Salaries are one of the most powerful policy levers states and school districts can use to attract qualified, effective, and diverse teachers. What role do states play in supporting strategic use of salaries? This report examines the state teacher compensation policies that influence districts' potential strategic use of teacher pay. It analyzes…

With more than two decades of on-the-ground experience impacting 300,000 educators and 3 million students, NIET's success is grounded in research. The success of NIET's work is evident in the positive findings from evaluations of impact. In NIET's 2022-23 Research Summary, we summarize findings from five new studies and highlight selected findings…

Career Technical Education (CTE) teacher recruitment is a challenge that has dogged state CTE leaders for decades. According to a recent survey of State CTE Directors, 98 percent said that increasing access to industry experts is a high priority in their state. And 20.4 percent of rural districts with CTE teacher vacancies report that CTE…

Researchers at NIET and elsewhere have studied the effectiveness of "TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement" (TAP) in raising student achievement, improving the quality of instruction, and increasing the ability of high-need schools to recruit, retain and support effective teachers. This document provides summaries of some…

This report examines the ongoing effort to revamp teacher evaluations. After collecting and synthesizing data from 17 states and the District of Columbia, it provides five major lessons for policymakers. New evaluation systems are just one part of sweeping changes in American schools. Because the number and extent of these changes are daunting,…

Created by the U.S. Congress in 2006, the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) represents the first federal initiative targeted directly at state and district efforts to introduce performance measures into educator compensation. TIF responds to a growing body of evidence that existing pay structures do not respond to labor force realities or adequately…