Teacher pay has become a big contender in the education reform space, with growing agreement that paying educators a livable wage is essential to building a strong, stable workforce. At the same time, policymakers continue to grapple with a related challenge: how to retain effective teachers. A new study brings these two strands together, examining how a statewide minimum salary policy shapes teacher retention and offering fresh insight into whether boosting baseline pay can help schools hold on to the talent they need most.
In 2023, Arkansas passed the LEARNS Act, a comprehensive education law that included reforms ranging from Educational Freedom Accounts for private school tuition to literacy requirements. Importantly, it also effected three major teacher salary changes: raising the minimum statewide teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000, guaranteeing all teachers a minimum raise of $2,000, and allowing school districts to deviate from a traditional seniority-based salary schedule.
To study how school districts adjusted to the new legislation, a group of researchers from the University of Arkansas and Brown University’s Annenberg Institute compared salary data from nearly all Arkansas public school districts before (2022–23) and after (2023–24) implementation, alongside key district characteristics like size, location, and student demographics. They then merged these data with long-term administrative records tracking teachers’ job assignments over time, allowing analysis of how changes in compensation influenced teacher retention and turnover across the state. Unlike other research that examines the impact of teacher salary increases, this study is the first to speak directly to the impact of a large, statewide minimum salary increase.
This approach allowed them to answer the following questions: How have school districts’ teacher compensation policies changed in response to the LEARNS Act? How has the distribution of teacher salaries across districts and regions shifted, and how have the relationships between teacher salaries and district characteristics evolved? And finally, how have the salary increases under the LEARNS Act affected teacher retention?
Researchers found that teacher salaries in traditionally lower-paying rural and high-poverty districts experienced larger increases in their salary steps (i.e. incremental pay increases typically based on years of experience), making the starting salaries in these districts more competitive. For example, an increase of 10 percentage points in the proportion of free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL) students in a district was associated with about a $475 average increase in starting salaries. And rural districts increased their starting salaries by just over $2,000 more than urban districts.
The researchers also concluded that the salary increases had positive effects on retention. Teachers who received raises above $2,000 were more likely to remain in their districts. It should be noted that the empirical estimates used demonstrated that the effects of a salary boost on retention were more concentrated in the first year after implementation. After the first year of implementation, the effects decreased somewhat in subsequent years. The strongest effects were observed among those who received the largest increases (above $6,000). Overall, retention rose by roughly 0.4 percentage points for each $1,000 increase in salary. Larger raises produced even bigger gains in retention, with increases of 2.2 percentage points for raises between $6,001 and $8,000, and 3.1 percentage points for raises above $8,000.
Unfortunately, the effects of the policy seemed to fade as inflation eroded the value of the initial salary gain, which aligns with prior research on the topic. While the policy demonstrates promising short-term improvements in teacher retention in the years following initial implementation, its long-term sustainability remains a concern. This highlights the need for continued study of how large, statewide reforms perform over time and how they might be adjusted to maintain their impact. Similarly, future research should also consider whether or not these policies keep more effective educators in the classroom.
Taken together, Arkansas offers an instructive example of a policy with clear potential to improve teacher retention, but it also underscores that raising salaries alone may not be enough to ensure lasting change as the policy only created a one-time increase in teacher salaries. Policymakers will need to think beyond initial salary increases and consider how to enact a structural change in teacher compensation that is able to provide educators with a sustainable salary long-term.
SOURCE: Gema Zamarro, Andrew M. Camp, Josh McGee, Taylor Wilson, & Miranda Vernon. “Raising the Floor: Teacher Retention Effects of a Statewide Minimum Salary Increase.” (March 2026).
