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…

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…

This article draws from the concept of precarious employment to better understand the working conditions of teachers of adult English as an additional language (EAL) learners in Canada. I examine previously published research on the employment situations of this group of educators, drawing from data that have been gathered using interviews and…

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…

Teaching quality is a crucial factor in student success, contributing to students' short- and long-term learning opportunities. High-quality teaching not only contributes to the improvement of student test scores and graduation rates but also gives students a "strong foundation from which to advance and achieve" in the future. Long term,…

In this article, the authors discuss the aim of their book, "The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments" (2015). The authors provide an account of the dire employment conditions that have weakened North American universities as professional institutions of teaching and learning. They believe that…

Challenging the claims of pension boards and other groups about the cost-effectiveness, fairness and flexibility of the traditional defined benefit pension plans still in place in 38 states, this report includes a report card on each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, with a detailed analysis of state teacher pension policies, and…

This report, which has been developed through a partnership between the African Union Commission (AUC) and UNICEF, aims to: (1) track the progress that African nations have made in education, especially in relation to Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) and the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA) goals; (2) identify the challenges…

Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), this paper exposes the neoliberal ideology of the knowledge-based economy embedded within university policies, specifically those that regulate faculty hiring, promotion, and remuneration in two national contexts: Turkey and Mexico. The paper follows four stages of CDA: (1) focus upon a social wrong in its…

More than 60 years after the ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education" was handed down, its promise remains unfulfilled. In many respects, America's public schools continue to be "separate and unequal." Indeed, the growing resegregation of American schools by race and ethnicity, compounded by economic class segregation, has…

The article analyzes the practice and experience of faculty management at the University of Pennsylvania and its implications for Chinese universities from the perspective of management systems and operation mechanisms. Recent reforms and innovation of faculty management at Sichuan University are described.

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:…

In the social, political, and social humanities lexicon of today's Russia there is probably no word that is in wider and more common use than modernization. What this refers to is the profound and systematic transformation of all the main structures and sub-systems of the social organism, including "education"--one of the most important,…

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…

In this article, we explain how overly prescriptive, rigid state statutory and regulatory policy frameworks regarding teacher evaluation, tenure and employment decisions outstrip the statistical reliability and validity of proposed measures of teaching effectiveness. We begin with a discussion of the emergence of highly prescriptive state…