Neoliberal reform of the university sector has resulted in increasing numbers of academics employed on casual or fixed-term contracts. While there is an emergent body of literature on issues of precarity in the academy, relatively little attention has been paid to the roles and responsibilities of those tenured academics who employ and…

Over the last 18 years, Economic Policy Institute has closely tracked trends in teacher pay. Over these nearly two decades, a picture of increasingly alarming trends has emerged. Simply put, teachers are paid less (in weekly wages and total compensation) than their nonteacher college-educated counterparts, and the situation has worsened…

Teacher job satisfaction is the degree to which employees like or dislike their profession; they are satisfied when they have positive attitudes and feelings towards their job. Many studies were conducted in developing and developed countries, but unfortunately, studies focusing on teacher job satisfaction in the Afghan context are very limited.…

Just as states require anyone interested in operating a motor vehicle to meet specific driver's license requirements, state policies dictate that any individual interested in teaching in a public school must first fulfill a series of requirements to obtain a teaching credential. As schools increasingly struggle to find an adequate number of…

Many factors contribute to the academic success of elementary age students, but one must not overlook the importance of the classroom teacher. Measuring teacher absenteeism is difficult as it is not factored into local, state, or federal accountability requirements and teacher attendance policies are created locally through collective bargaining…

Most research about how to improve the teacher workforce has focused on interventions designed to improve incumbent teachers, far less attention has been directed toward teacher hiring processes and whether districts can make better hiring decisions. Using data from Spokane Public Schools and Washington state, we describe the findings from a study…

Qualified teachers with disabilities are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). To maintain legal compliance, principals must have an understanding of employment law, but often lack the training to prevent legal liability. This study reviewed litigation on discrimination claims under the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation…

Until recently, legal challenges to the use of value-added models (VAMs) in evaluation and teacher employment decisions in federal court had been unsuccessful. However, in May 2017 a federal court in Texas ruled that plaintiff-teachers established a viable federal constitutional claim to challenge the use of VAMs as a means for their termination…

Society in Northern Ireland can be characterised as being underpinned by an enduring cultural, religious and political divide between two dominant communities: Catholics and Protestants. The educational system largely reflects and contributes to the reproduction of this separation. Teachers are generally deployed in schools that are consistent…

Despite the large literature on teacher labor market in the United States, only few studies have examined the career choices of former teachers and the factors that affect their decisions to return to the profession. This is surprising given that former teachers represent over a third of teachers entering the teaching workforce, according to some…

Colleges and universities in the United States have embraced the "gig" economy with use of non-tenure track and part-time faculty. However, much of the work on job satisfaction in academia focuses on tenure-line professors. This study seeks to answer the question of whether adjunct faculty look more like independent gig workers or…

For the last two decades, Ohio has given its new public school teachers choices among retirement plans. Early in their employment, they are handed a form that allows them to opt for a traditional pension plan, a 401(k)-style defined-contribution (DC) plan, or a plan that combines elements of each. If they make no affirmative decision at all--that…

Our goal in this paper is to better understand public pension funding dynamics with a focus on sustainability and intergenerational equity. We examine the steady-state properties of deterministic models and simulations of stochastic models to illuminate the implications of recently proposed policies to alleviate current funding pressures. We close…

We examine the efficiency of traditional school districts versus charter schools in providing students with teachers who meet their demographic and education needs. Using panel data from the state of Michigan, we estimate the relationship between enrollment of Black, Hispanic, special education, and English learner students and the presence of…

This study addressed teachers' perceptions of the effect of online teacher professional development programs (OTPDPs) on their professional development. This five-month study focused on four aspects of OTPDPs: (1) Teachers' perceptions on OTPDPs, (2) the impact of OTPDPs on lesson planning, (3) the impact of OTPDPs on STEM teaching, and (4) the…