Missouri has a teacher shortage. Just ask anyone.
Except the actual teacher shortage problem is different from what many people assume.
In our new paper on Missouri’s teacher pipeline, James Shuls and I show that the state’s teacher labor market does not indicate a broad shortage of teachers. Since 2013, Missouri has hired 4,000 teachers while public school enrollment has fallen by almost 30,000 students. The shortage pressure appears to be coming from specific high-need subject areas and schools.
Broad policy solutions like raising the statewide minimum teacher salary will not effectively address the problems in Missouri’s teacher labor market. Targeted policy solutions are needed. One such solution is paying excellent teachers to work in high-need schools.
Before making the case for this policy, it’s worth acknowledging how narrow the shortage really is. The St. Louis region is a clear example. Most of the region appeared to face very low shortage pressure. But the Riverview Gardens, Normandy, and Jennings school districts faced strong shortage pressure. These three districts are also among the lowest performing in the state, and as of 2022, these schools ranked 549th, 544th, and 502nd out of 552 school districts in academic performance, respectively.
These districts are struggling disproportionately to attract and retain teachers, and their students are struggling to learn.
A form of “crisis pay” for excellent teachers willing to work in these districts could help attract and retain teachers and improve academic outcomes. It would function much like differential pay, which is already used in healthcare to draw providers to higher-need hospitals.
Paying excellent teachers, of course, requires an evaluation system that meaningfully and fairly differentiates teacher performance. A notable example is right next door in Tennessee: the Tennessee Educator Accelerator Model (TEAM).
This idea is not unprecedented.
When the Dallas Independent School District offered sizable financial incentives to reassign top-rated teachers to high-need elementary schools through its ACE program, there was immediate improvement in student achievement that had “dramatic, lasting, positive effects on student learning through middle school.”
For districts like Riverview Gardens, which had just 5.1% of its almost 5,000 students score proficient in mathematics, this type of policy could help many children get help from excellent teachers.
There is a growing desire to put market forces to work in Missouri’s long-monopolized public education system. Paying excellent teachers to work in high-need schools would be a meaningful step toward that goal.
