Adequate leave policies and benefits help school districts attract and retain great teachers, ultimately leading to better student outcomes.
A Healthy Workforce Makes for a Healthy Profession
A competitive benefits package—including adequate sick and personal leave, paid parental leave, and affordable health insurance—is crucial for attracting and retaining effective teachers.
While student learning depends heavily on consistent, high-quality instruction, teachers need reasonable leave policies to maintain their health and care for their families. Paid parental leave ensures educators don’t have to choose between their newborns and their careers, yet only two in five of the nation’s largest school districts offer teachers any of this crucial benefit.1 Quality health insurance with affordable premiums protects teachers’ well-being while making the profession more viable.
Districts that offer competitive benefits packages are better positioned to attract great teachers, reduce turnover, and maintain the stable workforce students need to succeed. By investing in quality benefits, we invest in quality teachers, producing better student outcomes.
Latest Findings
Does paid parental leave for teachers pay off?
Our analysis of 148 large school districts2 examines the evolution of their paid parental leave policies and provides a closer look at the costs of providing teachers with this benefit in a handful of school districts.
Most districts don't offer teachers paid parental leave
Although the number of large districts in our sample that offer paid parental leave has doubled in the past two years, most districts (57%) still don't offer this crucial benefit.
Teacher leave policies: How much paid time off do teachers get?
We investigate how much paid leave teachers get, how leave accumulates over time, what types of paid leave are available, and what incentives districts offer for teachers who do not use all their available leave.
The sample for this analysis, drawn from NCTQ’s Teacher Contract Database, consists of 148 school districts in the United States: the 100 largest districts in the country, the largest district in each state, and the member districts of the Council of Great City Schools.
