Paying the Best Teachers More to Teach More Students. Rapid Response

On top of many policymakers' wish lists is increased teacher pay. Particular attention also has focused on mechanisms such as merit pay to target rewards to the most effective teachers and keep them in the classroom. Yet resources are constrained. Raising pay for some or all teachers inevitably takes funds away from some other element of schooling. With little likelihood of surplus education funding in the foreseeable future, many pay overhauls have stalled or been scrapped entirely. But there is a way forward that would yield higher pay without fiscal sacrifice, new analysis shows: increasing the class sizes of only the most effective teachers. Targeted increases in class size would require fewer teachers overall and the savings from the reduced number of teachers could be repurposed as bonuses for the teachers taking on larger classes. This fiscal analysis explores teacher cost and enrollment data in one district to quantify the amount of funds available for teacher bonuses associated with strategic class size increases of three students for the most effective teachers.