The U.S. has witnessed a resurgence of labor activism, with teachers at the forefront. We examine how teacher strikes affect compensation, working conditions, and productivity with an original dataset of 772 teacher strikes generating 48 million student days idle between 2007 and 2023. Using an event study framework, we find that, on average,…

The issue of students dropping out before completing secondary education is a global concern with significant individual and societal consequences. Various terms, such as Early School Leaving (ESL), Early Leaving from Education and Training (ELET), and school dropout, reflect different policy perspectives on this phenomenon. Despite international…

The U.S. has witnessed a resurgence of labor activism, with teachers at the forefront. We examine how teacher strikes affect compensation, working conditions, and productivity with an original dataset of 772 teacher strikes generating 48 million student days idle between 2007 and 2023. Using an event study framework, we find that, on average,…

This study is the first statewide analysis of the effectiveness of the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) program. Introduced in 2019, TIA is the most significant and unprecedented teacher merit-pay system in the U.S. Leveraging the Synthetic Control Method (SCM), we construct a counterfactual scenario to assess the causal impact of TIA on…

Four-day school week (4DSW) adoption is an increasingly popular policy, particularly for rural districts that are seeking to reduce educator turnover and district expenditures. Using a staggered treatment event study design, I am among the first to estimate the quasi-experimental effects of 4DSW adoption on teacher turnover, and I am the first to…

The quality of the teaching force in our public schools has received great attention as one of the approaches to improve student performance, as there exists ample evidence that teacher quality matters for student achievement (see McCaffrey et al., 2004 for a review on this literature). Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain (2005) find large differences…

Efforts to attract and retain effective educators in high poverty public schools have had limited success. Dallas ISD addressed this challenge by using information produced by its evaluation and compensation reforms as the basis for effectiveness-adjusted payments that provided large compensating differentials to attract and retain effective…

The Octavius V. Catto Scholarship launched in spring 2021 at Community College of Philadelphia (CCP) to help Philadelphians achieve college success. Inspired by 19th-century civil rights leader Octavius Catto's belief in education for all, the scholarship goes beyond tuition assistance, providing wraparound supports including academic coaching,…

This qualitative single-subject case study investigated teachers' perceptions of what motivates them to pursue professional development. The research focused on one school district in New Jersey with participants from elementary, middle, and high schools. The district administrator in charge of professional development was also interviewed.…

The significant decrease in student achievement levels following the pandemic has become a pressing national problem, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts showed some of the sharpest academic achievement declines in the country. To assist schools in recovering from the pandemic, the federal government allocated three waves of funding through its…

From its inception in the early 1900s, vocational education in American high schools was designed to prepare students for jobs that did not require any formal postsecondary education. In the last decades of the 20th century, growing concern about how separating students into "college" and "non-college" tracks often perpetuated…

School finance reforms caused some of the most dramatic increases in intergovernmental aid from states to local governments in U.S. history. We examine whether teachers' unions affected the fraction of reform-induced state aid that passed through to local spending and the allocation of these funds. Districts with strong teachers' unions increased…

The purpose of this study was to investigate and measure those factors in the restaurant industry and how they impacted student persistence and graduation from a culinary school in the Midwest. A correlational approach was utilized to determine if students' perceptions of stress, low pay, and long and odd hours changed as they progressed through…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to demonstrate in the context of quality assurance (QA), how stakeholders define quality education and its connections to maximize value for the stakeholder using a grounded theory approach. Design/methodology/approach: A four-stage research design using grounded theory methodology was used to develop and…

Schools in rural communities face many challenges in retaining effective teachers, many of which are beyond school leaders' control: need for educators to serve multiple roles, lower teacher salaries, and large percentages of students from low-income backgrounds. However, cultivating a school culture where teachers are supported to be effective…