To help address funding and teaching resource disparities across districts in the state, Texas leaders developed the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA). The Allotment aims to make the teaching job more appealing and sustainable, particularly in rural areas and in areas with a high concentration of economically disadvantaged students. This document…

This study explores ways in which salary can be structured to reduce leadership shortages by investigating how comparative wage dispersion and position alter the relationship of salary to principal turnover. Using a seventeen-year longitudinal dataset covering over sixteen thousand principals in Texas, discrete-time hazard models demonstrate that…

The quality of the early environment children experience influences their human capital development. We investigate retention and compensation in the Early Care and Education workforce by merging datasets from three different government agencies in Texas. We employ non-structural methods to compare turnover and pay in Early Care and Education with…

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…

The attrition of classroom teachers has garnered significant attention due to its impact on education. While past discourse focused on pay as the driving force behind departures, our study delves into the qualitative aspects of attrition. Reviewing a dataset spanning 40+ years, we explore multifaceted reasons behind teachers considering leaving…

A fundamental question for education policy is whether outcomes-based accountability including comprehensive educator evaluations and a closer relationship between effectiveness and compensation improves the quality of instruction and raises achievement. We use synthetic control methods to study the comprehensive teacher and principal evaluation…

Texas reduced new teacher preparation requirements in 2001 to allow more alternate paths to licensure. Within 5 years, this policy change resulted in more than half of the state's new teachers being alternatively licensed. Using a series of first difference models, this study examines the relationship between the increased supply of new teachers…

A fundamental question for education policy is whether outcomes-based accountability including comprehensive educator evaluations and a closer relationship between effectiveness and compensation improves the quality of instruction and raises achievement. We use synthetic control methods to study the comprehensive teacher and principal evaluation…

The academic and economic benefits of school spending are well-established, but focusing on these outcomes may underestimate the full social benefits of school spending. Recent increases in U.S. child mortality are driven by injuries and raise questions about what types of social investments could reduce child deaths. We use close school district…

The United States is facing growing teacher shortages that may disproportionately affecting schools serving high proportions of students of color, low-income students, and those in rural or urban areas. Special education teachers (SETs) are particularly in demand. Each year, nearly half of all vacancies are filled with teachers switching from one…

Teacher attrition continues to be a major issue in public education today. Keeping schools staffed with quality teachers is a struggle across the United States. Hard to staff, low-income schools see the highest attrition rates among public schools. This phenomenological qualitative study explored teachers' experiences with the Teacher Incentive…

In recent decades, education leaders and researchers have increasingly sought to disaggregate key higher education outcome data--graduation rates, attainment, employment, and income--by race and ethnicity in order to uncover and narrow equity gaps. The same is true, recently, for affordability, especially as it relates to the differential impact…

Texas reduced new teacher preparation requirements in 2001 to allow more alternate paths to licensure. Within five years, this policy change resulted in over half the state's new teachers being alternatively licensed. Using a series of first difference models, this study examines the relationship between the increased supply of new teachers in…

This qualitative study investigated what factors kept teachers committed to teaching in one rural east Texas school district despite the perceived educational inequalities of rural districts compared to suburban and urban districts. When it comes to teacher retention, rural school leaders cite school environment and community lifestyle…

Many states have recently made or are considering changes to their teacher retirement systems. However, little is known about how teachers value various elements of their retirement benefits versus other aspects of their jobs and compensation. To help alleviate this gap, we use a discrete choice stated preferences experiment embedded in a…