More than a decade and a half of work on the topic has shown there has been a long-trending erosion of teacher wages and compensation relative to other college graduates. Simply put, teachers are paid less (in wages and compensation) than other college-educated workers with similar experience and other characteristics, and this financial penalty…

Teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Colorado have raised the profile of deteriorating teacher pay as a critical public policy issue. Teachers and parents are protesting cutbacks in education spending and a squeeze on teacher pay that persist well into the economic recovery from the Great Recession.…

An effective teacher is the most important school-based determinant of education outcomes. Therefore it is crucial that school districts recruit and retain high-quality teachers. This is increasingly challenging given that the supply of teachers has been greatly affected by high early to mid-career turnover rates, annual retirements of longtime…

Over the past few years, as cash-strapped states and school districts have faced tough budget decisions, spending on teacher compensation has come under the microscope. The underlying question is whether, when you take everything into account, today's teachers are fairly paid, underpaid, or overpaid. In this forum, two pairs of respected…

Over the past few years, as cash-strapped states and school districts have faced tough budget decisions, spending on teacher compensation has come under the microscope. The underlying question is whether teachers are fairly paid, underpaid, or overpaid. In this forum, two pairs of respected economists offer very different answers. Andrew Biggs of…

Effective teachers are demonstrably the most important resource schools have for improving the academic success of their students. Yet for many school leaders, recruiting and retaining talented and effective classroom teachers remains an uphill battle. Whether teacher salaries are sufficient to attract the best graduates into teaching remains an…

In the June "Kappan," Marc Tucker summarized the "Tough Choices" report, the sequel to a report issued in 1990 by a predecessor group, which attributed the nation's low productivity growth in the 1970s and 1980s to inadequate American schools. The authors critiqued it and charged Tucker with trying to stampede policy makers into adopting reckless…

Over the past year, two economists--Michael Podgursky, currently Middlebush Professor and Chairman in the Departmentof Economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Lawrence Mishel, President of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.--have been debating whether or not teachers are adequately paid, at least compared to other…

Wage analyses of several government surveys suggest that substantial, broad-based reductions in real wages occurred in the final years of the 1980s recovery. (Data sources are the hourly compensation data from the Employment Cost Index series and wage data from the Current Population Survey.) The wages of those who lost the most in the 1980s (high…