Addressing the Teacher Qualification Gap: Exploring the Use and Efficacy of Incentives to Reward Teachers for Tough Assignments

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Center for American Progress
November 2008
Dan Goldhaber

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Teachers are, by most any measure, inequitably distributed among students. Poor students are far more likely than their wealthier counterparts to be matched with teachers who have little experience, graduated from less-selective colleges, and possess fewer credentials. It is not surprising that inequities exist in the distribution of teachers across the nation’s classrooms. The labor economics literature finds a general relationship between wages and the nonpecuniary working conditions of a job, such as risk. Jobs with less desirable attributes usually pay a “compensating differential” to motivate individuals to accept the position over one that offers more favorable nonpecuniary working conditions.

Yet most school systems utilize a single-salary-schedule pay structure that determines a teachers' salary by their degree and experience alone without considering, for instance, the desirability of the teaching position. The teacher labor market therefore adjusts based on the job attributes of a school assignment through teacher sorting across schools, rather than through salary differentials that depend on the job attributes of a school assignment. Schools serving poorer students get less-qualified teachers, and it is quite likely that these teachers are also less effective. The maldistribution of teachers, moreover, tends to create inequities in student funding.

States have employed various strategies to address the maldistribution of teachers, such as financial inducements, including salary supplements or loan forgiveness for teachers willing to work in high-poverty schools; changes to working conditions in high-poverty schools; and targeted teacher-pipeline policies. Yet we know relatively little about the efficacy of many of these strategies. Addressing teacher inequities is difficult because much of the inequity in teacher distribution overall is due to inequities within local school districts. Some of the policy options, such as financial incentives, might therefore lead to a re-allocation of teachers within a district, a prospect that may not be very politically palatable to the communities that stand to lose effective teachers.

The political will to address teacher inequities has so far failed to match the strength of the rhetoric often decrying the problem. But new federal and state policy initiatives suggest that political will and rhetoric are beginning to align. The key will be to ensure that investments are productive by pairing new teacher-equity policies with efforts to assess their success.

This report builds on what we do know and combines it with labor-economic theory and an assessment of the politics associated with teacher-equity reforms to make several recommendations designed to help address teacher equity.