Education is currently one of the key resources that enable countries to flourish and grow economically; as world experience has shown, the importance of this factor will increase steadily. To a large extent, the full-fledged restructuring of the Russian economy depends on the character and effectiveness of transformations in Russia's system of…

The effects of reliance on part-time faculty in higher education have been much discussed of late. Most observers now agree that the increasing reliance on contingent academic labor has worrisome consequences for both students and faculty. The authors recently attempted to provide needed analysis of what drives the current reliance on part-time…

Reform advocates and policymakers concerned about the quality and distribution of teachers support proposals of alternative compensation for teachers in hard-to-hire subject areas, hard-to-staff schools, and with special knowledge and skills. The successful implementation of such proposals depends in large part on teacher attitudes. The current…

Merit pay programs for educators--sometimes referred to a "pay for performance"--attempt to tie a teacher's compensation to his/her performance in the classroom. While the idea of merit pay for classroom teachers has been around for several decades, only now is it starting to be implemented in a growing number of districts around the…

Gaps in faculty pay between private and public colleges and universities continue to widen, warned the American Association of University Professors in its annual report on the economic status of the profession. It is a divide, the group argues, that threatens the ability of public institutions to recruit and retain faculty members at all levels.…

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…

When negotiating new teacher contracts, most districts, no doubt, are focusing discussions on averting wage freezes and massive layoffs. But prudent districts--those looking for long-term solutions to budget problems as well as those seeking to more fairly compensate the most effective teachers--are reconsidering the traditional salary schedule,…

Merit pay initiatives transparently alter the teaching profession and goings-on within classrooms, and thereby promise to stoke the self-interests of the two most prominent stakeholders in public education: teachers and parents. This memo summarizes the authors' ongoing efforts to empirically evaluate the extent to which public debates about merit…

The general-equilibrium effects of performance-related teacher pay include long-term incentive and teacher-sorting mechanisms that usually elude experimental studies but are captured in cross-country comparisons. Combining country-level performance-pay measures with rich PISA-2003 international achievement microdata, this paper estimates…

This brief presents the views of the members of the British Columbia Teachers' Federation on the provincial government's budget to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. It is a crucial time for public education in British Columbia and they take very seriously the chance to provide information and their perspective on…

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Great Recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. With a duration of eighteen months, this recession was almost double the length of the average post-World War II economic downturn. Although the worst recession since the Great Depression is now technically over, this analysis…

Previous research has established the returns to academic ability in the general labor market, and this paper investigates such returns in the teacher labor market. Using a nationally representative sample of public school teachers, I find that teachers who graduate from the most selective undergraduate institutions have salaries that are between…

Research has consistently shown that teacher quality is distributed very unevenly among schools to the clear disadvantage of minority students and those from low-income families. Using information on teaching spells in North Carolina, the authors examine the potential for using salary differentials to overcome this pattern. They conclude that…

The inequitable distribution of well-qualified teachers to students in the United States is a longstanding issue. Despite federal mandates under the No Child Left Behind Act and the use of a range of incentives to attract teachers to high-need schools, the problem remains acute in many states. This study examines how and why teacher quality is…

This paper provides a review of recent policy initiatives to reform teacher compensation systems and evidence regarding the effect of these policies. The first section examines the current structure of teacher compensation in the U.S. K-12 public education system. The compensation "system" for teachers is fragmented and uncoordinated. Teacher…