Want to pay good teachers more? Require them to teach where they grew up

I was thinking about this in my car on the way to work, and I thought it would be an interesting discussion topic. <br><br>I am 23 years old and am an elementary school librarian. I moved back to the city I grew up in and attended the school district I grew up in. To be clear, my home district is chronically underfunded and understaffed. Every school is Title 1 and about half are in the bottom 10% of all elementary schools in the state. Our pay is also in the bottom 10% in our state. At the same time, a district 20 minutes up the road has one of the top 10 elementary schools in the state, modern facilities, the latest technology, etc. and a salary scale that is nearly 25% higher. <br><br>The thing is, I am not the exception. I have spoken to so many people in my profession who grew up where I did, but chose to work at the district 20 minutes away because the pay was better and they believed they would have better resources to teach with. Meanwhile teachers who had no connection to our school district get hired at Title 1 schools, don't last a year or two, and leave to go to the better funded district. Experienced teachers always end up at the well funded, high performing schools, and rookie teachers always end up at the underfunded, low performing schools. <br><br>I know the government is broke and won't be raising the pay of underfunded schools anytime soon. So we need to find a way to get good teachers to the underfunded districts. I wonder if there is a way to pay a teacher a higher salary for being a good teacher, but require them to teach at underfunded schools. If you want to get paid more, great - but you have to teach where it matters most. Now of course this would have to be balanced with allowing teachers to continue teaching at their school of choice if they want to, and with also ensuring an effective evaluation system to define "good" teachers. <br><br>I guess what I'm wondering is, does anyone know of any programs that do this? Does this idea have any downsides, and what would they be?