Authors: Jane Arnold Lin­cove, ​University of Mary­land, Bal­ti­more County​; Nathan Bar­rett, ​Education Research Alliance for New Orleans​; Katharine O. Strunk, ​University of South­ern California​Unlike tra­di­tion­al pub­lic schools, char­ter schools have auton­o­my over hir­ing and com­pen­sat­ing school lead­ers. This pro­vides char­ter schools with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to use com­pen­sa­tion to attract bet­ter-qual­i­fied indi­vid­u­als to lead­er­ship posi­tions in pub­lic edu­ca­tion and to pro­vide finan­cial incen­tives for school lead­ers to achieve cer­tain goals. This study uses state per­son­nel data to exam­ine asso­ci­a­tions between prin­ci­pal, stu­dent, and school char­ac­ter­is­tics and prin­ci­pal pay. We exam­ine what prin­ci­pal qual­i­fi­ca­tions are val­ued and reward­ed by char­ter schools, as well as whether prin­ci­pals receive increas­es in pay when schools achieve spe­cif­ic goals. We also exam­ine the role of job com­plex­i­ty in prin­ci­pal pay — includ­ing mea­sures of stu­dent demo­graph­ics, school orga­ni­za­tion, and admin­is­tra­tive sup­port — to deter­mine if pay is high­er when prin­ci­pals take on more chal­leng­ing assignments.