.

Conclusion

Teacher salaries in U.S. Islamic schools fall far below the average annual wages of public and private school teachers across the country. American Islamic schools are paying teachers more than $25,000 less than the national average salary for teachers. Even when compared solely with other private schools, the Islamic school salary is over $5,000 less, on average.

While pay overall may be lower for Islamic school teachers, there may be opportunities for higher salaries depending on the state in which these teachers work. Similar to regional trends in teacher wages, the average salaries at Islamic schools were higher in the West; however, a number of states in the Midwest and South ranked among the states with the highest salaries. This means Islamic school teachers may not be tied to the Western region of the country to find higher paying positions. 

Our research indicates that the financial resources available to Islamic schools matter. What we see in the data is a consistent, positive relationship between schools’ operating budgets and overall revenue with teacher compensation. Schools with higher financial resources provided higher teachers’ salaries and offered more benefits. We cannot say, however, that a causal relationship exists between financial resources and teacher compensation.

While we do not see the same level of consistency in the relationship between school characteristics and teacher compensation as we saw with school financial resources, there are a couple of key areas in which school administrators might hone their focus if trying to pinpoint school characteristics influencing compensation: 1) the number of teachers in the school, particularly the number of full-time teaching staff; and 2) some credentialing of the staff, especially at lower grade bands. School size, indicated by the number of full-time teachers and student enrollment, is correlated with the school’s financial resources, including operating budget and revenue. This may explain why these characteristics are related to teacher pay and benefits. Schools that are unable to offer high teacher pay and a large number of traditional benefits might consider creative but meaningful alternatives. Specifically, these benefits should address factors such as burnout, which teachers have identified as reasons for leaving the field.

While competitive salaries may not impact recruitment across all teaching positions, they are an important factor in retaining teachers in Islamic schools. Findings around the relationship between salaries and the difficulty of filling vacancies were only found for English positions, where a high teacher salary still resulted in great difficulty in hiring English/Language Arts teachers; however, the positive relationship between compensation and teacher retention rate was consistent. Schools with higher teacher pay and that provide a higher number of benefits have higher levels of retention. 

This report has three key limitations: the timeframe of the data collection, the design of the questionnaire, and the scope of the analysis conducted. 

The timeframe of data collection (November 23, 2022-June 6, 2023) is a snapshot of the landscape of Islamic schools and may have been impacted by unique post-Covid transitions and other longitudinal trends. Although we lack longitudinal data to demonstrate salary’s impact on teacher recruitment and retention over time, recent research around teacher burnout and turnover appear to support the argument that compensation is an essential component to attracting and retaining qualified teachers.26 However, there are likely other factors related to teacher recruitment and retention in Islamic schools that our data does not address. Additionally, the impacts of pandemic conditions that we could not account for may have influenced the findings. We encourage future research on this topic to further explore these complexities.

The questionnaire design presented a few limitations for our research. Similar to many studies involving large sample sizes, technical glitches are inevitable; some questions had missing responses and were consequently omitted from calculations in our analysis. Secondly, a few questions included inconsistent ranges in the options provided to participants; these ranges were adjusted in the analysis and the data was able to be used. Thirdly, due to some questions offering ranges rather than allowing participants to provide specific financial data, we used the top and middle ranges in our analysis. The transformation of categorical salary scales to integers by using the maximum number for each scale may have inflated the salary of teachers at those schools. However, we believe the schools that participated directionally represent the gaps in pay experienced by Islamic school teachers compared to other teachers across the country, as well the differences in pay by grade band.

Finally, while we have collected a sizable sample, it is not nationally representative of American Islamic schools. We benchmark the reported salaries by grade band and state and acknowledge that survey design limits the ability to accurately assess the state of compensation among all American Islamic schools. Future research should consider incorporating weighting efforts to make findings more representative of Islamic schools in the U.S.

DOWNLOADS

Conclusion

RECOMMENDATIONS

The salary benchmarking and survey results presented in this report equip readers with information to understand the current landscape of compensation in full-time U.S. Islamic schools. We explore how school resources and various school characteristics are related to teacher compensation as well as efforts to hire and retain Islamic school teachers. Data from research like that which is described in this report can be used to drive the continuous development of Islamic schools. 

Efforts to attract and retain highly qualified and capable teachers should be made by Islamic school leaders and the broader community to ensure their success and that of their students. Based on the conclusions identified in this research, we offer the following recommendations for specific stakeholders. 

School Administrators can use this report to:

• • Better understand the salary landscape nationwide and in your state to help determine competitive compensation packages that allow you to retain highly qualified teachers and effectively recruit the next generation of educators.
  • Advocate for increased compensation by presenting data to boards and funders to justify raising teacher salaries and benefits.
  • Assist in identifying the school characteristics related to teacher compensation, retention, and recruitment in your school that you may be able to impact these outcomes.
  • Consider offering teachers alternative benefits that might buffer against burnout such as adequate planning periods, possibly with other teachers in their grade band, as well as compensatory days off for extracurricular activities that teachers oversee and support. Additionally, consider implementing less common benefits, such as mental health support, flexible working conditions, and childcare services as they can significantly improve teacher satisfaction and retention.
  • Provide staff with an array of teacher credentialing and training options that can provide pathways for professional growth. 
  • Identify positions in your school that might require additional efforts in your retention and recruitment strategy.
  • Promote community-building initiatives that strengthen relationships between Islamic schools and their surrounding communities to enhance support and improve recruitment and retention efforts.
  • Promote data literacy and informed decision- making by collecting and analyzing data on various school characteristics:
    • school financial characteristics (e.g., operating budget, revenue, etc.);
    • staff qualifications (e.g., degrees, certifications, credentials, etc.);
    • teacher-to-student ratio;
    • staff demographics;
    • staff compensation;
    • position vacancies and recruitment efforts;
    • staff turnover rates and reasons for separation;
    • student demographics; and
    • enrollment data.

Teachers can use this report to:

• • Better understand the salary landscape nationwide and in your state to help evaluate competitive compensation packages.
  • Inform your decision of working at an American Islamic school.
  • Self-advocate for competitive compensation, benefits and development opportunities.
  • Engage with administrators and policymakers to stress the importance of adequate compensation and benefits for attracting and retaining quality teachers
  • Advocate for introducing less commonly offered benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid leave, and professional development in Islamic schools to attract and retain qualified teachers.
  • Advise school leaders about the importance of competitive salaries, expanded benefits, and a positive work environment to improve recruitment and retention.

Policymakers, Non-School Education Organizations, and Researchers can use this report to:

• • Identify ways you can support American Islamic schools in their efforts to attract and retain good teachers.
  • Identify areas for additional research to uncover factors not measured in our report that may be impacting teacher recruitment and retention.
  • Share key insights from this report to help Islamic education succeed, including ways to cultivate a more enriching, rewarding, and supportive professional environment for teachers in the industry.
  • Foster collaboration between Islamic schools, educational organizations, and researchers to share resources, strategies, and data to improve teacher recruitment and retention practices.

Endnotes

1. Melissa Kay Diliberti, Heather L. Schwartz. “Educator Turnover Has Markedly Increased, but Districts Have Taken Actions to Boost Teacher Ranks: Selected Findings From the Sixth American School District Panel Survey,” RAND Corporation Research Report, 2023, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA900/RRA956-14/RAND_RRA956-14.pdf.
2. Jake Bryant et al., “K-12 Teachers Are Quitting. What Would Make Them Stay?” McKinsey & Company, March 2, 2023, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/k-12-teachers-are-quitting-what-would-make-them-stay#/.
3. William Price, Ernest Terry Jr., and OpenStax-CNX, “Can Small Class Sizes Help Retain Teachers to the Profession?” by National Council of Professors of Educational Administration, OpenStax-CNX, July 29, 2008, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1067130.pdf.
4. Isaac M. Opper and RAND Corporation, “Teachers Matter: Understanding Teachers’ Impact on Student Achievement,” report, RAND Corporation, 2019, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR4300/RR4312/RAND_RR4312.pdf.
5. Charles T. Clotfelter et al., “How And Why Do Teacher Credentials Matter for Student Achievement?” National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, March 2007, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED509655.pdf.
6. Se Woong Lee and Eunjung Alice Lee, “Teacher Qualification Matters: The Association Between Cumulative Teacher Qualification and Students’ Educational Attainment,” International Journal of Educational Development 77 (September 1, 2020): 102218, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2020.102218.
7. Elizabeth Knox and Caitie Butler, Work Reimagined: How the Power of Pace Can Help Your Organization Achieve a New Level of Focus, Engagement and Satisfaction, 2021.
8. Kappan Staff, “Why Teachers Are Leaving and What We Can Do About It,” Kappan Online, April 2, 2024, https://kappanonline.org/why-teachers-are-leaving-what-we-can-do-marshall-pressley-neugebauer-shannon/.
9. Wes Manley, “Teacher Voices – Attracting and Retaining Qualified Teachers,” The Line K-12, January 24, 2020, https://thelinek12.com/teacher-voices-attracting-retaining-qualified-teachers/.
10. Anne Podolsky et al., “Solving the Teacher Shortage: How to Attract and Retain Excellent Educators,” Learning Policy Institute, September 15, 2016, https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/solving-teacher-shortage-brief.
11. Nadeem Memon, A History of Islamic Schooling in North America, 2019, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429442797.
12. Abdus Rashid, D. H., & Muhammad, Z. (1992). The Sister Clara Muhammad schools: Pioneers in the development of Islamic education in America. The Journal of Negro Education, 61(2), 178–185, https://doi.org/10.2307/2295414.
13. Nadeem Memon, A History of Islamic Schooling in North America, 2019, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429442797.
14. Islamic Schools League of America Database, 2023-2024.
15. Lucy C. Sorensen and Helen F. Ladd, “The Hidden Costs of Teacher Turnover,” AERA Open 6, no. 1 (January 1, 2020): 233285842090581, https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858420905812.
16. National Center for Education Statistics, “Employment and Average Annual Wage of Elementary School Teachers in Elementary and Secondary Education Industry, by State or Jurisdiction: 2016, 2019, and 2022.” https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_211.70c.asp. 
17. National Center for Education Statistics, “Employment and Average Annual Wage of Middle School Teachers in Elementary and Secondary Education Industry, by State or Jurisdiction: 2016, 2019, and 2022.” https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_211.70d.asp. 
18. National Center for Education Statistics, “Employment and Average Annual Wage of Secondary School Teachers in Elementary and Secondary Education Industry, by State or Jurisdiction: 2016, 2019, and 2022.” https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_211.70e.asp. 
19. National Center for Education Statistics, “Average Total Income, Base Salary, and Other Sources of School and Nonschool Income for Full-time Teachers in Public and Private Elementary and Secondary Schools, by Selected Characteristics: School Year 2020-2.” https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_211.10.asp. 
20. Jake Bryant et al., “K-12 Teachers Are Quitting. What Would Make Them Stay?” McKinsey & Company, March 2, 2023, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/k-12-teachers-are-quitting-what-would-make-them-stay#/. 
21. Nadeem Memon, A History of Islamic Schooling in North America, 2019, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429442797. 
22. Islamic Schools League of America Database, 2023 -2024. 
23. Elizabeth Dabney and Patrick Schuermann, “Examining Compensation Models and How to Attract and Retain Employees,” Nais.org, 2024, https://www.nais.org/magazine/independent-school/spring-2024/examining-compensation-models-and-how-to-attract-and-retain-employees/.
24. National Center for Education Statistics, “Employment and Average Annual Wage of Elementary School Teachers in Elementary and Secondary Education Industry, by State or Jurisdiction: 2016, 2019, and 2022.” https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_211.70c.asp. 
25. National Center for Education Statistics, “Employment and Average Annual Wage of Middle School Teachers in Elementary and Secondary Education Industry, by State or Jurisdiction: 2016, 2019, and 2022.” https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_211.70d.asp.
26. National Center for Education Statistics, “Employment and Average Annual Wage of Secondary School Teachers in Elementary and Secondary Education Industry, by State or Jurisdiction: 2016, 2019, and 2022.” https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_211.70e.asp.