K-12 students who ride the school bus have more than likely experienced service interruptions due to the school bus driver shortage. The current driver shortage promotes underpinnings influencing student education today. With more than 26 million students dependent on school buses, the path to replenishing the nation's school bus driver faction…

States have taken different approaches in addressing the need for increased compensation among teachers by spreading pay increases across multiple years, linking increases to performance, and connecting them to sweeping K-12 policy changes, such as school vouchers. The earn-as-you-learn Registered Apprenticeship model is an increasingly popular…

We survey undergraduate students at a large public university to understand the pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors driving their college major and career decisions with a focus on K-12 teaching. While the average student reports there is a 6% chance they will pursue teaching, almost 27% report a nonzero chance of working as a teacher in the…

In this brief, we set out to understand how unionization may or may not shape practices central to charter schools' ability to serve students. The study, an exploratory one, includes 29 interviews across eight schools that unionized four to six years ago. Our results point to areas of concern, optimism, and future research. We found: (1)…

Long-standing shortages of well-prepared special educators, especially within rural areas, have jeopardized positive outcomes for students with disabilities. In this multiple case study of administrators and special educators, the authors examined how individuals make sense of the special education teacher shortages in relation to the challenges…

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…

For state-funded preschool programs the compensation of teachers is a critical issue for program quality and effectiveness. If preschool programs are to attract and retain teachers comparable to those in primary schools, preschool teachers must receive comparable pay and benefits. This brief assesses compensation parity between state-funded…

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…

This study investigated the relationship between teachers' job satisfaction and teachers' satisfaction with their salary, the number of years teaching, and the principals' communication about the kind of school they want. Teacher attrition in the K-12 public school system is a well-documented problem citing many motives and causes. The recruitment…

Although Virginia teachers earn thousands more annually than their counterparts in states such as Mississippi and Arkansas, data show that the Virginia teacher retention percentage is among the lowest in the U.S. (North, 2021). Comparing teacher salaries to those of other occupations, the Commonwealth ranks 50th in the nation, just ahead of the…

The shortage of teachers is an immense challenge for schools in Illinois, as well as throughout the United States. Districts are changing and adapting their practices to recruit new teachers, but similar changes and efforts need to be implemented to retain the teachers currently in our schools. This research study gave a confidential survey to the…

The data presented in this report provide facts about the extent to which local, state, and national governments commit resources to public education. The level of commitment to education varies on a state-by-state basis. National Education Association (NEA) Research offers this report to its state and local affiliates as well as to researchers,…

In 2018, West Virginia teachers staged a statewide strike which lasted almost two weeks and included schools across all 55 countywide districts. The main reported strike issues for West Virginia teachers included cuts to their healthcare coverage by the state and relatively low salaries. Prior to the strike, West Virginia teachers ranked 48th in…

This dissertation examines the school-level impacts on student achievement in the state of Pennsylvania from the economic inputs provided to students and schools. I conduct a comprehensive review of prior literature on Pennsylvania education funding, the issue of equity versus adequacy, academic spending per pupil, and teacher compensation, as…

Texas reduced new teacher preparation requirements in 2001 to allow more alternate paths to licensure. Within 5 years, this policy change resulted in more than half of the state's new teachers being alternatively licensed. Using a series of first difference models, this study examines the relationship between the increased supply of new teachers…