School districts increasingly rely on weighted student funding (WSF), yet there is little research on this allocation model. This study collects more than 70 measures on each of 19 districts using WSF in 2018 for a landscape analysis of formula features and implementation practices. While districts report common reasons for adopting WSF (equity,…

In 2013 California adopted a new watershed state finance policy, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) to drive more resources to students with higher needs, create more spending flexibility, and let districts decide how to spend substantial new dollars. Our analysis examines financial data from nearly all California school systems to clarify…

Teacher salary decisions are often made with little connection to the pension obligations they entail. In this paper, authors Marguerite Roza and Jessica Jonovski model the impacts of late-term raises on teacher pension obligations showing that on average each dollar raise triggers $10 to $16 in new taxpayer obligations. The authors provide…

On top of many policymakers' wish lists is increased teacher pay. Particular attention also has focused on mechanisms such as merit pay to target rewards to the most effective teachers and keep them in the classroom. Yet resources are constrained. Raising pay for some or all teachers inevitably takes funds away from some other element of…

Teacher compensation is driven largely by teacher longevity. While it's true that wages in many fields generally increase with experience, what differs in teaching is the degree to which pay is linked to seniority. And compared to other professions, teaching has more heavily back-loaded pay -- meaning a disproportionate share of earnings comes…

Labor, in the form of wages and benefits, makes up most of the costs of schooling. Much has been written about wages--especially the idea that we need to make salaries more competitive to attract a stronger labor pool. Analysts pay less attention to benefits, except to bemoan the rising cost of them. But as a portion of labor compensation, we…

Two seemingly different threads are in play on the issue of class size. The first is manifested in media reports that tell readers that class sizes are rising to concerning levels. The second thread appears in the work of some researchers and education leaders and suggests that repurposing class-size reduction funds to pay for other reforms may…

In many districts where budgets are tight and forcing cuts in services, are teacher incomes also falling behind? Is teaching becoming a less remunerative occupation relative to other local opportunities such that over time it may become less attractive? Or, do the automatic salary triggers shift wages up despite revenue constraints? This study…

Beginning this year with its 2012 graduating class, the University of Notre Dame ended its practice of offering diplomas made of sheep's skin, a tradition that has all but disappeared except in some stubborn corners of academia. But the tendency of employers to pay premiums to workers holding certain diplomas is thriving. This tendency, dubbed the…

Even as new educational technologies have emerged, staffing innovations have seemed all but impossible in American schools. Charter and district schools alike long ago surrendered to the notion that education requires at least as many core teachers as is determined from dividing enrollment by class size. A few new school designs suggest that we…

How much money is tied up in master's degrees? A 2007 study estimated that 2.1 percent of all current expenditures can be attributed to teacher compensation related to master's degrees. Seen another way, the master's bump costs the average school district $174 per pupil. These national figures conceal substantial variation among states in the…

As the economic outlook continues to darken, school districts will be looking for ways to cut costs, and they will no doubt wrestle with some difficult issues. When does it make sense to keep classes small? When does it make sense to increase class sizes to cut costs? Such debates are often carried out in the absence of information about what…

After years of non-stop increases--national k-12 per-pupil spending is up by "one-third" in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1995--schools now face the near-certainty of repeated annual budget cuts for the first time since the Great Depression. In some states and districts, reductions will be dramatic--well into the double digits. And…

State and federal accountability systems are pressuring public schools to improve the performance of low-achieving students. To respond, schools must be able to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, strengthen curricula, and take other steps to provide struggling students with the help they need. But such efforts are expensive and, as the…

School district budgets typically hide as much as they reveal. Superintendents are finding this as they discover huge deficits that nobody saw coming. District budgets are opaque by design, and they often mask important facts about resource allocation within a district, as well as about total spending. This paper reports the results of an original…