Nobody goes into teaching to get rich, but that's no excuse not to pay teachers as professionals. Compensation is one of the most important factors in determining who enters the teaching profession and how long they stay--yet 90 percent of all U.S. school districts pay teachers without any regard for their actual performance with students,…

This longitudinal study examined the professional perceptions of educational leaders as to the fairness and impact of teacher evaluation and compensation reforms under Race to the Top. The study surveyed graduate students in education and educational leadership programs to assess changes in their perceptions from prior to RTTT implementation…

This report explores the extent to which states (and several large cities) are positioned to provide high quality preschool education on a large scale. States and cities that are already doing so or that could do so with modest improvements offer opportunities for advocacy to advance access to high quality early education as well as for rigorous…

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…

Kim Farris-Berg, Edward J. Dirkswager and Amy Junge originally identified ten potential areas in which teachers could secure collective autonomy when conducting research for "Trusting Teachers with School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots." That list was developed from research about school decentralization and autonomy…

This paper presents the annual report of the American Association of University Professors on the economic status of the profession for 2010-2011. This analysis of the economic status of the faculty begins with results from this year's annual survey of full-time faculty compensation. Survey report table 1 presents the most basic results, while…

Teachers unions are under increasing scrutiny these days, and teachers are being asked to give up or reduce benefits, salary gains, and pensions. At the same time, teacher preparation and induction programs are encouraged to explore the medical training model as an exemplar. What a wonderful idea! Educators should charge for their work on an…

Previous research indicates that typical district budgeting practices mask large between-school teacher compensation expenditures (TCE) differences, that teacher sorting drives those TCE differences, and that TCE differences drive overall resource inequities. While scarce accurate school-level resource data has hindered intradistrict equity…

For years, the debate about American education was like a bad marriage. The arguments were about everything but the core issue--instructional quality. The other issues--education finance, school choice, standards--all matter, but are secondary to the importance of effective instruction. In the labor-intensive education field, effective instruction…

To achieve the goal of attracting and retaining talented professionals in education, performance-based compensation systems (PBCS) must offer salaries that are both fair and sufficiently competitive at each point across an educator's career continuum. Although many states, especially with the support of the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grants,…

This study examines the impact that collective bargaining has on multiple dimensions of teacher compensation, including average and starting salaries, early and late returns to experience, returns to graduate degrees, and the incidence of different pay for performance schemes. Using data from the School and Staffing Survey (SASS) and a more recent…

High-performing teachers tend to seek out positions at more affluent or academically challenging schools, which tend to hire more experienced, effective educators. Consequently, low-income and minority students are more likely to attend schools with less experienced and less effective educators (see, for example, DeMonte & Hanna, 2014; Office…

The purpose of this study was to examine the job satisfaction of adjuncts in the curriculum area of business at four-year universities and to determine the roles that individual job facets play in creating overall job satisfaction. To explore which job facets and demographics predict job satisfaction for the population, participants were asked to…

"Library Journal's annual Placements & Salaries Survey, with 1,996 respondents representing 38.7% of the approximately 5160 2009 LIS graduates, found an uptick in starting salaries, but bigger bumps in part-time and temporary jobs, an expanding gender gap, setbacks for minority graduates, and a drop in the number of total graduates. On the up…

Over the past 10 years, approaches to compensating teachers in primary schools, middle schools, and high schools have come under increasing criticism. The so-called single-salary schedule, which emerged in the 1920s as a way to make teachers' pay less arbitrary and more equitable, seems inefficient in an era where education policy seeks to improve…