Salary Schedules, Teacher Sorting, and Teacher Quality

Gregory Gilpin ()
Additional contact information
Gregory Gilpin: Montana State University

No 2011-004, CAEPR Working Papers from Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington

Abstract: This study investigates how salary rigidities affect teacher quality across teaching subjects and high schools and whether high quality teachers can be compensated sufficiently to attract them into unfavorable schools. For identification, we rely on idiosyncratic variations in compensation across adjacent districts within the same state. The results indicate that, on average, math/science teachers’ scholastic aptitudes are 8.5 percentiles lower and humanities teachers are 4.5 percentiles lower compared to other teachers. Furthermore, we find that schools with higher percentages of student eligible for free lunch hire teachers with, on average, 7 to 17 percentiles lower scholastic aptitudes with the math/science teachers being even lower. Increases in lifetime compensation is found to raise the scholastic aptitude of teachers hired across all schools, with diminishing returns in schools with more favorable working conditions. However, the lower 26% of the teacher aptitude distribution seems to not respond to compensation at all with only marginal gains up to the 60th percentile. Furthermore, bonus/merit pay or additional school activity income do not seem to be significant in recruiting/retaining high aptitude teachers.

Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2011-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://caepr.indiana.edu/RePEc/inu/caeprp/caepr2011-004.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inu:caeprp:2011004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CAEPR Working Papers from Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research ().