Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Traditionally, teacher salaries have been based on a fixed schedule that does not vary by subject area or work environment. Faced with the difficulty of staffing positions in math, science and special education and the difficulty of recruiting teachers to work in schools serving disadvantaged students, many districts a few states have experimented with differential pay systems that allow teachers in “hard-to-staff” subjects and schools to be paid more than other teachers. There is scant evidence on the efficacy of differential pay systems and the extant research focuses exclusively on retention of existing teachers.

In this paper we analyze the effects of a statewide differential pay system for Georgia math and science teachers on (i) the number of students who complete a major in math education or science education, (ii) likelihood that college graduates with a major in education become math or science teachers in a Georgia public school, (iii) the number of certified math and science teachers and (iv) the quality of math and science teachers (measured both by credentials like coursework, GPA and SAT score and by “value added”). To do this we exploit a nine-year panel of individual-level statewide data from Georgia’s longitudinal education database, GAAWARDS. The GAAWARDS database includes information on K-12 teachers and their students as well as the college transcripts and entrance exam scores of students in Georgia public universities and those of students from many private colleges and universities in Georgia as well. A difference-in-difference approach will be utilized, exploiting inter-temporal variation in the existence of the differential pay program and cross-subject differences in coverage.