Why focus on Seeding Innovation to support Strategic Staffing?
Reimagining teaching roles and staffing structures to make the profession more sustainable requires innovative thinking about how states and districts leverage time and resources. While few barriers exist that prevent districts from implementing innovative staffing approaches, states can play an important role in nurturing conditions that make strategic staffing possible, through strategies like grant funding, waivers from state policy, and strengthening pipelines into the educator workforce.
State performance on Seeding Innovation for Strategic Staffing
While there is little state policy standing in the way of implementing strategic staffing policies, few states explicitly focus on reimagining the teaching role as a strategy, despite its powerful potential to attract and retain talented educators.
NCTQ evaluates whether states are effectively using this policy lever by examining whether they financially support teacher leader roles, offer grant opportunities or “innovation zones” to innovate with strategic staffing models, financially contribute to differentiated pay structures for aspiring teachers, and have funding flexibility that can support innovative staffing models. Explore the key actions below to learn more about how each state is implementing policies to support Strategic Staffing. (NCTQ does not currently assign rankings to states for this policy area.)
Who stands out?
What are the key actions states should take?
Key Resources
Reimagining the Teaching Role
Explore NCTQ’s detailed 2024 analysis of strategic staffing policies.
Reimagining the Teaching Role: Research Summary
Dive into the research leading states and districts to innovate with strategic staffing models.