Why aren't we paying teachers more?

Great teaching remains the bedrock of student academic success. However, recruiting and supporting effective teachers has become increasingly difficult in recent years. Education spending has steadily increased since the pandemic, yet teacher salaries remain stagnant and educator morale low. What’s more, the bipartisan reform consensus on teachers that anchored the Bush-Obama era is a distant memory. Greater political division now constrains the policies that will shape the future of the teaching profession.

Amid that backdrop, the Program on Education Policy and Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government is hosting six one-hour virtual sessions with the nation’s leading policymakers, scholars, and experts on K-12 teacher policy. The purpose of this virtual series is to examine current challenges to reforming the teaching profession to drive student academic success.