Teacher Compensation Policy
Requirements: Georgia encourages its districts to compensate
teachers for certain types of related prior subject-area work experience. For
all positions requiring a state-issued certification, the state allows a
defined number of experiences to count toward salary requirements, with most qualifying experiences relating to the education field, such as serving as a teacher in a foreign
country or serving in a professional position at the U.S. Department of Education. The state salary schedule is waived for 169 of 180 school districts to allow districts to provide additional compensation for new teachers with relevant prior work experience.
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policy to encourage districts to compensate all new teachers with
relevant prior work experience.
Georgia should not limit this policy to only certain
specific education field experiences. Such compensation would be attractive to
career changers in other fields, such as in the STEM subjects.
Georgia did not respond to NCTQ's request to review this analysis for accuracy.
8C: Prior Work
Districts should be allowed to pay new teachers with relevant work experience more than other new teachers. State and district salary structures frequently fail to recognize that new teacher hires are not necessarily new to the workforce.[1] Some new teachers bring with them deep work experience that is directly related to the subject matter they will teach.[2] For example, the hiring of a new high school chemistry teacher with 20 years' experience as a chemical engineer would likely be a great boon to any district.[3] Yet most salary structures would place this individual at the same point on the pay schedule as a new teacher straight out of college. Compensating these teachers commensurate with their experience is an important recruitment and retention strategy, particularly when other, non-teaching opportunities in these fields are likely to be more financially lucrative.[4]
Specifics of teacher pay should largely be left to local decision making. However, states should use policy mechanisms to inform districts that it is not only permissible, but also necessary, to compensate new teachers with relevant prior work experience.