Afton Partners

Of all K-12 public school teachers who left their jobs during the 2012-13 period, only 6.8% said they did so as a result of their salary, according to the most recent figures from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. So what else is pushing teachers out of the profession and stopping more qualified people from entering it? An analysis of the Grand Challenges facing the education system found that the most salient issues cover a variety of themes, but the biggest one that jumps out is school culture. Many teachers protested in part as a response to dilapidated classroom conditions. When teachers went on strike in Oklahoma, beyond asking for a pay raise, they also demanded a $200 million increase in public school funding to improve school buildings and services.

The market research firm IDC estimates that $4.9 billion was spent on devices by K-12 schools in 2015, and the Software and Information Industry Association estimates that nearly $8.4 billion was spent on software. Yet the same device or program can cost more from one state to another and even from district to district. Responsibility to negotiate with vendors falls on school districts that often do not have the time or resources to drive a hard bargain.

The survey asks districts about whether they offer financial incentives either to help recruit new teachers or to target bonus payment to specific teachers. The survey provides eight different financial incentive options. The first four types of incentives are intended as recruitment tools and are, by nature, short-term rewards. The remaining four incentives are intended to reward specific types of teachers or those filling specific needs the district may have, and the reward is generally more permanent.

Beaverton is one of a rapidly expanding network of districts in the Smarter School Spending coalition, which uses so-called “continuous improvement” tools to integrate budget and academic staff and planning in schools. Instead of a small circle of staff poring over spreadsheets in marathon budget meetings once or twice a year, the districts involve everyone from finance officers and principals to teachers and janitors in ongoing conversations about solving instructional problems in sustainable ways.

In one such study, infusions of dollars to poor school districts, as a result of court-ordered reform, led to a 10% increase in the predicted graduation rate for students from low-income families and a projected 10% rise in their lifetime earnings. Other research found that increasing K-12 spending by 10% added a half-year of schooling and a wage boost of nearly 10%. “A 22 percent increase in per-pupil spending,” the study concluded “is [estimated to be] large enough to eliminate the education gap between children from low-income and nonpoor families.”