A Promising Strategy to Address Teacher Staffing Challenges
Across the country, policymakers are confronting a growing teacher-workforce crisis: persistent shortages in high-need fields, declining enrollment, and tightening budgets that threaten student outcomes.
Our new analysis with the National Parents Union (NPU) shows that strategic approaches to pay and staffing, like those used successfully in nursing, can help attract and retain talented educators where they’re needed most.
Across the country, the most experienced teachers tend to cluster in schools serving more advantaged students. Step-and-lane pay scales and transfer rights reward seniority, not need—so district funding and teaching talent often flow toward low-poverty schools.
Differentiated pay helps rebalance that equation by offering incentives for educators to work in the hardest-to-staff schools and subjects, ensuring that the students who need the most support get access to the most experienced teachers.
Analysis of teacher contracts in the 100 largest school districts shows that fewer than half include differentiated pay for special education, English Learners, or STEM—and only about 15 percent offer incentives for high-poverty schools.
Even when policies exist, bonuses are often temporary, buried behind approval requirements, or too small to influence where teachers work. NCTQ research suggests that differentials must reach roughly 7.5 percent of base salary to affect staffing decisions—well above what most districts currently offer.
Nurses and teachers share many workforce similarities—education levels, gender representation, and union affiliation—but their pay systems diverge sharply. Contracts for nurses represented by the same national union (AFT) routinely include 10–20 percent premiums for overnight, weekend, or other hard-to-staff shifts. Teacher contracts in the same cities often provide little or no comparable compensation.
This comparison shows the issue isn’t unionization or membership priorities—it’s outdated pay structures in education that fail to recognize differentiated roles.
Districts and states that have adopted meaningful, sustained incentives have seen measurable improvements in recruitment, retention, and student outcomes:
Teacher shortages aren’t new, but they’re solvable. Differentiated pay gives states and districts a practical, evidence-based way to staff every classroom with skilled, supported educators.
High-Poverty Schools That Are Raising The Bar
Discover what works! Dive into our series highlighting high-performing, high-poverty schools in Colorado, Massachusetts, and our newest feature – Texas!
Explore the ties between school poverty and student outcomes, and discover how some schools are driving academic achievement and growth despite challenging circumstances.
We identify 34 high-poverty schools that achieved proficiency rates of at least 50% in math and/or ELA on the 2024 Georgia Milestones Assessment. Through surveys and interviews with their principals, we examined the strategies driving their success and identified three common themes:
The success of these schools reflects a coordinated commitment to excellence at every level of governance. States set the stage by incentivizing evidence-based strategies through policy and funding, while districts provide the necessary support and resources. However, it is ultimately principals who bring these strategies to life, and this research underscores that strong local leadership is an essential driver of meaningful improvements in student outcomes.
By examining the strategies and practices implemented by these “spotlight schools” via surveys and interviews with school leaders, we seek to uncover what has worked to achieve these positive academic outcomes. We identified 62 high-poverty schools that have achieved high proficiency rates or demonstrated significant growth in math and/or ELA on the 2023 Student Assessment for Academic Readiness (STAAR).
While there is no singular formula for fostering academic excellence, leaders of these Texas spotlight schools shared four common themes:
To encourage these school- and district-level strategies, Texas has statewide policies aligned with each of these four themes, including: strong, aligned state standards through the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), High-Impact Tutoring (HB 4545 & HB 1416), High-Quality Instructional Materials (HB 1605), and the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA). Spotlight schools participated in these opportunities at higher rates than other, lower-performing schools, leveraging state funding and guidance to launch new initiatives.
Of the 300 Colorado elementary and middle schools in the highest poverty quartile, we highlight the 39 schools that have either achieved above-average proficiency rates or demonstrated growth by at least 10 points on the CMAS assessment in either math or ELA.
While there is no single answer to fostering academic excellence, the leaders of the schools we surveyed and interviewed were largely aligned on the following core principles:
