For more than a decade, academics and education policy experts have raised concerns about a widespread shortage of teachers in the United States. The first wave of warnings came in response to the drastic cuts in state and local spending on education following the Great Recession. In this report, the authors use data from a wide range of sources…

More than a decade and a half of work on the topic has shown there has been a long-trending erosion of teacher wages and compensation relative to other college graduates. Simply put, teachers are paid less (in wages and compensation) than other college-educated workers with similar experience and other characteristics, and this financial penalty…

An effective teacher is the most important school-based determinant of education outcomes. Therefore it is crucial that school districts recruit and retain high-quality teachers. This is increasingly challenging given that the supply of teachers has been greatly affected by high early to mid-career turnover rates, annual retirements of longtime…

Over the past few years, as cash-strapped states and school districts have faced tough budget decisions, spending on teacher compensation has come under the microscope. The underlying question is whether teachers are fairly paid, underpaid, or overpaid. In this forum, two pairs of respected economists offer very different answers. Andrew Biggs of…

When most people think of the perks of teaching, an image that comes to mind is a shiny apple presented by a gap-toothed pupil. A recent paper by Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation and Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute claims that public school teachers enjoy lavish benefits that are more valuable than their base pay and…

Effective teachers are demonstrably the most important resource schools have for improving the academic success of their students. Yet for many school leaders, recruiting and retaining talented and effective classroom teachers remains an uphill battle. Whether teacher salaries are sufficient to attract the best graduates into teaching remains an…

One of the lightning rods in the discourse over teacher pay has been the question of "how much" teachers should be paid. What the "how much" debate does not directly address, however, is the question of "how" teachers should be paid. This paper attempts to help lay groundwork for a better understanding of what exactly teachers want in terms of how…