"Turn and Face the Strain: Age Demographic Change and the Near Future of American Education" outlines a fierce battle looming between the needs of public health care and education. A crisis is fast approaching that makes comprehensive improvement of America's public schools more important than ever. Faced with rapidly expanding…

While the pension plan landscape has changed remarkably over the last two decades, with most private-sector workers seeing a shift from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) plans, DB pension plans remain the overwhelming norm for K-12 teachers employed by state and local governments. With DB plans, teachers typically receive minimal…

Defined Benefit pension plans often generate odd time patterns of benefits. One typical pattern exhibits low accrual in early years, accelerating in mid-late years, followed by dramatic decline, or even negative returns in years that are relatively young for retirement. We consider four states for specific analysis: Arkansas, Missouri, California…

While educators are eager to forget the financial woes of the past two years and return to the familiar routine of steady budget increases, the fiscal outlook for America's fourteen thousand school districts is bleak--not just for next year, but for a half decade or more. This calls for a new mindset among educators and an unfamiliar,…

Most public elementary and high school teachers are covered by health insurance provided by their employer while they are employed. In most cases, these health plans are managed at the state level. At retirement, teachers with sufficient years of service are allowed to remain in the health plan. Retiree health plans for teachers vary widely across…

This paper is about the funding status of teachers' retirement pension schemes. Its goal is to relate the accounting for the funding of these pension obligations to the endemic, systematic, and fundamentally fraudulent system of accounting our country uses to assess the financial positions of federal, state, and local government as well as many…

Veteran educators are being encouraged to take early retirement in order to create jobs for less-experienced, lower-paid novices. Veteran educators are not alone: early retirement promotions have become the norm for aging workers in America. Consequently, there is a brain-drain of skilled workers at the national, state, and local levels. The early…

Every two years, the Educator Licensing Division of the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) is tasked with producing a report on the supply and demand of teachers. By statute, that report must contain data collected by surveying Minnesota public school districts, charter schools, and teacher preparation institutions (Minnesota Statute 127A.05,…

"Accelerated Leadership Development" captures and communicates the lessons learned from successful fast-track leadership programmes in the private and public sector, and provides a model which schools can follow and customize as they plan their own leadership development strategies. As large numbers of headteachers and other senior staff…

The Foundation for Educational Choice and the Manhattan Institute recently commissioned a new study to examine the emerging crisis of underfunding public teacher pension plans in the states. The implications for public policy will likely be severe in the coming years. Public funding for K-12 education, and the potential for new reforms hang in the…

Widespread media reports of local teacher shortages have become a hot topic in education since the summer of 2015. To date, there has not yet been a detailed national analysis of the sources and extent of teacher shortages, or a prognosis for the future. This report details the outcomes of such a study, which analyzes evidence of teacher…

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…

The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to satisfy today's claimants in the here-and-now at the expense of long-term concerns. Rules and auditing standards are intended to tame this kind of short-sighted behavior in the private sector. In the public sector, the primary safeguard is the hope that public officials will not be…

Sixty-eight percent of people who are approaching retirement age report that they intend to work full time or part time after retirement, mostly because they want to. With today's life span stretching to 80 years and beyond, turning 60 is no longer an end-stage event. Instead, it is the beginning of a new developmental phase. This article…

State and local funding for general operating budgets for Kansas public schools will be at a five-year low this school year, yet total Kansas school district spending will reach an all-time high of $5.67 billion according to estimates released by the Kansas State Department of Education. Total per pupil spending is projected to reach $12,454 per…