Retirement plans can create strong financial incentives that have important labor market implications, and many states have adopted alternative plan designs that significantly change these incentives. The authors use longitudinal data to investigate the impact of Washington State's 1996 introduction of a hybrid retirement plan on late-career…

Many factors contribute to the academic success of elementary age students, but one must not overlook the importance of the classroom teacher. Measuring teacher absenteeism is difficult as it is not factored into local, state, or federal accountability requirements and teacher attendance policies are created locally through collective bargaining…

Background: Policy makers are increasingly adopting performance incentives to spur underperforming teachers as a way to improve teaching and student performance. However, much of the experimental research fails to find meaningful effects of performance incentives on either student achievement or teacher practice. Purpose/Objective: Using the…

To provide an appropriate incentive for teaching profession, the important questions are "how much should we pay?" and "which factors influence potential teachers' decision the most?" This research evaluates the factors that discourage and encourage potential teachers to join the profession in Cambodia and Laos by applying a…

To help states retain teachers and recruit the next generation into the profession, this brief examines teacher compensation policies in states and how adjustments could help reverse teacher shortage trends. The report looks at teacher compensation packages as a whole, including data on salary, health insurance, retirement and other benefits. It…

Administrative support has been frequently identified as the most important factor influencing teachers' employment decisions (Burkhauser, 2017; Ladd, 2011). While many rural schools operate in hard-to-staff contexts that suffer from severe teacher shortages, it is unknown if rural teachers require rural context specific administrative support.…

Research Findings: In this non-experimental study, the research team analyzed data from a randomly selected sample of child care programs in Maryland and Vermont to understand what characteristics contribute to collaboration success. The team also examined the relationship between collaboration success and measures of child care program quality.…

Teacher pension systems concentrate retirements within a narrow range of the career cycle by penalizing individuals who separate too soon or remain employed too long. The penalties result in the retention of some teachers who would otherwise choose to leave, and the premature exit of some teachers who would otherwise choose to stay. We examine the…

While policymakers have been directing considerable attention to teacher effectiveness, one basic aspect of effectiveness has received relatively little attention: teacher attendance. No matter how engaging or talented teachers may be, they can only have an impact on student learning if they are in the classroom. This paper asks a simple question:…

As public budgets have grown tighter over the past decade, states and school districts have sought ways to control the growth of spending. One increasingly common strategy employed to rein in costs is to offer experienced teachers with high salaries financial incentives to retire early. Although early retirement incentive (ERI) programs have been…

While the retirement security landscape has changed drastically for most workers over the last twenty years, traditional defined benefit (DB) pension plans remain the overwhelming norm for K-12 teachers. Because DB plans pay off fully with a fixed income after retirement only if a teacher stays in the profession for decades and yield little or…

The purpose of the qualitative collective case study is to identify the weaknesses in the methods used to recruit highly qualified African American preservice teachers in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The data collection process consisted of one-on-one, open-ended interview questions with 10 highly qualified African American public school…

The authors analyze the Arkansas teacher pension plan and empirically gauge the behavioral response to incentives embedded in that plan and to possible reforms. The pattern of pension wealth accrual creates sharp incentives to work until eligible for early or normal retirement, often in one's early fifties, and to separate shortly thereafter. We…

This study summarizes the empirical results of school-level research done in Georgia, one of the post-Soviet, Caucasian states, in October 2009. The findings drawn from qualitative and quantitative data describe current policies regarding teacher salaries and incentives in Georgia and identify future possible policy strategies aimed at the…

In the 1980s, school districts dabbled with programs that offered teachers cash inducements, such as bonuses or raises, for doing their jobs well. But those merit-pay programs were mostly short-lived, hotly debated, and understudied. Even after all this time, no one knows definitively whether children learn more when teachers are paid extra for…