Nobody goes into teaching to get rich, but that's no excuse not to pay teachers as professionals. Compensation is one of the most important factors in determining who enters the teaching profession and how long they stay--yet 90 percent of all U.S. school districts pay teachers without any regard for their actual performance with students,…

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…

Whether referred to as "pay-for-performance" (PFP) or "merit pay," attempting to tie educators' compensation to their performance in the classroom and students' performance on high-stakes tests has been a key component of many educator compensation reform efforts in the last five years. This issue looks at PFP systems broadly…

Charter schools are held up as examples of the benefits of a freer approach to hiring teachers. Most studies of charter school personnel policies, however, overlook important variation in personnel practice within the charter school sector. Examining how charter schools use recruitment timelines and teacher compensation to complete for teachers in…

This collection of articles gathers reprinted materials on teacher attraction and retention for small and rural school districts. The material is organized in two sections: (1) Attracting and Retaining Quality Teachers and (2) Challenging and Enriching Current Staff. Reprints from a number of publications present strategies for addressing the…