Offering competitive teacher compensation is an important part of the solution to recruit and retain a strong and diverse teacher workforce. The maps and associated tables that follow show three teacher wage indicators for the nation and each state: (1) average annual starting salary for public school teachers; (2) average annual starting salary…

Pensions have been at the forefront of recent debates over teacher pay, but the issues are complicated and political. As such, this document is an attempt to inform readers about how pension plans work for the 90 percent of public school teachers enrolled in them. Using objective data and analysis, we explain how teachers earn benefits in those…

This paper discusses the causes of the difficulties experienced in recruiting and retaining teachers to work in schools in England. The analysis begins with a report by the National Audit Office which blamed the Department of Education's actions as the main reason for the difficulties, then using other documented sources, reports, press articles,…

During a two-year period from 2000-2002, California awarded a $20,000 Governor's Teaching Fellowship (GTF) to 1,169 people enrolled in traditional, post-baccalaureate teacher licensure programs who agreed to teach in low-performing public schools for four years after earning their licenses. The GTF was a policy response to longstanding evidence…

In this paper, we report the results of a pilot study of the cost of teacher turnover in five school districts. We examine the rate of turnover, the relationship between turnover and teacher and school characteristics, and the costs associated with recruiting, hiring, and training replacement teachers. We find evidence that turnover costs,…

The Legislative Budget and Audit Committee of the Alaska Legislature has asked The Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Alaska Anchorage to make certain changes and adjustments to the Geographic Cost of Education Index (GCEI) that the American Institutes for Research (AIR) constructed and reported on in Alaska…

In 2007, the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) completed an 18-month study of the costs of teacher turnover in five school districts. The selected districts varied in size, location, and demographics enabling exploration of how these variations affected costs. Costs of recruiting, hiring, processing, and training…

With its inadequate training methods and disregard for teaching and learning knowledge base, Wendy Kopp's Teach for America (TFA) program continues a long tradition of devaluing urban students and deprofessionalizing teaching. One elementary school principal found that recruits lacked teaching skills and were not really dedicated to meeting…

In this paper, the authors describe a cost analysis framework and approach that can be easily understood by a range of relevant audiences and that has been successfully used to estimate the costs of a range of professional development initiatives. The paper illustrate its use by drawing on the authors' experience applying the framework in three…