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This comparison shows the issue isn’t unionization or membership priorities—it’s outdated pay structures in education that fail to recognize differentiated roles.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.
