This year's "Quality Counts" report, the 15th edition of this annual report produced through the joint efforts of the "Education Week" newsroom and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, arrives at a time of continued fiscal anxiety and education policy ferment in the wake of what has been widely described as the…

The near-collapse of the American financial system has led to a search for its causes and ways to prevent it from happening again. Many political leaders blame at least some of the sub-prime mortgage crisis on mistakes caused by financially "illiterate" consumers and propose to solve that problem with mandatory classes in personal finance.…

This research examined the influence of delay and anticipated health and enjoyment on the amount of retirement savings sacrificed for early retirement. In addition to testing and supporting predictions that willingness to sacrifice retirement savings would be less with shorter delays to retirement, greater anticipated health, and greater…

The first aim of this article is to present a characterization of the techno-mathematical literacies needed for effective practice in modern, technology-rich workplaces that are both highly automated and increasingly focused on flexible response to customer needs. The second aim is to introduce an epistemological dimension to activity theory,…

Coordinating the two sources of retirement income--private pensions and Social Security--tends to lower employer costs and result in private pensions that replace a larger percentage of preretirement income for higher-paid workers. (Author/SK)

Outlines the provisions of the Simplified Employee Pension plan, which is, essentially, an employer-sponsored Individual Retirement Account. Available from the Louisiana State Bar Association, 225 Baronne Street, Suite 210, New Orleans, Louisiana 70112; sc $2.50. (IRT)

As firms switch from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution plans, employees bear more responsibility for making decisions about how much to save. The employees who fail to join the plan or who participate at a very low level appear to be saving at less than the predicted life cycle savings rates. Behavioral explanations for this behavior…

After years of non-stop increases--national k-12 per-pupil spending is up by "one-third" in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1995--schools now face the near-certainty of repeated annual budget cuts for the first time since the Great Depression. In some states and districts, reductions will be dramatic--well into the double digits. And…

It sounds like a simple solution to a growing problem: Address teacher shortages by adopting policies that encourage veterans to stay in the classroom while attracting retirees back to the job. While many states and districts are doing just that, they are also finding that their policies can have unintended consequences--such as raising questions…

These authors argue that estimates of the net economic cost of suicide should go beyond accounting for direct medical costs and indirect costs from loss of earnings by those who commit suicide. There are potential savings from (a) not having to treat the depressive and other psychiatric disorders of those who kill themselves; (b) avoidance of…

This policy brief summarizes findings presented at a February 2009 research conference on teacher retirement systems hosted by the National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI) at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College. The 2009 conference was the second in a series of NCPI events focusing on findings from recent research on issues related to…

In April 2009, a high school principal in a large Arizona school district met individually with 18 of his most senior teachers to inform them that they would not have a job the following year. Why didn't tenure protect them from wholesale dismissal? The answer is they all had one thing in common: they were retirees who had been leased or hired…

Almost thirty years ago, Justice William Brennan saw clearly that American higher education was coming under the same pressures to "cut costs and increase efficiencies" to which market forces were subjecting businesses. Since Justice Brennan's observation, employers generally have sought to maximize their "flexibility' by creating a…

A study of pension plans at 14 companies for the years 1960, 1970, and 1980 shows that company-sponsored plans are dynamic. Changes may have resulted from statutory increases in the age at which workers can be forced to retire. (JOW)

No one generation should get a better "net deal" out of the retirement system than another. Various social security reforms are analyzed. (RM)