Layered Reforms and the Structure of Teacher Pay: Descriptive Evidence from Maryland

States increasingly reform teacher compensation through bundles that layer across-the-board raises, credential- and role-based bonuses, and salary floors. Yet research evaluates such reforms in isolation, focusing on pay levels rather than structure. We develop a framework classifying reforms by how they act on the sources of salary variation—rescaling, introducing, or compressing variation—and apply it to Maryland’s Blueprint, which enacted all three types between 2022 and 2026. Drawing on a 19-year statewide panel, we find the reforms rescaled rather than restructured pay: traditional drivers (e.g., experience, degrees) still dominate, premiums along them grew, and the $60,000 salary floor produced no detectable compression. Value-added models show reform dollars flowed partly to credentials unrelated to student achievement (e.g., master’s degrees).