Teacher vacancies have been a long-standing issue in U.S. public schools, only made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. Vacancies tend to be concentrated in high-poverty, high-minority schools and hard-to-staff subjects like special education and STEM. States have implemented various policies to decrease turnover, including offering teachers bonuses…

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…

Background: Despite being an important component of teacher compensation, government-sponsored teacher pensions are only 72 percent funded on average and have total unfunded liabilities exceeding $600 billion nationally (McGee, 2019; Novy-Marx & Rauh, 2011; "Public Plans Data," 2020). Annual per pupil teacher retirement costs account…

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…

Understanding how the District of Columbia (DC) funds District of Columbia Public School (DCPS) students and DC public charter school students is essential to ensuring all students receive the support they need as COVID-19 pandemic-era federal funds expire. The recent rise in the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula (UPSFF) and the boost in the…

The fiscal crisis facing the economy has led to withdrawal of the state from major sectors of the economy including education. With the advent of the liberalized economic policy the private sector has been playing a pivotal role in the economic development. Higher education ceases to be the 'merit good' and the universities are encouraged to…

What is the impact of the gender pay gap in academia over the course of a career and retirement? To quantify this impact, we used a Canadian post-secondary institution as a case study and simulated the effects of the reported difference in salary across multiple academic career trajectories. A starting wage gap of less than $9,000 resulted in a…

When pension benefits are not directly tied to contributions, some individuals may earn disproportionate returns on their retirement contributions. For instance, individuals who receive relatively larger late-career raises will receive disproportionately greater returns. For teachers, whose salaries are determined by salary schedules set by…

Many argue that public school systems should stop linking teachers' salaries so closely to their years of experience. However, the effect of deferred retirement compensation on the premium paid to experienced teachers has, to date, been underappreciated. To shed more light on this issue, we calculate the total compensation earned by teachers in…

From funding to teacher quality, inequities exist between school districts. This paper adds to the literature on inequities by examining the impact of pension plan formulas on pension benefits. Using data from the salary schedules of 464 Missouri school districts, this paper analyzes how various final average salary calculations would impact the…

Longitudinal administrative data generated by public education systems in the United States have become increasingly available and have tremendous potential to inform policy research. While it is tempting to take the accuracy of administrative data for granted, there are reasons why researchers should approach these data with a degree of caution.…

Background/Context: High teacher turnover has directed a great deal of scholarly attention toward the connection between teacher retention and teacher working conditions. Prior work has identified a set of key working conditions associated with teacher retention, including supportive school leadership, school safety, a collaborative professional…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of financial factors on motivating college students to consider teaching in hard-to-staff rural schools. The role of perceived respectability of the profession was also explored. Design/methodology/approach: This work relies on an explanatory sequential mixed-method design, that…

Voters in Marin County have long been willing to pass parcel taxes to fund their schools. In 2016, taxes faced unprecedented opposition from local activists; taxes in Kentfield and Mill Valley were defeated or passed by previously unheard-of narrow margins, respectively. What changed? This case study uses district financial and demographic data as…

P-12 and higher education finance policies and resources impact human resources administration. By examining education finance policy analyses covering 50 states written from 2013 to 2019, we illuminate human resource trends and challenges that emerged during this time. The purpose of this document analysis was to synthesize and share emerging…