State Teacher Policy Database Homepage › Indiana

Teacher Compensation

Learn more about how Indiana is leveraging compensation to attract a qualified, effective, and diverse teacher workforce.
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Indiana’s Performance

Ungraded
Explore the key policy levers below to learn more about how Indiana is implementing Teacher Compensation policies. (NCTQ does not assign rankings to states for this policy area.)
See how Indiana performs across policy levers to improve Teacher Compensation
Differentiated Pay for Hard-to-Staff Schools and Subjects
Performance Pay
Pay for Prior Work Experience
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Why focus on Teacher Compensation?

Competitive compensation is a key strategy states can leverage to attract skilled, effective educators. Research shows that policies like strategic pay for working in hard-to-staff schools and subjects, paying teachers more for being highly effective, or rewarding career changers for prior work experience can incentivize behavior, successfully bringing effective teachers into schools1 or subject areas2 that most need them, and increase teacher retention.3

Recommendations for Indiana for Teacher Compensation

Differentiated Pay for Hard-to-Staff Schools and Subjects

  • Differentiate pay for teachers working in high-need or hard-to-staff schools
  • Ensure that the differential pay for working in a high-needs school is at least at the evidence-based threshold of 7.5% of the salary or typically $5,000
  • Ensure that the differential pay for working in a hard-to-staff certification area is at least at the evidence-based threshold of 7.5% of the salary or typically $5,000

Performance Pay

  • Offer incentives to districts to incorporate performance into teacher compensation
References
  1. Morgan, A. J., Nguyen, M., Hanushek, E. A., Ost, B., & Rivkin, S. G. (2023). Attracting and retaining highly effective educators in hard-to-staff schools (No. w31051). National Bureau of Economic Research.
  2. Theobald, R., Xu, Z., Gilmour, A., Lachlan-Hache, L., Bettini, E., & Jones, N. (2023). The Impact of a $10,000 Bonus on Special Education Teacher Shortages in Hawai‘i. CALDER Working Paper 290-0823.
  3. Bueno, C., & Sass, T. R. (2018). The effects of differential pay on teacher recruitment and retention. Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Research Paper Series (18-07).