America’s schools face a number of warning signs about the teaching profession: higher turnover, lower morale, declining interest in the profession among college students, persistent shortages in certain subjects. These problems could have big consequences for students.

“I don’t want to sound alarmist, but it’s been bad,” said Luis Rodriguez, an education researcher at New York University. “The concerning thing is that we as a nation aren’t doing anything systematic to address some of these causes.”

So what should policymakers do?

Chalkbeat reviewed dozens of studies and spoke to a number of researchers and teachers. Although there are no foolproof answers for strengthening the profession and improving teacher quality, the following are some ideas that research suggests might help.

There is substantial evidence suggesting that higher pay attracts more talented people into the classroom and keeps them there. But teachers’ take-home pay has fallen further and further behind other college-educated workers’. Surveys show that relatively low pay is a source of frustration among teachers and deters college and high school students from choosing the profession.

A higher starting salary may be a particularly good way to draw new people into teaching. Raising salaries beyond the first year and through the middle of teachers’ careers is also important, both for attracting new teachers and retaining existing ones. Some research finds that schools are most likely to lose effective teachers after the first couple years in the classroom.

One way to raise salaries might be to shift some of teachers’ compensation from benefits to take home pay. Teachers receive a greater fraction of pay through benefits compared to other workers, and retirement benefits make teacher compensation heavily backloaded. This might be unappealing to people considering teaching and may cause them to underestimate total teacher pay.

“I think right now current compensation overweights investments in career teachers’ long-term benefits and under-invests in the first year teacher’s starting salary — we back-weight the benefits,” said Matthew Kraft, an education researcher at Brown University.

Read the full article about solutions for high teacher turnover by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat.