Recruitment and retention of agriculture teachers is a major concern in the field of school-based agricultural education (SBAE). A major reason cited for this concern is perceived shortcomings in teacher compensation. To remedy this factor, Illinois implemented an extended contract grant program to provide agriculture teachers with additional…

Defined benefit (DB) pension plans incentivize "salary spiking," where sharp increases in pay are leveraged into significantly higher levels of retirement compensation. While egregious instances of salary spiking occasionally make headlines, there is little guidance on the definition of salary-spiking behavior or understanding of its…

Defined benefit (DB) pension systems determine the size of pension payments using an employee's "final average salary". Thus, employees enrolled in DB pension systems face an incentive to "salary spike" -- strategically increase late career pensionable compensation -- to increase their retirement income. This is an important…

This article takes advantage of a recently released national data set on school site expenditures to evaluate spending variations between traditional district operated schools and charter schools operated by for-profit versus nonprofit management firms. Prior research has revealed the revenue-enhancement, private fund-raising capacity of major…

Teacher attrition is a significant problem nationally and a special challenge for school-based agriculture education programs. The purpose of this study was to investigate contributing variables associated with former Illinois school-based agriculture teachers and their decision to leave the profession. A four-factor conceptual model is proposed…

Background: School closure is one of the primary measures considered during severe influenza pandemics and other emergencies. However, prolonged school closures may cause unintended adverse consequences to schools, students, and their families. A better understanding of these consequences will inform prepandemic planning, and help public health…

We use data from 2015-2016 to document faculty representation and wage gaps by race-ethnicity and gender in six fields at selective public universities. Consistent with widely available information, Black, Hispanic, and female professors are underrepresented and White and Asian professors are overrepresented in our data. Disadvantaged minority and…

Gender equity in education has certainly improved since the 1960s, when women faced barriers such as quotas limiting their numbers. Indeed, in recent years, women have surpassed men in their persistence and success as college students: They now receive about 60 percent of bachelor's degrees. But even though women now have full access to education,…

The financial problems afflicting the Illinois teacher pension plan have grabbed headlines. An equally important problem, though underappreciated, is that relatively few teachers benefit much from the plan. This report evaluates the pension benefits provided to Illinois public school teachers. The researchers project annual and lifetime pension…

Teach For America (TFA) began in 1990 as an organization purportedly interested in working towards ameliorating a national teacher shortage by sending its corps members into urban and rural schools. In the decades that followed, especially during and immediately following a nationwide onslaught of teacher layoffs instigated by the 2008 Great…

In this paper, I document evidence that intergovernmental incentives inherent in public sector defined benefit pension systems distort the amount and timing of income for public school teachers. This intergovernmental incentive stems from the fact that, in many states, local school districts are responsible for setting the compensation that…

Teacher recruitment and retention factors were identified in the smallest public school districts in Illinois. Findings were compared to a previous study of Montana rural teacher recruitment and retention conducted by Davis (2002). A quantitative survey instrument was administered to teachers employed in the 24 smallest Illinois school districts.…

We study employers' perceptions of postsecondary degrees using a field experiment. We randomly assign the sector and selectivity of institution to fictitious resumes and send them to real vacancy postings on a large online job board. According to our results, a bachelor's degree in business from a for-profit "online" institution is 22…

Despite three decades of scholarship on economic restructuring in the United States, employers' violations of minimum wage, overtime and other workplace laws remain understudied. This article begins to fill the gap by presenting evidence from a large-scale, original worker survey that draws on recent advances in sampling methodology to reach…

Background: Teacher quality plays a key role in student learning outcomes. Yet, data suggest that elite college graduates who enter teaching are less likely to stay in schools serving low income and minority students compared to other teachers. Thus, many educators and policy makers agree that in order to equalize the playing field, recruitment,…