Retaining Effective Teachers Policy
Massachusetts does not encourage local districts to provide compensation for related prior subject-area work experience. However, the state does not seem to have regulatory language blocking such strategies.
Encourage local districts to compensate new teachers with relevant prior work experience.
While still leaving districts with the flexibility to determine their own pay scales, Massachusetts should encourage districts to incorporate mechanisms such as starting these teachers at a higher salary than other new teachers. Such policies would be attractive to career changers with related work experience, such as in the STEM subjects.
Massachusetts commented that teacher salaries are set at the district level. Massachusetts is the state lead for a teacher incentive grant from USED that is looking at new ways to recruit, deploy, retain and reward effective teachers in its two largest districts, Springfield and Boston. The state continues to take an aggressive stance in reviewing its human capital policies and strategies consistent with state law and local control and the collective bargaining rights it safeguards.