The Exceptional Results of Sensible Teacher Salary Reforms

Wednesday, October 4, 2023 Hoover Institution | Stanford University Eric Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, discussed “The Exceptional Results of Sensible Teacher Salary Reforms” and his paper “Attracting and Retaining Highly Effective Educators in Hard-to-Staff Schools,” with Andrew Morgan (University College London ), Minh Nguyen (Ball State University), Ben Ost (University of Illinois at Chicago), and Steven Rivkin (University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Texas at Dallas). PARTICIPANTS Eric Hanushek, John Taylor, Annelise Anderson, Uschi Backes-Gellner, Eric Bettinger, Michael Bordo, Michael Boskin, Tom Church, John Cochrane, Livio Cuzzi Maya, Thomas Dee, Sami Diaf, David Fedor, Andy Filardo, Bob Hall, Michael Hartney, Laurie Hodrick, Robert Hodrick, Nicholas Hope, Bob Joss, Ken Judd, Dan Kessler, Donald Koch, Anjini Kochar, Evan Koenig, David Laidler, Charles Leung, Ross Levine, Mickey Levy, Nicole Lindsay, John Lipsky, Michael Melvin, Dinsha Mistree, Radek Paluszynski, Paul Peterson, Valérie Ramey, Paola Sapienza, Richard Sousa, Tom Stephenson, Jack Tatom, Yevgeniy Teryoshin, Stephan Thomsen, Carl Walsh ISSUES DISCUSSED Eric Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, discussed “The Exceptional Results of Sensible Teacher Salary Reforms” and his paper “Attracting and Retaining Highly Effective Educators in Hard-to-Staff Schools,” with Andrew Morgan (University College London ), Minh Nguyen (Ball State University), Ben Ost (University of Illinois at Chicago), and Steven Rivkin (University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Texas at Dallas). John Taylor, the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution, was the moderator. PAPER SUMMARY In 2015, the Dallas Independent School District (Dallas ISD) introduced an outcomes-based evaluation and pay system for teachers that completely replaced the near-ubiquitous salary system based on experience and graduate education. Evaluations combined supervisor ratings, student achievement, and student survey responses, and these determined salaries. Using synthetic control methods, we find that student achievement improved dramatically relative to the control group. This system underlies efforts to manage the system better. Specifically, efforts to attract and retain effective educators in high-poverty public schools have had limited success. Dallas ISD addressed this challenge with information produced by its evaluation system to offer large, compensating differentials to highly effective teachers willing to work in its lowest achievement schools. The Accelerating Campus Excellence (ACE) program resulted in immediate and sustained achievement increases. The improvements were dramatic, bringing average achievement in the previously lowest performing schools close to the district average. When ACE stipends are largely eliminated, a substantial fraction of highly effective teachers leaves, and test scores fall. This highlights the central importance of performance-based incentives. To read the paper, click the following link https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/acepaper_03112023.pdf To read the slides, click the following link https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/Dallas%20Teachers_October2023%20%20-%20%20Read-Only.pdf