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One of the most familiar claims in education is that teachers are the most important in-school factor for student learning. It also happens to be well-supported by research.
But states aren’t acting on it. According to a new analysis from the National Council on Teacher Quality, fewer states are offering extra incentives for teachers to work in hard-to-staff schools and subjects today than they were in 2022.
As of this year, NCTQ found that just 13 states have differentiated pay policies for teachers in hard-to-staff schools, down from 28 in 2022. Just three states — Alabama, Hawaii and Texas — offer a state supplement of $5,000 or more annually. Texas’ is by far the biggest of the three. Its incentive program, which I wrote about in 2025, now awards up to $36,000 a year for the best teachers who are willing to work in the most high-poverty rural schools.
Many of the incentives that remain are one-time stipends or provide only relatively small bonuses, which are not likely to change where teachers choose to work.
States have also retreated on offering incentives for teachers who work in subject-area shortages. NCTQ counts 36 states that offer no extra pay at all for teachers in high-demand fields, up from 29 in 2022. In those states, high school chemistry teachers are often paid the same as social studies teachers, even though chemistry teachers tend to be much harder to find and could likely earn more outside of education. As NCTQ puts it, the result is a system that “ignores basic supply and demand.”
Alabama is the most aggressive state on subject-area shortages. Its TEAMS program pays middle and high school math and science teachers as much as $15,000 extra each year, and another $5,000 on top of that if they work in a hard-to-staff school. That’s the kind of money that can potentially change a teacher’s behavior.
Most schools have been on a hiring spree over the last few years, but it’s not like the demand for teachers has dried up entirely, or that there are no remaining shortages. In the 2026-27 school year, 40 states plus Washington, D.C., said they had a shortage of special education teachers, and 35 said they did not have enough math and science teachers.
Take my home state of Virginia, for example. State leaders tell the federal government that they have 18 shortage areas, including special education and English as a second language, as well as high school math, world languages, social studies, science, physical education, and career and technical ed. And yet, NCTQ reports that Virginia has no program to provide differential pay in hard-to-staff schools or subjects, let alone supplemental pay to keep the state’s best teachers, or to encourage those great educators to work in high-need schools. Virginia policymakers are willing to acknowledge that they have shortage areas, but their compensation policies largely ignore them.
Does extra pay work? It can, if the amounts are large enough and consistent enough. When Hawaii started giving special education teachers a $10,000 annual bonus, plus $8,000 more for working in high-need schools, it didn’t solve all of the state’s staffing gaps, but the number of special education slots that sat vacant or went to unlicensed teachers dropped by 35%. The effects were particularly large in high-need schools, although this did mean that some teachers with dual certifications shifted from general to special ed. Nationally, teachers report that working in special education can be especially hard, and Hawaii’s pay incentive helped compensate for that disparity.
And what about quality? One reason to deviate from the traditional salary schedule is that some roles are much harder to fill. Another reason is that some teachers are particularly effective, and a sensible compensation system should recognize both. Texas shows how a state can invest in keeping its best educators. The state paid out $750 million under its Teacher Incentive Allotment last year, and those efforts seem to be boosting retention and helping schools raise student achievement.
Targeted incentives can also make financial sense. The Learning Policy Institute estimates that each teacher who leaves costs a larger district about $25,000 to replace and a smaller one about $12,000. States that pay every teacher the same, no matter the subject or school, may be saving money upfront. But in NCTQ’s words, they are “spending it on churn and vacancies.”
If teachers really are the most important in-school factor, and states really do face persistent shortages, policymakers should act accordingly.
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