Retirement incentives are frequently used by school districts facing financial difficulties. They provide a means of either decreasing staff size or replacing retiring senior teachers with less expensive junior teachers. We analyze a one-time retirement incentive in a large school district paid to teachers willing to retire at the end of the…

How much do teachers value compensation deferred for retirement (CDR)? This question is important because the vast majority of public school teachers are covered by defined benefit pension plans that "backload" a large share of compensation to retirement relative to the compensation structure in the private sector, and there is scant…

The ongoing crisis in teacher pension funding has led states to consider various reforms in plan design to replace the traditional benefit formulas, based on years of service and final average salary (FAS). One such design is a cash balance (CB) plan, long deployed in the private sector, and increasingly considered, but rarely yet adopted, for…

Public school teachers retire much earlier than comparable professionals. Pension rule changes affecting new teachers can be used to close this gap in the long run, but any effects will not be observed for decades and the implications for workforce quality are unclear. This paper considers targeted incentive policies designed to deter retirement…

Retirement benefits for faculty are an important, but relatively understudied, topic in postsecondary education. To date, there have been very few studies that have used qualitative research methods to examine how workers make financial decisions about retirement, and no qualitative investigations of faculty choice between DB and DC plans. To help…

West Virginia's attempt to reshape its teacher retirement system in the 1990s and early 2000s is often cited as a cautionary tale to block other teacher pension reform efforts across the country. Critics argue that because West Virginia replaced its pension fund with a defined contribution (DC), 401(k)-style plan in the early nineties, and then…

Today, nine out of 10 Americans age 65 and older depend on Social Security benefits to lead a comfortable and secure retirement. Among all Americans over age 65, Social Security makes up more than half of their household income. This brief outlines the history of Social Security benefits in the public sector, describes the safe harbor rule and how…

This essay argues for a redefinition of disciplinary activity and examines disciplinary identity development beyond traditional academic/nonacademic binaries. Through analysis of interviews with twenty-seven retired members of rhetoric, composition, and writing studies, this essay provides a closer look at retirement as an active but overlooked…

In "Are Texas Teacher Retirement Benefits Adequate?," authors Chad Aldeman and Anthony Randazzo analyze the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS) of Texas and find it is not serving all of its members well. Most members will leave their teaching service in Texas with inadequate retirement benefits, and the unfunded liabilities the system has…

Teachers shortage is one of the major concerns in the public schools of Bhutan and the impact on academic achievement is very much overwhelming. The data collected within the period of five years (2015-2019) shows the increase in attrition rate by 3.98% which is a concern for the education sector of Bhutan. Yearly the voluntary resignation of the…

Los Angeles Unified, the second-largest school district in the country, is on pace to spend more than half of its annual budget on retirement and health-care costs by the year 2031. By then, it is projected to spend 22.4 percent of its budget on pensions and 28.4 on health-care benefits for current and former workers. The cost of health care is…

In response to financial pressures, the New York State Assembly has created new, less-generous retirement plans for teachers. Teachers and other education employees are enrolled in one of two plans, the Teachers' Retirement System of the City of New York (TRS) and the New York State Teachers' Retirement System (NYSTRS). How far have the benefits…

Teachers and other employees of the School District of Philadelphia receive their retirement benefits from the Pennsylvania state retirement plan for schools, which includes both a defined-benefit pension plan and a modest retiree health benefit. The cost of the former is expected to rise quite substantially and, as this technical analysis will…

The growing interest in the history of curriculum and pedagogy in subject English might be seen as a response to educational reforms that are replacing earlier, progressive understandings of subject English with narrowly technical understandings of teacher professional knowledge and practice. This essay emerges out of an intergenerational,…

Ideas and norms about disability shaped the experiences and careers of every teacher and prospective teacher in the Los Angeles public schools between 1930 and 1970. Medical doctors created and conducted the extensive medical examinations that teaching candidates and practicing teachers needed to pass to enter or remain in the classroom. The Los…