After a quick interval of inactivity, extra states and districts seem open to the concept of giving lecturers further pay for taking up sure sorts of roles or accelerating scholar achievement—with experiments and full-fledged applications beneath approach in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Utah, amongst others.
The concept of “efficiency” or “advantage pay”—setting lecturers’ compensation partly on their college students’ achievement—has a protracted and contentious historical past. Advocates have lengthy claimed it rewards the best lecturers and encourages them to remain within the classroom, whereas critics argue fashions typically use slender, ill-fitting take a look at measures for trainer high quality and aggressive bonuses discourage lecturers from collaborating.
A wave of state and district experiments—pushed within the 2010s by federal grants targeted on “worth added” measures of lecturers’ results on scholar development on standardized take a look at scores—confirmed combined outcomes. Efficiency-pay fashions fell considerably out of vogue within the years since, as policymakers targeted extra consideration on recruiting and retaining lecturers amid nationwide shortages, and trainer strikes led to extra emphasis on base pay.
However years of worsening tutorial malaise at the moment are prompting policymakers to experiment with new methods to hyperlink trainer pay to scholar development.
“Within the final 5 years, [performance pay] has been considerably missed as a technique,” mentioned Heather Peske, president of the Nationwide Council on Trainer High quality. “However I feel we’ve seen in districts … and in Arkansas’s work and in Texas’ work, they’re actually attempting to mix these efforts to enhance trainer effectiveness, to reward lecturers, and to provide them significant suggestions utilizing the educator-evaluation system. And when these issues are all put in place collectively … we’re seeing scholar outcomes enhance.”
Probably the most formidable experiments transcend take a look at scores
The most recent and most formidable of those experiments transcend gauging efficiency primarily based totally on take a look at scores to think about a trainer’s classroom follow, peer collaboration, and willingness to sort out high-need topics, college students, and communities. Lots of them are nonetheless too new and unstudied to have generated conclusive outcomes.
Utah, for instance, has launched a five-year pilot through which lecturers are evaluated primarily based on a mix of scholar achievement development on take a look at scores, skilled evaluations, dad or mum and scholar surveys, and in some districts measures of teacher-team collaboration.
Starting within the 2026-27 college 12 months, top-performing lecturers will obtain bonuses every year from 2026 to 2029. The highest 5% of eligible lecturers in collaborating districts will obtain a $10,000 bonus per 12 months; the highest 6-10% of lecturers obtain $5,000 per 12 months; and the highest 11-25% of lecturers obtain $2,000 per 12 months. Academics in high-poverty faculties have these bonuses doubled.
“We imagine that instructing will not be a performative act, however one that’s to provide a consequence: scholar studying,” mentioned David Forbush, affiliate director of Utah State College’s Middle for the College of the Future, which helped develop the pay program in partnership with the state. “Our information that means that the majority lecturers, in the event that they’re in a high-poverty college and get tenure, have a tendency to maneuver out of their faculties into low-poverty faculties the place the work is less complicated. Our thought is to attempt to incentivize lecturers: ‘Should you’re distinctive, keep in your faculties.’”
Utah has tried a statewide advantage pay program earlier than. Its profession ladders program, which ran from 1983-2012, required districts to implement an prolonged college 12 months to include trainer skilled growth days, further alternatives for lecturers to work to earn more cash, in addition to advantage awards. Most districts didn’t implement advantage pay; lecturers and principals had complained the bonuses set lecturers in competitors with one another and made them much less more likely to collaborate
Most states are encouraging districts to make use of efficiency pay
Half of states and the District of Columbia now encourage—if not explicitly require—districts to make use of trainer efficiency when structuring pay methods.
Arkansas’s LEARNS Advantage Trainer Incentive Fund, created in 2023, initially bumped the state’s minimal beginning wage as much as $50,000, with a minimal $2,000 increase for all lecturers. Going ahead, it gives no automated wage will increase, however as a substitute allocates bonuses of as much as $10,000 per 12 months for classroom lecturers, library or media specialists and counselors.
The scale of particular person bonuses range primarily based on whether or not the trainer reveals excessive scholar development over a number of years, mentors different lecturers, and/or teaches in topics, areas, or scholar teams with crucial instructing shortages. Within the 2024-2025 college 12 months, greater than 4,200 educators earned non-performance bonuses, with a mean award of greater than $3,300. (The primary performance-based bonuses haven’t rolled out but.)
Gema Zamarro, an schooling reform and economics professor on the College of Arkansas, has been monitoring the implementation of the Arkansas pay overhaul as a part of an ongoing analysis of this system. Early analysis from Zamarro and her colleagues has discovered the pay restructuring has helped rural districts be extra aggressive with bigger close by districts in recruiting and retaining new lecturers, and has lowered the variety of lecturers leaving the classroom for different fields.
“It’s nonetheless very early outcomes, however they appear fairly strong,” she mentioned. “In Arkansas, wage will increase have been comparatively small 12 months after 12 months, so the one approach lecturers needed to make a significant enhance of their pay was leaving the classroom and taking one among these exterior roles in schooling, like turning into a principal, assistant principal or … trainer coach. Now the distinction [between teaching and other roles] is decrease, so it does appear that it’s decreasing turnover from transitions out of the classroom.”
Texas’s statewide Trainer Incentive Allotment, launched in 2019 and expanded this 12 months, gives funds to districts to supply advantage pay to lecturers primarily based on three ranges of designations. Grasp lecturers, thought of the highest 5% primarily based on scholar development and sophistication observations, can earn $12,000 to$32,000. Academics within the subsequent 20% of efficiency are thought of “exemplary” and earn $6,000 to $18,000. Acknowledged lecturers, who both earn Nationwide Board certification or carry out within the high third of efficiency, can earn $3,000 to$9,000 per 12 months.
The variety of Texas lecturers who’ve obtained performance-based bonuses has shot up from fewer than 3,000 5 years in the past throughout the three efficiency ranges to roughly 25,000 lecturers in 2025.
Whereas there isn’t any statewide proof but how this system has affected scholar efficiency or trainer turnover, some particular person districts have credited it with progress in each. Late final month, the Senate Well being, Training, Labor, and Pensions committee highlighted the Ector County college district, which has seen vital enhancements in each trainer turnover and scholar achievement from restructuring its trainer pay utilizing the state allotment.
“The only most essential in-school issue that influences scholar achievement is the trainer,” Superintendent Scott Muri advised the committee. “We frequently search the ‘silver bullet’ and fail to take a position deeply in crucial ingredient within the schooling equation.”
Nonetheless, this system as an entire has not helped in increasing the general attractiveness of instructing in Texas, which has the best share of uncertified lecturers within the nation, in response to Toni Templeton, who tracks Texas trainer workforce points for the College of Houston and is learning the allotment program each statewide and within the Houston college district.
“What we’re combating is that you could go to highschool, get a bachelor’s diploma, and of all of the choices of jobs you may have obtainable to you, trainer pay is sort of low comparatively,” Templeton mentioned. “This focuses on the highest lecturers, not a increase of lecturers’ base pay, so we don’t have sufficient {dollars} within the public schooling system to supply a aggressive wage to get curiosity again into the sector and get individuals again into [teaching] routes.”
Incentivizing lecturers to remain in lecture rooms
Trainer salaries nationwide have risen 27% from 2015-16 to 2024-25—however after adjusting for inflation, pay has declined by greater than 5%, in response to federal schooling information.
That’s spurred extra states and districts to include bonuses for hard-to-staff topics, scholar teams, and geographic areas. In a single current research, NCTQ discovered the share of enormous city districts paying extra for lecturers in hard-to-staff positions greater than doubled, from 22% to 45%, from 2017 to 2024. Few of those shortage-based bonuses require lecturers to show scholar tutorial development, suggesting that the majority states are retaining performance-based and shortage-based bonuses separate.
“We’ve actually inspired this concept of lecturers being incentivized to be in lecture rooms,” mentioned Jenna Chiasson, Louisiana’s deputy superintendent of instructing and studying, who credited the state’s new teacher-pay system with bettering morale and retention within the state. All lecturers received a $2,000 stipend and help employees a $1,000 stipend for the 2025-26 college 12 months. ((A proposed constitutional modification to make the stipend everlasting failed in a state referendum in March, although it’s anticipated to be placed on the poll once more subsequent 12 months.)
Louisiana gives funding for native districts to award bonuses for hard-to-staff instructing positions, but in addition permits some districts to incorporate merit-pay measures.
“Differentiated compensation, when performed effectively and when performed proper, can actually make a big distinction, particularly after we suppose general of our challenges in filling sure instructing positions,” Chiasson mentioned.
