Better salaries and benefits can boost teacher retention

Key points:

Higher pay raises and better benefits could help keep K-12 teachers in the teaching workforce, finds New nationally representative RAND survey.

American teachers reported modest salary increases between the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years, just $2,000 on average and well below the desired increase of $16,000. Black teachers and teachers in states where collective bargaining is prohibited reported receiving the smallest pay increases.

“Teachers who received larger pay increases also said they were less likely to intend to leave the profession,” he said. Elizabeth Steinerlead author of the report and policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.

Sixty-five percent of teachers nationally reported taking on extra work, such as coaching athletics or serving as department chairs. However, one in four teachers nationally said they were not paid for their extra work. Black teachers were more likely than white teachers to report doing unpaid extra work. Teachers who were paid for extra work reported small earnings: about 4 percent of base salary.

Although benefits represent a larger proportion of teachers' total compensation package, on average, than similar working adults, working adults reported better access than teachers to benefits such as paid personal time off, paid parental leave, and reimbursement of registration. The biggest difference occurred in the case of paid parental leave. Only a third of teachers reported having had paid parental leave, compared to nearly half of similar working adults.

Additionally, for almost all of the employer-provided benefits the researchers asked about, fewer teachers thought their benefits were adequate compared to similar working adults. Among teachers who had paid parental leave, only 46 percent thought it was adequate compared to 78 percent of similar working adults who had access to paid parental leave. As with pay, teachers who considered their benefits adequate were less likely to say they intended to leave the teaching profession.

“Offering a broader set of benefits and improving the quality of those benefits could improve teachers' perceptions of their pay and improve retention,” Steiner said. “We found that teachers who had better perceptions of their benefits also had better perceptions of their salary.”

The RAND State of the American Teacher survey is an annual, nationally representative survey of K-12 public school teachers across the U.S. Teacher data is presented in comparison to a separate supplemental survey from the 2024 American Life Panel , a nationally representative survey of working adults.

He American Teacher Status The survey was supported by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

Other authors of “Larger Pay Raises and Adequate Benefits Could Improve Teacher Retention: Results from the 2024 State of America's Teachers Survey” are Ashley Woo and and doan.

RAND Education and Work provides objective research and analysis that improves social and economic well-being through education and workforce development. The division conducts early childhood research through postsecondary education programs, workforce development, programs and policies affecting workers, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy and decision making.

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