While many educators in higher education are using technologies in their teaching, their use of technology is generally restricted to meeting purposes of convenience and efficiency. Rarely are the affordances of technology being exploited by educators in higher education in order to develop teaching strategies that truly engage students, and help…

This executive summary highlights results from the full report (published separately) which includes two studies that describe the local context for teacher employment decisions. The first examines the local labor market, and the second examines employment for teachers who left Austin Independent School District (AISD). A separate technical report…

State and local governments today face significant financial stress from the most recent recession, which makes their need to control benefit costs even greater. Revenues declined 22% from 2008 to 2009, mostly because of reduced tax income. At the same time, state and local government spending on unemployment compensation jumped 86%. It is no…

The landscape of public education retirement plans is in an upheaval. A variety of economic, demographic, and political factors make it increasingly difficult for defined-benefit pension plans alone to provide educators with an adequate retirement. As a result, for the nearly seven million educators in America's public primary and secondary…

It is widely recognized that teacher quality is the central input in school performance. This insight has put human resource and compensation policies, including performance pay, tenure, alternative route recruitment, and mentoring, at center stage in school reform debates. Some school administrators have been innovators and reform leaders in…

An increasing number of states are mandating teacher performance be considered in educator employment decisions, including awarding tenure and layoffs, according to a 50-state policy review of teacher tenure laws. Tenure laws have historically granted job protections based on years of employment. The Education Commission of the States (ECS)…

More than 60 years after the ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education" was handed down, its promise remains unfulfilled. In many respects, America's public schools continue to be "separate and unequal." Indeed, the growing resegregation of American schools by race and ethnicity, compounded by economic class segregation, has…

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…

The article analyzes the practice and experience of faculty management at the University of Pennsylvania and its implications for Chinese universities from the perspective of management systems and operation mechanisms. Recent reforms and innovation of faculty management at Sichuan University are described.

While policymakers have been directing considerable attention to teacher effectiveness, one basic aspect of effectiveness has received relatively little attention: teacher attendance. No matter how engaging or talented teachers may be, they can only have an impact on student learning if they are in the classroom. This paper asks a simple question:…

Charter schools see as many as one in four teachers leave annually, and recent evidence attributes much of this turnover to provisions affected by collective bargaining processes and state laws such as salary, benefits, job security, and working hours. There have been many recent efforts to improve teacher voice in charter schools (Kahlenberg…

This article focuses on the importance of recognizing and appreciating the ways that a teacher integrates her personal and professional life with an English-only policy. Much can be learned from the ways in which she negotiates social forces and integrates them into her individual reality while making sense of the restrictive language policy.…

Policymakers know that improving teaching in our schools requires a systemic look at many policies related to educator effectiveness. For example, teacher preparation programs need to be dramatically improved and strengthened, but without accompanying reform in compensation, even highly effective and innovative schools of education are unlikely to…

In the social, political, and social humanities lexicon of today's Russia there is probably no word that is in wider and more common use than modernization. What this refers to is the profound and systematic transformation of all the main structures and sub-systems of the social organism, including "education"--one of the most important,…

This First Look report introduces new data for national and state-level public elementary and secondary revenues and expenditures for fiscal year 2013 (FY 13). Specifically, this report includes findings from the following types of school finance data: (1) revenue and expenditure totals; (2) revenues by source; (3) expenditures by function and…