Tag: Teacher benefits

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Latest Edu-Reads

Max Marchitello finds that pension spending in Maryland is regressive. Accounting for pension spending amplifies the total spending gap between high- and low-poverty school districts by 34 percent.

“Chicago has the most pension debt of any major U.S. city, a shrinking population and an $838 million budget gap—and the city’s teachers have been striking since Thursday.” That sentence pretty well sums up this WSJ article on the many challenges facing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Here’s a longer deep dive into the structural issues and the tough trade-offs pensions are forcing on state and local budgets.

In her 2003 book, Elizabeth Warren proposed an open enrollment system for schools. After reading her recent education platform, Andrew Ujifusa is asking, “why didn’t Warren propose open enrollment for public schools in her platform? Does she no longer support such a system? If not, why?”

Why do we assign new teachers to the hardest jobs? Although they can’t answer that question, a new study by Paul Bruno, Sarah Rabovsky, and Katharine Strunk documents the extent of the problem.

Speaking of new teachers, this is a great new ECS resource on what states are doing to support teacher recruitment and retention.

This is a cool piece from EdNavigator on how they think about building a language-inclusive culture and how it relates to their work with parents.

Mike Goldstein, the founder of Match Education in Boston (and a frequent Eduwonk commenter!), has a great entry in Fordham’s Wonkathon about why struggling students remain below grade level, and how to help them.

And here’s an update on the school that LeBron James supported in Akron.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman  

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Latest Edu-Reads

This is hard to stomach: “The Trump administration determined that more than 500,000 children would no longer be automatically eligible for free school meals under a proposed overhaul to the food stamp program…”

Madeline Will takes a long look at the two competing accreditors for teacher preparation programs. I suppose it’s not great that programs can now shop around for an accreditor that gives them the answer they want that is more aligned with their needs, but I’m also not convinced accreditation is the right lever to pull if we’re trying to improve the quality of new teachers.

You already know what I think of loan forgiveness programs for teachers. Kevin Carey walks through the history of all the various programs and requirements. Warning: It may make your head hurt, but it’s a helpful reminder of just how complicated these all are.

Earlier this month the House voted 419-6 in favor of repealing the “Cadillac Tax” on expensive employer-provided health care plans. It would still need to pass the Senate, but that large majority shows just where the politics stand right now. Meanwhile, health care wonks of all political stripes are trying to push back. Frankly, I’m with the wonks on this one. I’d rather Americans didn’t have our health care benefits tied to our employers at all, but we’ve created a particularly weird incentive by not taxing employer spending on health care. That creates a system where the people using health care have little reason to help control health care costs. And, in the long run, employers spend more and more on benefits at the expense of salaries and wages. That’s bad for efficiency, bad for budgets, and, ultimately, bad for workers.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman

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The Side Effects of Reading Robert Pondiscio. Plus, What’s Eating Teacher Salaries in Kentucky?

Warning: Reading Robert Pondiscio may cause side effects of unintentional chortles and knowing grimaces.

Neerav Kingsland on New Orleans. His piece is a nice reminder against comparing effect sizes in isolation. It’s much easier to see positive effects of an intervention when dealing with a small sample, but getting the same effect size for an entire city, let alone an entire state, is quite a bit more meaningful in the real world.

Cory Curl with an excellent analysis of school spending trends in Kentucky. Like in California, health care costs seem to be a primary culprit for stagnant teacher salaries.

Lake Wobegon, New Mexico?

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman

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Eduwonk Is Fishing… Plus Teacher Turnover, Diversity, Benefits, TEACH Grants, and the Peter Principle

Andy Rotherham has gone fishin’ for the summer, but in the meantime he’s given me the keys to the blog. I can’t match his wit or his knowledge of fishing, but I’ll try to keep it lively around here. Here’s what I’ve been reading lately:

New JOLTS data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show, once again, that public education has some of the lowest turnover rates of any sector in our economy.

Kudos to NPR for sticking with this story on TEACH Grants.

Max Marchitello and Dr. Liso Grillo on how Howard University identifies diverse teacher candidates.

Cass Sunstein argues high school students applying to college are subject to excessive or unnecessary “sludge.”

Paul Bruno with data on health care costs in California schools. Short version: They’re rising much faster than other types of education spending, especially teacher salaries. Read the full report here or EdSource op-ed here.

Speaking of benefits, PDK published a good piece recently from James Shuls, Colin Hitt, and Robert Costrell on how teacher pension plans can exacerbate school finance inequities.

As we head into campaign season, Conor Williams asks what’s the best way to spend billions of dollars of new money to improve outcomes for low-income students. Is it teacher salary increases, or something else?

Alex Tabarrok on a new study on the “Peter Principle,” the idea that people keep getting promoted up the ladder until they’re no longer good at their job. There are implications here for the education field, particularly in how to think about keeping great teachers in the classroom.

Mocktail bars?

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman