ERIC Number: EJ1425366
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Jan
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-1068-2341
Retirees Return to Work: How a North Carolina Policy Helped Staff High-Need Schools
Rachel Jarrold-Grapes; Patten Priestley Mahler
Education Policy Analysis Archives, v32 n4 2024
Teacher vacancies have been a long-standing issue in U.S. public schools, only made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. Vacancies tend to be concentrated in high-poverty, high-minority schools and hard-to-staff subjects like special education and STEM. States have implemented various policies to decrease turnover, including offering teachers bonuses and salary increases. We study one of these policies, a return-to-work policy in North Carolina from 1999-2009, that allowed retired teachers to return to work full-time, earning both their full-time salary and pension benefits concurrently--often resulting in as much as 50% more income than a typical full-time teacher. We document policy take-up and characterize which teachers returned and what schools hired them. The main take-away is that retirees indeed returned under this policy and that high-need schools were disproportionately the ones that hired them.
Descriptors: Teacher Retirement, Teachers, Teacher Salaries, Older Workers, Employment Opportunities, Reentry Workers, Retirement Benefits, Disadvantaged Schools, Teacher Shortage, State Policy
Colleges of Education at Arizona State University and the University of South Florida. c/o Editor, USF EDU162, 4202 East Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620-5650. Tel: 813-974-3400; Fax: 813-974-3826; Web site: https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/epaa
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: North Carolina
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A