While it is generally understood that defined benefit pension systems concentrate benefits on career teachers, and impose costs on mobile teachers, there has been very little analysis of the magnitude of these features and patterns of variation between states. The authors develop a measure of implicit redistribution of pension wealth among…

Limited information exists on how early career teachers, particularly those in "Generation Y", feel about the pension system and potential reforms to the pension system. This paper presents an analysis of the appeal of different aspects of pension plans; their influence on charter versus traditional public school teachers; and how…

We offer a concise history of teacher retirement plans in the United States, highlighting the increase in the generosity of the plans over the past 25 years. We employ data from plans in all fifty states to estimate the impact of a set of social and economic variables on the plans' replacement rates for a hypothetical teacher. We find that, at the…

Defined Benefit pension plans often generate odd time patterns of benefits. One typical pattern exhibits low accrual in early years, accelerating in mid-late years, followed by dramatic decline, or even negative returns in years that are relatively young for retirement. We consider four states for specific analysis: Arkansas, Missouri, California…

Most public elementary and high school teachers are covered by health insurance provided by their employer while they are employed. In most cases, these health plans are managed at the state level. At retirement, teachers with sufficient years of service are allowed to remain in the health plan. Retiree health plans for teachers vary widely across…

While there has been substantial research studying the factors that influence teachers' career decisions, there is far less literature on the relationship between teacher effectiveness, mobility, and attrition. In the paper "Teacher Effectiveness, Mobility, and Attrition in Florida: A Descriptive Analysis," Martin West and Matthew…

In "The Politics of Teacher Pay Reforms"--a paper presented at the National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference in February--Dan Goldhaber, a research professor at the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington and an affiliated scholar with the Urban Institute's Education Policy…

District Awards for Teacher Excellence (D.A.T.E.) is a state-funded program in Texas that provides grants to districts for the implementation of locally-designed performance pay plans. All districts in the state are eligible to receive grants, but participation is voluntary. As D.A.T.E. continues in its second year of operation with approximately…

Modern personnel economics emphasizes the importance of strategic, integrated compensation policy in an organization. In this paper I review key features of the compensation system for public school teachers. The rigidities and inefficiencies that arise from single salary schedules and other features of the compensation regime, and their…

Like most other state and local government employees, teachers participate primarily in defined benefit pension plans whose benefits are based on final average salaries and length of service. Such pensions have been replaced in many private sector firms by defined contribution pensions. A number of questions have arisen about the feasibility and…

The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to address today's claimants and focus on the here-and-now at the expense of long-term concerns and more dispersed constituencies. In the private sector, rules and regulations seek to tame corner-cutting and short-sighted behavior. In the public sector, the primary safeguard is the…

A recent report published by the National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI) presents findings from the second-year of a multi-year evaluation of the Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program, a statewide educator incentive program that operated in Texas. As part of this larger study, evaluators examined how participation in the TEEG…

A recent report published by the National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI) presents findings from the first-year evaluation of the Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program, one of several statewide educator incentive programs in Texas. Findings are based on the responses of full-time instructional personnel at over 1,000 TEEG schools…

Policy discussions about teacher quality and teacher "shortages" often focus on recruitment and retention of young teachers. However, attention has begun to focus on the incentive effects of teacher retirement benefit systems, particularly given their rising costs and the large unfunded liabilities. In this paper we analyze accrual of…

There is significant interest in reforming retirement plans for public school employees, particularly in light of current market conditions. This paper presents an overview of the various types of state regulation of public pension plans that affect possibilities for reform. Several states have legal protections that effectively prevent a state…