How teachers' choices affect what a dollar can buy: Wages and quality in K-12 schooling

This paper examines the distribution of teachers acrossschools and districts and the distribution of teacher salaries acrossdistricts both in New York State and nationally. It finds that muchof the variation in teacher qualifications across schools is withindistricts. Salary schedules do not vary within districts. Thus,current salary differences are neither driving nor alleviating many ofthe disparities in teacher qualifications across schools. Thesedisparities appear to be driven primarily by teacher preferences forhigh-achieving, high-socioeconomic-status students or for theworking conditions in the schools these students attend. Targetedsalary increases and/or targeted improvements in working conditionsare needed to draw high-quality teachers to low-performing schoolsand to alleviate the inequities we see in the quality of the teachingforce across the state and across the country.