It’s Pay, Yes, But Other Things Also Matter

Summary for Educators

Based on: “It’s Pay, Yes, But Other Things Also Matter”
By Kimberly Ashton | Ed. Magazine, Harvard Graduate School of Education | September 22, 2026

THE BIG IDEA

Teacher compensation matters—a great deal. But new research on educator well-being suggests that what happens inside the workplace may be nearly as important as what appears on the paycheck.

Harvard’s Ed. Magazine highlights findings from the second annual Educator Well-Being Report Card, based on responses from nearly 9,000 educators during the 2024–25 school year. The report examines seven factors associated with job satisfaction and educators’ mental and physical health. These include compensation and adequate staffing, but also supportive leadership, school culture, collaboration, and educators’ own capacity to cope with difficult emotions and maintain well-being outside work.

For principals, one finding deserves particular attention: the strongest predictor of educator well-being was whether teachers felt supported by their leaders.

That means teacher retention is not simply an HR problem. It is a leadership problem—and potentially a leadership opportunity.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Pay matters. Compensation remains one of the most important reasons teachers consider leaving their schools or the profession.

• Leadership may matter even more than many principals realize. Teachers who feel heard, respected, included in decisions, and supported by administrators report higher levels of well-being.

• Student behavior is a major pressure point. Only slightly more than half of surveyed educators said administrators adequately backed them in dealing with student behavior, discipline, and mental-health concerns.

• Consistency counts. Teachers want administrators to communicate shared expectations and apply discipline procedures predictably rather than leaving individual teachers to manage serious problems alone.

• Collaboration protects against isolation. Structured opportunities for teachers to solve problems together can improve both well-being and retention.

• Teachers still believe deeply in their work. Despite stress and burnout, educators report a strong sense of purpose and a belief that their work makes a meaningful difference in students’ lives.

WHY IT MATTERS

School districts frequently approach the teacher shortage primarily through recruitment: signing bonuses, hiring fairs, alternative certification programs, tuition reimbursement, and larger applicant pools.

Those strategies have value. But recruiting teachers faster accomplishes little if schools continue losing experienced educators because the workplace itself is unhealthy.

Perhaps the most striking finding reported by Harvard is that roughly half of the differences in educator well-being could be predicted by how teachers responded to questions about their administrators.

That should command the attention of every superintendent and principal.

Leaders cannot always control salaries, state mandates, testing requirements, pension systems, or healthcare costs. But principals have substantial influence over what teachers experience every day.

Do teachers believe the principal will support them when student behavior becomes difficult?

Are their concerns taken seriously?

Do they have meaningful input before major decisions are made?

Can they find the principal when they need help?

Do teachers have time to collaborate?

Are expectations clear and consistently enforced?

These seemingly ordinary leadership practices may determine whether talented educators remain in a school or begin looking elsewhere.

The research also challenges the idea that teacher wellness can be addressed primarily through yoga sessions, mindfulness programs, appreciation breakfasts, or occasional morale-building activities. Those efforts may be welcome, but they cannot compensate for a workplace in which teachers feel ignored, isolated, overwhelmed, or unsupported.

The better approach is structural.

Create a school where teachers can do their jobs successfully.

LEADERSHIP ACTIONS

1. Ask teachers where they feel unsupported.
A short anonymous survey asking, “What is making your job unnecessarily difficult?” may reveal more than a lengthy climate survey.

2. Examine discipline systems.
Teachers need to know that administrators will respond when serious behavioral problems interfere with teaching and learning.

3. Protect collaboration time.
Professional learning communities should give teachers genuine opportunities to discuss students, examine instructional problems, and develop solutions together.

4. Increase teacher voice.
Before implementing significant changes, involve the educators who will actually carry them out.

5. Remove unnecessary burdens.
Every new initiative, form, meeting, report, or requirement consumes teacher time. Leaders should continually ask: Does this help teachers teach?

6. Treat retention as a leadership metric.
Instead of asking only how many teachers resigned, examine why they stayed or left—and what school leadership contributed to that decision.

LEADER REFLECTION

The Harvard article ultimately delivers an encouraging message: teacher well-being is not fixed.

Schools can create conditions in which educators flourish.

Salary will always matter, and school leaders should advocate for competitive compensation. But principals also possess something enormously powerful—the ability to shape teachers’ everyday experience of work.

The most important retention strategy may therefore begin with a deceptively simple question:

Do the teachers in our school genuinely believe that their leaders have their backs?

Original Article

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com