Most teachers have tenure protections that constrain dismissal. Some argue that tenure improves recruitment and retention by mitigating the risk of monopsony employment and substituting job security for lower salaries. Others argue that tenure reduces performance incentives making it difficult to dismiss ineffective teachers. We examine…

In "Are Texas Teacher Retirement Benefits Adequate?," authors Chad Aldeman and Anthony Randazzo analyze the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS) of Texas and find it is not serving all of its members well. Most members will leave their teaching service in Texas with inadequate retirement benefits, and the unfunded liabilities the system has…

In response to financial pressures, the New York State Assembly has created new, less-generous retirement plans for teachers. Teachers and other education employees are enrolled in one of two plans, the Teachers' Retirement System of the City of New York (TRS) and the New York State Teachers' Retirement System (NYSTRS). How far have the benefits…

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…

Teacher pension systems concentrate retirements within a narrow range of the career cycle by penalizing individuals who separate too soon or remain employed too long. The penalties result in the retention of some teachers who would otherwise choose to leave, and the premature exit of some teachers who would otherwise choose to stay. We examine the…

Between 2011 and 2013 lawmakers in every state proposed, and often enacted, laws intended to impact codified state provisions related to teachers and teachers' unions (author calculation). These new laws either worked against union interests (e.g., by prohibiting collective bargaining) or they aligned with union positions (e.g. by providing…

This article reviews retirement benefit plans for faculty in a critical light and examines alternatives. (JD)

This second report of the Commission on Public School Personnel Policies in Ohio is concerned with teacher tenure in the state of Ohio and need for changes in the tenure law. The basic positions of the commission are that teachers should be protected against arbitrary and unwarranted action by their employers but that professional incompetence…

The Committee on Retirement of the American Association of University Professors initiated its first retirement policies survey in 2000 to address a lack of reliable and systematically collected information on retirement policies and practices across U.S. institutions of higher education. At the end of the 1990s, there was a sense that…

Chapter 7

Recent court decision, affecting teachers and other school employees are reviewed in this chapter. (JH)

This book is designed to acquaint Missouri teachers with the state laws that affect them. Teachers' legal status, their rights, duties, and obligations are defined. Examples are taken from constitutional provisions, judicial decisions, and statutory enactments to show both general aspects of school law for all teachers and specific applications to…

This survey of 464 junior college teachers from 60 institutions was designed to determine the relative importance to faculty members of four categories of employee benefits--security, teaching, research, and income supplement. (NF)

The author considers some problems caused by lack of university growth and discusses changes in policy that the no growth state will require. Faculty tenure in a no growth situation is emphasized and early retirement recommended to maintain vitality in the institution. (DE)

Since 1972 the national percentage of tenured faculty has risen from 43 to 60 percent, and from 23 to 52 percent at York College of Pennsylvania. The tenure policy has been debated there and nationally, and the college has changed its policy almost annually. This study first established an analytic faculty profile to determine the parameters for a…