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Thanks for highlighting this issue. It is crucial that policymakers and anyone who cares about teacher quality understand how much of good teaching is contextual. I consider myself an effective and accomplished teacher, but I've honed my craft in high performing schools. That doesn't mean that I work exclusively with high performing students, but my effectiveness with struggling students depends in large part on being able to work in the conditions that I do, with the fiscal and human resources to help me. I don't accomplish anything on my own, and I'm sure that I could not pick up and move to just any school and work some kind of magic there in a short amount of time. Over time, I might be able to adjust, and I would be skilled in identifying what I needed and whether or not I could get it. My prior experience would help, but there would be gaps as well.

Furthermore, compared to some low performing districts and schools in my region, my district pays anywhere from 20-40% more. (This is in California, where there is high variability among districts). I know some wonderful teachers who work for a lot less in other districts, and I'd hope any incentives being doled out would concentrate on keeping them in the classroom and helping their school to grow their own skilled teaching force. Were I to go onto the pay scale at some low-performing district, and then receive a $10,000/yr bonus, I would still be looking at pay cut of 15-20%.

Spot on post, Claus. You're right to steer the focus to broader contextual factors, such as teaching and learning conditions in these schools, including effective school leadership. I worry that this study is too narrowly construed - and hope that researchers are at least measuring some of these related variables.

There's some new research out from Tony Milanowski and colleagues at UW-Madison and elsewhere that questions the efficacy of higher salaries for attracting new teachers. It suggests a focus on school leadership, working conditions, and induction/mentoring would be preferable uses of resources to attract and retain new teachers. I wrote about it in a new blog post today: http://eduoptimists.blogspot.com/2009/09/research-attracting-new-teacher...

Thanks, David and Liam.

David, your point about current salary differences in many states erasing the effect of short-term bonuses is very well taken. I'm certainly all for incentives, but we really have to understand them in full context. Existing compensation gaps are an affront where they occur, and in those cases bonuses don't even qualify as band-aid measures.

Liam, the research you cite is very interesting. I've seen similar research that suggests financial incentives alone would have to be very, very high to offset the impact of terrible working conditions. In the past, we have favored a mix of financial incentives and better conditions.

Good post Claus. The TTI researchers randomly assign schools that have a teaching vacancy in targeted grades and academic subjects with high value-added teachers, or control group teachers (who theoretically would be drawn on to fill vacancies as they normally would if they were not part of a study). . In a brief discussion of the research program published online, officials warn teachers who are being recruited to the “experiment” that they will face challenges as they move into high needs schools:
"There may also be additional challenges in participating schools that are not present in your current school related to classroom management and school culture. We hope to help mitigate these issues by offering support during the summer orientation and by continuing to check in with teachers throughout the school year."

In other words, even in experiments designed to focus solely on how much to pay teachers for moving to high needs schools, researchers are forced to concede that working conditions matter.

Indeed, other school districts have tried offering additional pay for high needs schools without much positive result, even when substantial bonuses are awarded. In 2004, Palm Beach, Florida eliminated its $7,500 high needs school stipend after few teachers took the offer. Dallas’s offer of $6,000 to superstar teachers to move to challenging schools also failed to generate much interest. Now the district is offering $10,000 plus job security — recognizing that it is more difficult to teach in high needs schools and there is more opportunity not to succeed. A decade ago, South Carolina set out to recruit “teacher specialists” to work in the state’s weakest schools. Despite the offer of an $18,000 bonus, the state attracted only 20 percent of the 500 teachers they needed in the first year of the program, and only 40 percent after three years. Interviews with officials revealed that some teachers who applied were not qualified, while others would not move into these hard-to-staff positions because of location, lack of administrative support, poor working conditions, and a lack of adequate preparation for the difficult teaching tasks at hand. Unfortunately, too few policy analysts address the complex interplay between paying teachers for teaching in high needs schools and the working conditions they need in order to be effective in them.