Education Sector's latest chart you can trust looks at the salary structures in some of the nation's largest schools districts, with data supplied from NCTQ's Tr3 database . Though all of the districts follow the same rules for basing teacher pay on experience and degree status, the simplicity of these rules masks a host of illogical decisions about teacher pay.

Many of the districts have pay policies that do little to retain newer, younger teachers, which makes little sense from anyone's perspective, except perhaps that of the more seasoned union reps who do the negotiating. For example, it's hardly unusual for districts to "back load" salaries, giving veteran teachers bigger bumps in annual pay than newer teachers, but some districts take the notion to an extreme.

Teachers in Broward County, Florida, for example, earn their most lucrative annual pay increases from the 18th through the 21st year of their careers, even though there's not much risk of a teacher deciding to quit at that point, given the generous retirement plan looming just around the corner. The Broward teachers receive nearly half of the available compensation dedicated to experience in just those three years.

Ed Sector author Chad Aldeman proposes a more gentle sloping salary trajectory that places no extra emphasis on any one year except that it would front load salaries to attract and retain teachers. Aldeman also calls for the elimination of large bonuses based on advanced degrees. More on these ideas (and others) to come in our own upcoming report on the costs of degree-based compensation.