Teacher Salary Distribution and Sources of Variation: Pay Reforms Under Maryland's Blueprint

• In Event: Salaries, Sorting, and Discrimination: Educator Compensation and Workforce Dynamics

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: A substantial body of research links teacher salaries to workforce supply and retention, yet salaries remain an underutilized policy lever for addressing shortages and the inequitable sorting of teachers across schools. Further, low wages are among the top reasons teachers leave the profession. In recent years, many states have moved to raise teacher pay, with 23 states proposing minimum salary increases and six enacting such laws as of 2023. Maryland's Blueprint for Maryland's Future is among the most ambitious of these efforts, introducing three overlapping reforms: career ladder pay tied to advanced credentials and roles (effective Summer 2022), across-the-board 10% salary increases relative to 2019-20 levels (effective Summer 2024), and a $60,000 minimum salary floor (effective Summer 2026).

PURPOSE: While prior research has examined salary interventions in isolation, far less is known about how multiple, simultaneous reforms interact to reshape the overall distribution of teacher pay. Across-the-board percentage increases expand salary variation in ways that may reward experience—consistently associated with student achievement gains—but also amplify existing misalignments, such as the master's degree premium, for which there is little evidence of effectiveness returns. Minimum salary floors risk compressing the distribution and flattening incentives, as observed in Arkansas. The Blueprint presents a unique opportunity to examine how these complementary and competing logics play out together. We address three research questions:

1. Have teacher salaries kept pace with inflation since the Blueprint's passage?
2. What factors explain salary variation before and after implementation, and have reforms shifted their relative importance?
3. Are the factors driving salary differences associated with improved student outcomes?

DATA & METHODS: This study draws on person-level administrative data from the Maryland Longitudinal Data System covering all public-school teachers from 2007-08 through 2025-26. Analyses document changes in nominal and inflation-adjusted salaries over time. A variance decomposition using Shapley values tracks how much experience, education, district, and teaching credentials explain salary differences in each year. Finally, we link teacher characteristics to student test-score gains to assess whether factors driving salary variation are associated with instructional effectiveness.

FINDINGS & IMPLICATIONS: Three key findings emerge. First, average teacher salaries have risen by roughly $27,000 since Blueprint's passage, largely keeping pace with inflation. Second, the salary distribution has expanded: the gap between the 5th and 75th percentiles has grown, while the minimum salary floor has not yet visibly compressed the lower end. Third, the underlying structure of teacher pay has remained largely stable, experience explains roughly 43% of salary variation, education around 22%, and district below 15%. Linking these factors to student outcomes reveals that experience premiums are well-supported by effectiveness evidence, while master's degree and NBC bonuses are not. These findings suggest Blueprint reforms have succeeded in raising real wages but have largely layered new policies onto existing compensation structures rather than fundamentally realigning pay with the teacher characteristics most associated with student success.

Author

• Wesley Morris, University of Memphis
  Presenting Author