Retaining Effective Teachers Policy
Maryland 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, Maryland 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.
Maryland pointed out that with encouragement from the state Department of Education, districts often exercise the freedom to begin new teachers on a higher pay scale for possessing qualities or experiences that the local school system desired. For example, one local system has placed graduates from institutions of higher education that maintain interns in its Professional Development Schools (often considered more like second-year teachers) on a higher step than other newly graduated teachers.
The state added that it is actively encouraging the discussion of building good models for performance-based incentives and compensation through the work of its Performance Compensation Workgroup, supported through Race to the Top.