Shifting realities across the world have emphasized the need to change early childhood systems thinking. Specifically, a quality early childhood workforce was in high demand before the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to be in demand until sustainable recruitment and retention efforts are achieved. Encouraging more professionals to enter and…

This article draws on recent insight regarding the distribution and mobility of highly effective teachers, student access to top-performing educators, and research on the effectiveness of strategic compensation reforms to argue that the single-salary pay schedule has resulted in disturbing inequities for students and inefficiencies in resource…

Classroom stories show how using technology to investigate the wage gap provided opportunities to develop students' identities and agency and enabled a classroom culture of sharing and risk-taking. This article illustrates how technology can (a) support students' engagement in case-based reasoning by helping them organize and analyze data; (b)…

This action research study implemented an intervention, the Learn at Work program, for operational employees in facilities management at William & Mary earning less than $19 an hour. One of eight dimensions in the Workplace Inclusion Scale, developed by Lennox et al. (2022), is "access to opportunity" (p. 27). This study's…

Purpose: Despite the sizable research on teacher morale, including related work on teacher motivation, job satisfaction, retention, and attrition, studies have largely focused on morale in urban contexts. It is often assumed that suburban schools employ and maintain teachers with higher morale, but these conclusions are largely unsubstantiated. We…

One of the goals of pre-K programs funded by states is to support the learning and development of young children. Research finds that only high-quality programs can achieve positive, long-term outcomes in areas such as student achievement, educational attainment, personal and social behavior (e.g., reductions in crime), and adult health and…

Background: Engineering curricula are built around faculty and accreditors' perceptions of what knowledge, skills, and abilities graduates will need in engineering careers. However, the people making these decisions may not be fully aware of what industry employers require for engineering graduates. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study is…

Research examining students' socioeconomic outcomes after attaining a bachelor's degree tends to use single measures such as income or occupation (Thomas & Zhang, 2005; Torche, 2015). Yet, socioeconomic status is more complex than single measures. To capture that complexity, this study draws data from the National Center for Education…

A growing amount of research examines the personal and financial burden of students in healthcare programs who graduate with large amounts of student loan debt. However, a paucity of literature addresses occupational therapists' student loan debt burden. This study was conducted to describe the context of occupational therapists who have…

At a time when national discourse in the USA centers the need for professionalization, regulation, and surveillance, this article emphasizes the ways in which neoliberal logics harm those working in early childhood education in the USA. While stakeholders at every level debate proposed solutions to the early childhood education crisis, largely…

The author's statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions on the challenges faced by America's classroom teachers focuses on a few of the factors that lead to teacher frustration and burnout that higher pay, however well-intended, does not change. They include, but are not limited to, poor teacher preparation,…

The teacher shortage is a critical issue in many rural areas around the world. This paper presents the findings of two studies that investigated the impact of financial incentives on teacher attraction and retention in rural schools in Western China. Using the theory of compensating wage differentials and a mixed-method approach, we found that…

The Public School Forum's Top Education Issues outlines the Forum's priorities on what should be at the forefront of education policy decision-making each legislative biennium as the Forum works toward eliminating the systemic inequities that exist throughout the educational system and ensuring that every child has access to a high-quality…

High rates of teacher turnover and attrition (Diliberti & Schwartz, 2023), coupled by declining enrollment in teacher preparation programs (Partelowe, 2019) have created teacher vacancies and shortages in public schools across the nation (Darling-Hammond et al., 2023). Teacher turnover and attrition negatively impact student growth and…

Academic motivation enables students to face challenges in their studies and is important for student performance. Academic self-concept refers to students' perceptions of their competencies and ability to learn. The goal of the study was to evaluate academic motivation and self-concept of undergraduate optometry students. We used a mixed methods…