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In theory, it should be a good thing for teachers to earn a master’s degree. After all, no one would choose a poorly trained doctor or architect.
But theory is not always reality. In the case of teachers, research suggests the best way to get better is to actually practice teaching, especially with skilled coaches and mentors, not to sit in a classroom to earn an advanced degree.
Unfortunately, a flawed theory of teacher development has been baked into a range of state- and district-level policies that encourage or even require teachers to get ever-higher levels of external training. And, instead of working to better understand how to help teachers improve on the job, policymakers continue to rely on credentials to do that work.
That starts with state control of who gets into the profession, with some states demanding that teachers earn master’s degrees to get or stay in. In California, for example, educators can’t remain in the classroom beyond an initial five-year grace period unless they earn a master’s or become National Board certified.
Once prospective teachers are licensed by their respective states, most districts use educators’ academic credentials to decide how much money they will earn. Salary schedules typically offer higher pay to teachers with more academic credits, on the theory that extra training should make educators better.
And, to help teachers pay for all those additional courses, many states, districts and even the federal government have stepped in.
As a result, more teachers have master’s degrees than ever before, even though the profession today has more novices than it did in the 1980s and 1990s. As of 2020-21, more than half of all public school teachers had a master’s degree or higher. That makes teachers overall more educated than biochemists, zoologists, mathematicians and statisticians.
But research suggests that relying so heavily on teacher credentialing is misguided. Other than a few potential exceptions in high school math and science, teachers with master’s degrees are no better than those without them. A rigorous study from the Institute of Education Sciences found there was “no statistically significant relationship between student test scores and the content of the teacher’s training, including the number of required hours of math pedagogy, reading/language arts pedagogy or fieldwork.”
But teachers with a master’s are no worse, in general, than those without, either. So what’s the harm in pushing teachers to pursue more and more higher education credits?
The most damage is done to teachers themselves. Despite all the government subsidies, the Learning Policy Institute found that 60% of teachers have to take on debt to pay for those advanced degrees. Among those who took out loans and completed a master’s in 2020, the average balance owed was $38,230.
In other words, teachers are taking out large loans to earn academic credentials that won’t help them do their jobs better. That’s not a good trade.
The individual harm to prospective teachers should be enough for policymakers to pay attention. But paying for credentials also costs a lot of money, and those precious resources could be put to better use. According to a recent report from the National Council on Teacher Quality, 15 states require districts to offer additional pay for master’s degrees. Those states — Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio, Oklahoma and West Virginia — tend to be concentrated in the Bible Belt or upper Midwest.
But the practice is widespread. NCTQ found that 135 of 148 large districts offered higher pay for master’s degrees. The average premium in 2025 for beginning teachers with a master’s was $3,581 a year. For teachers with 25 years of experience, it ran to $9,315. This adds up to millions of dollars that districts are investing to reward teachers with higher degrees.
Seattle, for example, pays beginning teachers with a master’s degree almost $13,000 more than those with just a bachelor’s. In Miami, teachers with 10 years of experience make $20,446 more if they have a master’s degree. In Montgomery County, Maryland, a teacher with 25 years of experience makes almost $40,000 more with a master’s.
As these examples suggest, master’s degrees do pay off handsomely for some individuals. But that’s not the norm for most teachers. Last year, an analysis for the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity found that master’s degrees in education have low to negative returns on investment, in contrast to master’s degrees in science, engineering and nursing, which offered much greater returns.
There are better alternatives. States have been ramping up apprenticeship-style training programs that don’t require much of a front-end investment on the parts of teacher candidates. And a Texas program shows that states can pay teachers more without making the higher salary contingent on a master’s degree. Team-based staffing models demonstrate how schools can reward effectiveness rather than resumes.
But in most parts of the country, state and district policies continue to rely on teacher credentials. That harms educators, who take on debt and never earn much of a return on their investment. And it’s a poor use of taxpayer resources, which go toward a credentialing system that ultimately doesn’t help teachers get better at working with students.
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