Public Schools are Hemorrhaging Talented Teachers. Can higher salaries function as a tourniquet?

Research has clearly established that increasing teacher salaries reduces overall teacher attrition. A related question is whether higher salaries differentially retain high-ability teachers. Prior evidence sug-gests that the answer to this question is no. In this work, I revisit this question using a large panel dataset from Texas that links teachers to their certification scores, base salary, and mobility patterns. I find that differential retention effects of teacher salaries are more complicated than past research reveals. Differ-ential pay effects depend on teacher experience, so overall differential pay effects mask the effects that occur among experienced teachers. Increasing salaries for teachers with 3 or more years of experience differentially retains high-ability teachers, while higher salaries for teachers with 0-2 years of experience differentially retain low-ability teachers. This likely occurs because higher early-career salaries disrupt a positive sorting process that exits among novice teachers