Differential Pay: West Virginia
Retaining Effective Teachers Policy
Analysis of West Virginia's policies
West Virginia does not support differential pay by which a teacher can earn additional compensation by teaching certain subjects. However, the state offers a loan assistance program to teachers who agree to teach a subject area of critical need or in a school or geographic area identified as an area of critical need. Each teacher is eligible to receive up to $3,000 annually, with an overall cap of $15,000.
West Virginia does support differential pay for those teaching at high-need schools. Recent legislation provides a teacher-mentoring increment for classroom teachers with National Board certification who teach and mentor at persistently low-performing schools. The law also permits districts to use other available funds, federal and local, to provide incentives for highly qualified teachers to teach at low-performing schools.
Recommendations for West Virginia
Expand differential pay initiatives for teachers in shortage-subject areas.
Although the state's loan forgiveness program is a desirable recruitment and retention tool for teachers early in their careers, West Virginia should expand its program to include those who are already part of the teaching pool. A salary differential is an attractive incentive for every teacher, not just those with education debt.
State response to our analysis
West Virginia was helpful in providing NCTQ with the facts necessary for this analysis.
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West Virginia
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Delivering Well Prepared Teachers
- Admission into Teacher Preparation
- Elementary Teacher Preparation
- Elementary Teacher Preparation in Reading Instruction
- Elementary Teacher Preparation in Mathematics
- Early Childhood
- Middle School Teacher Preparation
- Secondary Teacher Preparation
- Secondary Teacher Preparation in Science and Social Studies
- Special Education Teacher Preparation
- Special Education Preparation in Reading
- Assessing Professional Knowledge
- Student Teaching
- Teacher Preparation Program Accountability
Expanding the Pool of Teachers
Identifying Effective Teachers
- State Data Systems
- Evaluation of Effectiveness
- Frequency of Evaluations
- Tenure
- Licensure Advancement
- Equitable Distribution
Retaining Effective Teachers
Exiting Ineffective Teachers
Pensions
Research rationale
States should help
address chronic shortages and needs.
States should ensure that
state-level policies (such as a uniform salary schedule) do not interfere with
districts' flexibility in compensating teachers in ways that best meet their
individual needs and resources. However, when it comes to addressing chronic
shortages, states should do more than simply get out of the way. They should
provide direct support for differential pay for effective teaching in shortage
subject areas and high-need schools. Attracting effective and qualified
teachers to high-need schools or filling vacancies in hard-to-staff subjects
are problems that are frequently beyond a district's ability to solve. States
that provide direct support for differential pay in these areas are taking an
important step in promoting the equitable distribution of quality teachers.
Short of providing direct support, states can also use policy levers to
indicate to districts that differential pay is not only permissible but
necessary.
Differential Pay: Supporting Research
Two
recent studies emphasize the need for differential pay. In "Teacher Quality and Teacher Mobility", L. Feng and T. Sass find that high performing teachers tend
to transfer to schools with a large proportion of other high performing
teachers and students, while low performing teachers cluster in bottom quartile
schools. Calder Institute, Working Paper 57, January 2011.
Another study from T. Sass, et al., found that the least effective teachers
in high-poverty schools were considerably less effective than the least
effective teachers in low-poverty schools http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/1001469-calder-working-paper-52.pdf.
C. Clotfelter, E. Glennie, H. Ladd, and J. Vigdor, "Would Higher Salaries Keep Teachers in High-Poverty Schools? Evidence from a Policy Intervention in North Carolina," NBER Working Paper 12285, June 2006.
J. Kowal, B. Hassel, and E. Hassel, "Financial Incentives for Hard-To-Staff Positions: Cross-Sector Lessons for Public Education,"
Center for American Progress, November 2008.
A
study by researchers at Rand found that higher pay lowered attrition, and the
effect was stronger in high-needs school districts. Every $1,000 increase was
estimated to decrease attrition by more than 6 percent. See S. Kirby, M. Berends, and S. Naftel, "Supply and Demand of Minority Teachers in Texas: Problems and
Prospects," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Volume 21, No. 1, March 20, 1999, pp. 47-66 at: http://epa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/21/1/47.