Many states have recently made or are considering changes to their teacher retirement systems. However, little is known about how teachers value various elements of their retirement benefits versus other aspects of their jobs and compensation. To help alleviate this gap, we use a discrete choice stated preferences experiment embedded in a…

School boards remain one of the most powerful forces in American education, helping to set curricula, evaluate teachers, and direct hundreds of billions of dollars in education funding. Yet teachers' unions play an outsized role in determining who serves on these boards. If the interests of teachers are perfectly aligned with those of students,…

Salaries are one of the most powerful policy levers states and school districts can use to attract qualified, effective, and diverse teachers. What role do states play in supporting strategic use of salaries? This report examines the state teacher compensation policies that influence districts' potential strategic use of teacher pay. It analyzes…

This Information Capsule summarizes the history of educational reform in the State of Florida from the 1970s through the present. Although the Florida Legislature has modified accountability policies and added new reforms over the years, the "A+ Plan for Education", signed into law by Governor Jeb Bush in 1999, remains the foundation of…

The Teacher Compensation Survey (TCS) was a research and development effort by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to explore the possibility of developing an administrative records survey that would compile compensation and demographic data on all public school teachers in the nation. A pilot survey in 2007 collected data from…

Charter schools see as many as one in four teachers leave annually, and recent evidence attributes much of this turnover to provisions affected by collective bargaining processes and state laws such as salary, benefits, job security, and working hours. There have been many recent efforts to improve teacher voice in charter schools (Kahlenberg…

On February 24, 2017, all of the authors of the state-of-the-state manuscripts published in the "Journal of Education Finance" met in Cincinnati, Ohio, to participate in a roundtable discussion focused on recent legislative actions in 38 states. A majority of those papers were revised to reflect a final report on legislative actions…

This article discusses Black teacher activism during Jim Crow through a case study of the Florida State Teachers Association. Few studies have examined the response of Black teacher associations to Jim Crow educational policies. This study examines inequities in school and teacher salaries and the FSTA's response by way of campaigns, rhetoric and…

Recruit, train, reward, retain. These actions sound like the core competencies of a human resources manager or the buzzwords for economic development initiatives aiming to attract Fortune 500 companies. The same principles apply to finding, preparing and retaining effective educators. All 16 Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states have…

Some Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grantees are experimenting with the design and operation of teacher leader (TL) programs as part of their performance-based compensation systems (PBCS). Much of the impetus for this is the U.S Department of Education TIF 4 requirement that grantees' PBCS should provide for "additional responsibilities and…

There is broad consensus that high-quality environments for young children depend on teachers who are skilled at nurturing their development and learning, yet low pay and inadequate working conditions routinely hamper teachers in their efforts to apply their skills and knowledge. This condition exists among teachers in early education as well as…

In 2009 the Committee for Economic Development (CED) called on district and state education officials to revamp the way that teachers are paid. New compensation systems are needed to attract highly qualified individuals into teaching under labor market conditions that have changed substantially since the typical framework for teacher salaries was…

Two competing pressures--downsized budgets and rising policy interest--have left the future of performance-based teacher compensation uncertain. A dicey fiscal climate and research that has shown limited impact have led some states and districts to scale back, abandon, or change their fledgling merit-pay programs, causing observers to wonder what…

A handful of districts, some with the approval of their local teachers' unions, are experimenting with alternatives to the fundamental components that govern teachers' base-pay raises. Ranging from a long-standing plan in Eagle County, Colorado, to a contract ratified earlier this year by teachers in the Pittsburgh district, the systems tie raises…

Recently, state and federal legislators have emphasized teacher quality in their efforts to improve public education. Many reformers believe that merit pay may prove invaluable in attracting highly qualified educators to the workforce and retaining them, as well as in improving students' test scores. While merit pay's ability to recruit and retain…