The National Council on Teacher Quality’s (NCTQ) September report on teacher pay found that in California, nearly $28 billion went toward teacher salaries in 2024–25.
According to NCTQ, nationally, the majority of school budgets (80 percent) goes toward employee salaries and benefits, but educators’ pay is “still driven by seniority and credentials — not by where a teacher works, the subjects they teach, or how much their students learn.”
Amid a harsh fiscal landscape, the report asserts that states should support local educational agencies to use dollars in ways that attract and retain good teachers in the schools and subjects most in need and where attrition is most significant.
“As student achievement continues to stagnate in many states, attracting and retaining effective teachers grows even more urgent,” the report reads. “When budgets are tight, states can reduce teacher turnover and boost student achievement by spending smarter.”
Strategies suggested to strengthen teacher compensation revolve around paying teachers more to work in schools and subjects that are hard-to-staff and rewarding effectiveness, not credentials.
In hard-to-staff schools, turnover rates can be 37 percent or higher and replacing one teacher can cost large districts up to $25,000.
“Strategic teacher pay is one of the most powerful tools states have to address staffing challenges and improve student learning — yet most states have failed to use it to its full potential,” according to the report.
Of the seven evidence-based policy actions identified by NCTQ that states can pursue to “spend smarter,” California only met one: not requiring districts to pay teachers more for obtaining master’s degrees.
Other actions (that California doesn’t currently fulfill) cover providing state funding for additional pay for teachers in hard-to-staff schools/subjects or requiring districts to do so; requiring districts to consider teacher effectiveness when making salary decisions; providing state funding for districts to give additional pay for high-performing teachers; and states offering/requiring higher pay for effective teachers in hard-to-staff schools/subjects.
Recommendations for California to attract and keep effective teachers in classrooms that need them most include:
- Guaranteeing a minimum 7.5 percent supplement for educators in hard-to-staff schools/subjects
- Requiring or financially incentivizing compensation structures that reward effective educators based on transparent and rigorous evaluation criteria, not solely credentials
- Redirecting money for automatic salary increases for advanced degrees/credentials to “meaningful incentives” like differentiated pay for teaching in hard-to-staff schools/subjects
- Should a teacher compensation system be changed, weigh grandfathering teachers under the existing system to make sure their pay doesn’t decrease
