A July brief from EdResearch for Action synthesizes current research on strategic staffing — a framework for redesigning teaching roles, time and compensation to better improve teacher retention, instructional quality and student outcomes.
The brief focuses on three core components of strategic staffing: collaborative teaching, differentiated compensation, and differentiated roles and career pathways.
Collaborative teaching
“Teacher collaboration, defined broadly as seeking and sharing guidance on instruction, curriculum, and problem-solving, is widely viewed as a key lever for improving instruction, student learning, and teacher satisfaction,” the brief states. “Collaborative instructional models improve student academic outcomes across subjects and grade levels, relative to classes taught by a single teacher.”
Researchers cited long-standing evidence that strong collaboration among teachers leads to stronger professional communities, improved instructional quality and better student outcomes, in part by reducing isolation and building capacity.
Currently, many teachers experience an unsustainable workload with one educator responsible for instruction, planning, assessment and family engagement for a full roster of students. Through stronger collaboration and collaborative teaching models, these duties can be spread across a team of teachers.
Differentiated compensation
Differentiated compensation means paying educators differently based on roles, responsibilities, expertise or performance, rather than using a uniform salary schedule based only on experience and credentials, according to researchers.
Researchers found that while “many merit pay programs have shown little or no effect, particularly those that relied solely on test scores, offered small bonuses, or lacked accompanying professional development … when pay differentials are large enough, tied to meaningful roles, and paired with professional supports, they can improve retention.”
Additional compensation signals that leadership and expanded roles are valued and helps educators view staffing changes as meaningful professional opportunities rather than added, uncompensated burdens.
Rather than setting pay entirely by years of experience and credentials, regardless of role or expertise, “differentiated compensation rewards teachers who take on leadership, specialization, or hard-to-staff roles,” the brief states.
Differentiated roles and career pathways
This factor is crucial for new and veteran teachers. While “new teachers who receive structured mentorship from an experienced colleague are significantly more likely to stay in the profession and more likely to improve their instructional practice,” the brief notes that providing opportunities for long-time teachers to collaborate effectively and have a voice in decision-making can lead to similar outcomes.
“Teacher leadership, defined as teachers influencing colleagues and school practice while staying in the classroom, is consistently associated with higher student achievement, stronger professional collaboration, and higher teacher retention,” according to the brief. “Differentiated roles involve assigning educators specialized responsibilities based on their strengths (e.g., mentoring, parental outreach, data tracking, curriculum design, or team leadership), creating career pathways that expand leadership opportunities without leaving the classroom.”
Differentiated roles create advancement opportunities — such as lead teacher or coach — that keep effective educators in the classroom rather than looking to administrative roles as a path to advancement.
Recommendations
Researchers offered five implementation principles vital to sustaining these staffing initiatives, including:
- Communicating and building buy-in: Strategic staffing initiatives are most likely to be effective when they are grounded in a shared vision, aligned to existing district priorities and backed by visible and consistent senior leadership.
- Co-designing with teachers: Including teachers early in the design of new roles, schedules and compensation systems increases buy-in and ensures staffing models fit the realities of classrooms and school operations.
- Building capacity through professional learning: Providing sufficient professional learning related to the implementation of strategic staffing is essential — simply giving teachers time, new responsibilities or additional pay will not lead to expected results.
- Aligning policy and systems across school, district and state levels: Strategic staffing requires alignment across the local and state systems. School-level leaders manage scheduling and daily functions; district leaders handle HR, contracts and budget; and state policy creates the enabling conditions, or the barriers, through funding formulas, credentialing codes and collective bargaining frameworks.
- Working collaboratively with unions: Districts that have successfully navigated collective bargaining agreement constraints have used several concrete strategies including building strong relationships with labor, starting with pilot programs and establishing non-conventional “reform tables” to talk about a broad range of issues and engage all stakeholders, including teachers and administrators, outside of standard contract negotiations. “Structures like these allow districts and unions to design new roles collaboratively, rather than treating the contract as the starting point,” the brief states.
