Teachers’ needs, demands, and requests are changing, due to a new generation entering the profession, or perhaps because teachers are becoming wiser about the ways schools operate and their ability to influence faculty compensation policy.
Teachers’ input into base salary increases and benefit structures usually ranges from limited to none, whether in the US Canada, or in the international world.

The New Evaluation Conversation

Often today, evaluation is not a welcome word among teachers, as it implies some element of risk, threat, or accountability that goes beyond what some teachers will be comfortable with.
Teacher input into professional growth and teacher evaluation protocols, however, is increasing. While it has always been an area of teacher involvement, heads of school know that their input is key now to the development and formation of teacher growth and evaluation systems.

The Salary Conversation Has Changed

In US public schools, and those in Canada and many other nations, teacher salary systems have been shaped by state institutions and collective bargaining. The resulting salary scales, grids, and systems honor and reward mainly years of experience, graduate work, extra duties and stipends, as well as movement into administrative and quasi-administrative positions. Independent and international schools adopted them without regard to whether they were mission appropriate for them.

Historically, many teachers were “called” to their profession almost like clergy. While salaries were important for ensuring a decent standard of living, most teachers in most locations could live comfortably if the school’s benefit systems were truly strong enough. Post-COVID, and in the current economic and cultural climate where parental influence is becoming more intrusive and often threatening rather than merely engaging, teachers are perceiving that their profession is becoming risky and less rewarding.  Independent and international school teachers are using their voices to advocate for themselves more often. They want to earn more money, regardless of the salary system design.

Most teachers, especially in the US, are keenly aware that the rich are getting richer and the super-rich are getting super-rich even faster. In the US, There are approximately 900 billionaires in the US who own a combined $7.8 trillion in household wealth, or about 4% of the nation’s total household wealth. The top 1% of earners own about 31% of total household wealth, and 97% of the nation’s household wealth is held by the top 50% of wage earners. The average teacher salary in the US, including public schools, is about $74,500.

Much of the real wealth for public school teachers is held in state pension plans, which are among the best forms of financial support for teachers in the US and some other nations, and are better than the retirement plans of almost all independent and international schools. Seeing numbers like these, teachers are now demanding larger increases in base salaries.

One challenge for teachers, especially in the US, is that some independent school tuitions in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles can reach $85,000 for a 12th grader, and $55,000 to $75,000 is not uncommon. Of course, many Catholic, Christian, and smaller schools charge much lower tuitions from $5,000 to $25,000 and thus cannot afford to pay teachers as generously as those charging much higher tuitions.

Creative Compensation and Benefits Are No Longer Optional

However, more schools in the US are now planning ways to help teachers buy homes or are building housing on school property as a lure to recruit teachers initially and to enable them to afford housing as long-term employees.  In the international market outside of Western Europe, most international schools also provide tax-free housing.

Independent schools are now exploring how to develop deferred compensation plans (457(b) and 457(f)) not just for the head or senior management, but also as a potential benefit for certain highly valued teachers, such as long-tenured educators whose skills could not be easily replaced.

Thinking outside the box is now essential for boards and school leaders. To recruit, train, nurture, and retain valued teachers in a highly competitive marketplace and to keep faculty morale and school climate positive, schools must think beyond the standard 2–5% across-the-board salary increase, especially with inflation on the rise.

How do schools accomplish this without pricing parents out of the marketplace due to ever-rising tuitions? Littleford & Associates has been raising that question for years, and yet many parents continue to afford tuitions, at least among the upper-middle and upper classes. The other side of this coin is the need for significantly greater endowments, more successful annual giving programs, and truly transformational approaches to engaging distant and often disenchanted alumni, as well as grandparents who need to be educated about tax effective charitable giving strategies.

Littleford & Associates worked with one School on the topics of salary and benefits design, teacher evaluation and growth protocols. This School engaged 24 teachers, 6 administrators, and 8 board members in a year-long process of informed, and challenging dialogue. Among many positive outcomes from this process came an unexpected one: substantially increased board member giving. In one case, an active board member who participated in the process described above gave $50 million to the school’s endowment for teacher salaries, a direct result of his deep engagement in the process. In another case, a board member’s parents shifted their planned giving from the university level to the K–12 school on which their son served as a board member, to the tune of approximately $100 million over time.

Teachers’ needs and demands, along with schools’ needs and their obligation to guarantee quality for parents, require that boards and heads think not only about more competitive salary systems, but also about out-of-the-box solutions. These include housing options for day school faculty, deferred compensation plans, childcare benefits, on-campus meals for staff families, a wider range of benefit choices and benefit “banks,” and rapidly expanding wellness incentives. Fundraising success may well come as an unexpected or now more common, powerful side effect.

What Boards and Heads Must Do Now

Retaining excellent teachers and maintaining the morale and school climate that make our independent and international schools healthy require more than competitive salaries. It requires imaginative leadership.

That means revisiting salary systems with fresh eyes, exploring deferred compensation structures beyond senior leadership, developing housing strategies for faculty, and building philanthropic relationships that make sustained investment in people possible. It also means involving teachers meaningfully in these conversations, not as a courtesy but as a strategic necessity.

Schools that approach faculty compensation routinely will risk losing talented educators, while those that approach it as a design challenge, with creativity and genuine commitment, will be positioned to thrive.

Littleford & Associates has been actively engaged with thousands of independent and International schools on the topics of faculty and staff compensation, evaluation, and benefits practices since 1983, when Mr. Littleford’s book Salary Systems in Independent Schools was published by NAIS, where it remained in print for 20 years as a popular best seller.