness: This white paper looks at the whole package of what school systems offer teachers, and examines how these offerings influence the attraction, development, retention, and motivation of a high-performing teaching force.
• First Steps: What School Systems Can Do to Reform Teacher Compensation and Career Path Right Now: This action-oriented brief outlines four key steps districts can take this year to move toward a future vision of the teaching job. Backed by ERS research and experience, these steps will have a positive impact on student outcomes, require little or no new investment, and lay the foundations for building a highly effective teaching force.