Education Compensation and Its Impact on Student Achievement

Educator compensation reform is generally under conceptualized, and considered in isolation from the other strategies being pursued at the Federal, state, and local levels to improve student learning. But compensation should be viewed as a major aspect of the education system that could be designed to foster and strengthen the goals and aspirations of state standards-based education reform and the No Child Left Behind Act. This two-year project will result in a series of policy papers or issue reports for education policy makers that will help them (a) conceptualize the issues surrounding educator compensation; (b) understand the evidence on the effects of current efforts that have changed educator compensation systems; and (c) design new efforts to change educator compensation that more effectively address the issues of recruiting and retaining high quality teachers in all states, in all districts, and in all types and locations of schools.