School leaders, specifically principals, play a pivotal role in shaping student learning outcomes. The benefits of strong leaders extend beyond academic achievement, such as reductions in absenteeism and exclusionary discipline. While quality principals are critical for creating and sustaining quality schools, the staffing pipeline is facing…

Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) collaborated with Wilder Research to conduct interviews with schools to understand how schools use their existing funding in order to sustain Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) implementation. The findings are presented in this report. Information on MDE's MTSS is included at the end of this report. MDE…

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…

Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) is an integrated system of high quality, standards-based instruction and interventions that are matched to students' academic, social-emotional, and behavioral needs. The framework relies on strong core instruction and layered tiers of supports for all needs of the whole child, with a focus on equity and…

For many non-traditional candidates, the path into teaching is riddled with bumps and detours. They must pay for increasingly expensive coursework and certification costs, attend classes that conflict with work schedules, and forgo wages to complete unfunded student teaching requirements. These roadblocks can deter valuable local…

The Teacher Compensation Survey (TCS) was a research and development effort by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to explore the possibility of developing an administrative records survey that would compile compensation and demographic data on all public school teachers in the nation. A pilot survey in 2007 collected data from…

University tuition fees and student debt have risen in part due to rapid expansion of university administration compensation. This study provides a novel methodology for detecting inappropriate executive compensation within universities. The usefulness of academic ideas is openly ranked using the h-index. By comparing the ratio of academic…

The Department of Early Learning (DEL) is directed by the state legislature to use currently collected data to compare state-funded child care compensation rates to market rates, cross-compare child care programs in other states and make biennial recommendations to the legislature on compensation models to attract high quality professionals. For…

As decades pass, new rounds of educational discussion surrounding teacher pay emerge calling for alternative compensation based on performance indicators. While much of the research on this latest iteration of performance pay, inspired by the presidential initiatives "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top," focuses on…

Strong and stable school leadership is critical for success in schools across the nation. The duties of the principal are many and varied. Principals, for example, can oversee instruction, purchase curricular materials and supplies, and provide professional learning and supports for teachers. Carrying out these duties effectively makes a…

Policymakers know that improving teaching in our schools requires a systemic look at many policies related to educator effectiveness. For example, teacher preparation programs need to be dramatically improved and strengthened, but without accompanying reform in compensation, even highly effective and innovative schools of education are unlikely to…

Reflecting the growing momentum in support of quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) as a key strategy to improve early care and education quality, significant amounts of public dollars have been devoted to their development and implementation. In this brief, the authors report on their investigation of both quality rating and improvement…

Teachers have the greatest school-based effect on the achievement of any child in their classrooms, but highly effective principals can positively affect the achievement of every student in their schools. The difference between a highly effective principal and an average one is equal to two-to-seven months of extra learning per year for each child…

Over the past decade, educators and policymakers have used a variety of approaches to designing and implementing teacher compensation programs. These approaches include federal incentive funds, state-level programs, and district initiatives. This article reviews 6 such programs in order to identify themes and draw conclusions relevant to…

In "Toward a More Comprehensive Model of Teacher Pay"--a paper presented at the February 2008 National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference--Julia Koppich examines recent policy initiatives implementing new approaches to teacher pay. Her discussion focuses on four current initiatives: ProComp in Denver, Toledo…