Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3102/0013189X231155154
M. Kraft
It is a healthy exercise to debate the merits of using effect-size benchmarks to interpret research findings. However, these debates obscure a more central insight that emerges from empirical distributions of effect-size estimates in the literature: Efforts to improve education often fail to move the needle. I find that 36% of effect sizes from randomized control trials of education interventions with standardized achievement outcomes are less than 0.05 SD. Publication bias surely masks many more failed efforts from our view. Recognizing the frequency of these failures should be at the core of any approach to interpreting the policy relevance of effect sizes. We can aim high without dismissing as trivial those effects sizes that represent more incremental improvement.
{"title":"The Effect-Size Benchmark That Matters Most: Education Interventions Often Fail","authors":"M. Kraft","doi":"10.3102/0013189X231155154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X231155154","url":null,"abstract":"It is a healthy exercise to debate the merits of using effect-size benchmarks to interpret research findings. However, these debates obscure a more central insight that emerges from empirical distributions of effect-size estimates in the literature: Efforts to improve education often fail to move the needle. I find that 36% of effect sizes from randomized control trials of education interventions with standardized achievement outcomes are less than 0.05 SD. Publication bias surely masks many more failed efforts from our view. Recognizing the frequency of these failures should be at the core of any approach to interpreting the policy relevance of effect sizes. We can aim high without dismissing as trivial those effects sizes that represent more incremental improvement.","PeriodicalId":47159,"journal":{"name":"Australian Educational Researcher","volume":"17 1","pages":"183 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78144018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-27DOI: 10.1007/s13384-023-00610-2
Tania Ferfolja, Kathryn Holmes, Christina Curry, Sherry, K. Parry, M. Armour
{"title":"What can Australian schools do better? Supporting students during menstruation","authors":"Tania Ferfolja, Kathryn Holmes, Christina Curry, Sherry, K. Parry, M. Armour","doi":"10.1007/s13384-023-00610-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-023-00610-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47159,"journal":{"name":"Australian Educational Researcher","volume":" ","pages":"1-18"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44760387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-27DOI: 10.1007/s13384-023-00615-x
Albertus Fiharsono, Michael Carey, M. Hyde, H. Beazley, Wigati Yektiningtyas-Modouw
{"title":"Culturally based learning needs of Korowai students in a lowland-remote area of Indonesian Papua: school physical environment and building design","authors":"Albertus Fiharsono, Michael Carey, M. Hyde, H. Beazley, Wigati Yektiningtyas-Modouw","doi":"10.1007/s13384-023-00615-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-023-00615-x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47159,"journal":{"name":"Australian Educational Researcher","volume":"1 1","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45599817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-17DOI: 10.3102/0013189X211027534
Robert M. Costrell
How are teacher pension benefits funded? Under traditional plans, the full cost of career teachers’ benefits far exceeds the contributions designated for them. The gap between the two has three pieces, which may (with some license) be mnemonically tagged the three R’s of pension funding: redistribution, return, and risk. First, some contributions made for the benefits of short-term teachers are redistributed to fund the benefits of career teachers. Second, pension plans assume rosy returns on their investments, which push costs onto future teachers and taxpayers. Finally, the risk inherent in providing guaranteed pensions carries other costs, tangible and intangible, notably including the nontrivial risk of insolvency, which would dramatically raise mandated contributions and endanger future teacher benefits. I quantify these three components of the gap between benefits and contributions using the same metric as annual contributions. Illustrating with the California plan, I find the full cost of a career teacher’s annual accumulation of benefits can be as high as 46.6% of earnings, nearly triple the corresponding contributions of 17.5%. To understand this gap, which fiscally affects all areas of education policy, researchers and practitioners may find it helpful to think of the three R’s of pension funding: redistribution, return, and risk.
{"title":"The Three R’s of Teacher Pension Funding: Redistribution, Return, and Risk","authors":"Robert M. Costrell","doi":"10.3102/0013189X211027534","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X211027534","url":null,"abstract":"How are teacher pension benefits funded? Under traditional plans, the full cost of career teachers’ benefits far exceeds the contributions designated for them. The gap between the two has three pieces, which may (with some license) be mnemonically tagged the three R’s of pension funding: redistribution, return, and risk. First, some contributions made for the benefits of short-term teachers are redistributed to fund the benefits of career teachers. Second, pension plans assume rosy returns on their investments, which push costs onto future teachers and taxpayers. Finally, the risk inherent in providing guaranteed pensions carries other costs, tangible and intangible, notably including the nontrivial risk of insolvency, which would dramatically raise mandated contributions and endanger future teacher benefits. I quantify these three components of the gap between benefits and contributions using the same metric as annual contributions. Illustrating with the California plan, I find the full cost of a career teacher’s annual accumulation of benefits can be as high as 46.6% of earnings, nearly triple the corresponding contributions of 17.5%. To understand this gap, which fiscally affects all areas of education policy, researchers and practitioners may find it helpful to think of the three R’s of pension funding: redistribution, return, and risk.","PeriodicalId":47159,"journal":{"name":"Australian Educational Researcher","volume":"10 1","pages":"91 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81539990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-17DOI: 10.3102/0013189X221080913
Wei-Hsin Kong, Shawn Ni
The growing fiscal cost of K–12 teacher pension plans and pension-induced labor market distortions have led to calls for teacher pension reforms. Dynamic structural econometric models are a useful way to analyze the fiscal and staffing consequences of current and alternative retirement plans. This article lays out the benefits of the structural econometric modeling approach for analyzing changes to teacher pension plans and estimates such a model for Missouri public school teachers. The results are then used to simulate effects of a pension reform on teacher retirement and employer pension costs.
{"title":"A Structural Econometric Approach to Analyzing the Impact of Teacher Pension Reform","authors":"Wei-Hsin Kong, Shawn Ni","doi":"10.3102/0013189X221080913","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X221080913","url":null,"abstract":"The growing fiscal cost of K–12 teacher pension plans and pension-induced labor market distortions have led to calls for teacher pension reforms. Dynamic structural econometric models are a useful way to analyze the fiscal and staffing consequences of current and alternative retirement plans. This article lays out the benefits of the structural econometric modeling approach for analyzing changes to teacher pension plans and estimates such a model for Missouri public school teachers. The results are then used to simulate effects of a pension reform on teacher retirement and employer pension costs.","PeriodicalId":47159,"journal":{"name":"Australian Educational Researcher","volume":"3 1","pages":"63 - 70"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90383003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-17DOI: 10.3102/0013189X221108197
Kata Mihaly, M. Podgursky
This article provides an overview for the special issue and a framework for thinking about the included papers. We begin by explaining why teacher pensions is a topic that should be of interest to the broader education research community and not just specialists in school finance or teacher compensation. Pension costs now account for 11% of K–12 operating expenditures—a share that has been steadily rising. The question for the education research community is whether these expenditures represent the best way to recruit, retain, and motivate high-quality teachers. We briefly review the current pension landscape with an explanation of how these plans work, trends in costs and expenditures, and changes that have been discussed or implemented. We then provide a brief literature review. Finally, we discuss how the articles in this special issue contribute to the literature on such topics as the influence of teacher pension policies on school staffing and workforce quality, teacher preferences for retirement plans, and the sustainability of plans.
{"title":"Teacher Pensions: An Overview","authors":"Kata Mihaly, M. Podgursky","doi":"10.3102/0013189X221108197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X221108197","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides an overview for the special issue and a framework for thinking about the included papers. We begin by explaining why teacher pensions is a topic that should be of interest to the broader education research community and not just specialists in school finance or teacher compensation. Pension costs now account for 11% of K–12 operating expenditures—a share that has been steadily rising. The question for the education research community is whether these expenditures represent the best way to recruit, retain, and motivate high-quality teachers. We briefly review the current pension landscape with an explanation of how these plans work, trends in costs and expenditures, and changes that have been discussed or implemented. We then provide a brief literature review. Finally, we discuss how the articles in this special issue contribute to the literature on such topics as the influence of teacher pension policies on school staffing and workforce quality, teacher preferences for retirement plans, and the sustainability of plans.","PeriodicalId":47159,"journal":{"name":"Australian Educational Researcher","volume":"47 1","pages":"57 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90784037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-17DOI: 10.3102/0013189X221093352
Andrew G. Biggs
The COVID-related financial market decline and economic recession have raised new concerns regarding the financial sustainability of retirement plans for state and local government employees, the largest group of whom is public school teachers. Using data from the Public Plans Database and the National Income and Product Accounts, I analyze teacher pension plans over the 2001–2019 period, seeking to answer questions regarding teacher pensions’ funded status, investment decisions and returns, adequacy of contributions, and generosity of benefits. These data show that teacher pension funding peaked at the beginning of the 2001–2019 period due to the tech bubble’s inflation of asset values, but then it declined thereafter due to investment returns that significantly underperformed assumptions, failures by sponsoring governments to consistently make full contributions, and increases in the generosity of pension benefits. School districts will face substantial funding challenges in the post-COVID period, as investment losses are factored into contribution rates, government revenues available to make contributions shrink, and education funding from state governments comes under pressure. I outline several policy alternatives that policymakers may consider, but none would make restoring teacher pensions to full funding a painless process.
{"title":"The Long-Term Solvency of Teacher Pension Plans: How We Got to Now and Prospects for Recovery","authors":"Andrew G. Biggs","doi":"10.3102/0013189X221093352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X221093352","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-related financial market decline and economic recession have raised new concerns regarding the financial sustainability of retirement plans for state and local government employees, the largest group of whom is public school teachers. Using data from the Public Plans Database and the National Income and Product Accounts, I analyze teacher pension plans over the 2001–2019 period, seeking to answer questions regarding teacher pensions’ funded status, investment decisions and returns, adequacy of contributions, and generosity of benefits. These data show that teacher pension funding peaked at the beginning of the 2001–2019 period due to the tech bubble’s inflation of asset values, but then it declined thereafter due to investment returns that significantly underperformed assumptions, failures by sponsoring governments to consistently make full contributions, and increases in the generosity of pension benefits. School districts will face substantial funding challenges in the post-COVID period, as investment losses are factored into contribution rates, government revenues available to make contributions shrink, and education funding from state governments comes under pressure. I outline several policy alternatives that policymakers may consider, but none would make restoring teacher pensions to full funding a painless process.","PeriodicalId":47159,"journal":{"name":"Australian Educational Researcher","volume":"11 1","pages":"98 - 115"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89585992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-17DOI: 10.3102/0013189X221095062
R. Murnane
This commentary explains how changing labor market conditions have made it more important for schools to attract and retain skilled teachers and yet more difficult to do so. This is important context for considering the contributions of the five papers on teacher pensions in this special issue. I describe and comment on the evidence that defined benefit (DB) pension plans have deleterious impacts on the ability of public schools to provide students with an excellent education. I describe the merits of alternative strategies for responding to the central problem with DB plans as currently funded. I conclude by explaining the importance of considering the design of teacher pension plans as part of a multipronged strategy to provide all students with a high-quality education.
{"title":"Commentary on Teacher Pension Papers","authors":"R. Murnane","doi":"10.3102/0013189X221095062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X221095062","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary explains how changing labor market conditions have made it more important for schools to attract and retain skilled teachers and yet more difficult to do so. This is important context for considering the contributions of the five papers on teacher pensions in this special issue. I describe and comment on the evidence that defined benefit (DB) pension plans have deleterious impacts on the ability of public schools to provide students with an excellent education. I describe the merits of alternative strategies for responding to the central problem with DB plans as currently funded. I conclude by explaining the importance of considering the design of teacher pension plans as part of a multipronged strategy to provide all students with a high-quality education.","PeriodicalId":47159,"journal":{"name":"Australian Educational Researcher","volume":"1 1","pages":"119 - 122"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86529830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-17DOI: 10.3102/0013189X211062850
James Hosek, David Knapp, Michael G. Mattock, Beth J. Asch
Retirement incentives are frequently used by school districts facing financial difficulties. They provide a means of either decreasing staff size or replacing retiring senior teachers with less expensive junior teachers. We analyze a one-time retirement incentive in a large school district paid to teachers willing to retire at the end of the 2016–2017 school year that required 1,500 teachers to accept the offer for it to be paid. The analysis uses an estimated structural model of teacher retention—enabling predictions through simulation of what teacher behavior would be in lieu of the incentive. As predicted by the model, too few teachers accepted the incentive and it was not paid. Simulations enable the decomposition of the would-be retirement incentive takers into those that retired because of the retirement incentive (i.e., marginal teachers) and those who would have retired without the incentive. We find that (1) most teachers who receive the retirement incentive would have retired regardless leading to substantial payments to teachers whose decisions are unchanged, (2) marginal teachers are likely to have retired within a couple years without the incentive limiting the period in which a salary gap can recoup the incentive’s costs, and (3) sharp increases in salary over the first years of teaching narrow the salary gap from which potential savings might derive. These mechanisms are common to most school districts so it is unlikely districts using retirement incentives will realize any cost savings if they replace retiring teachers with junior teachers.
{"title":"Incentivizing Retirement: An Analysis of Cash Retirement Incentives for Chicago Teachers","authors":"James Hosek, David Knapp, Michael G. Mattock, Beth J. Asch","doi":"10.3102/0013189X211062850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X211062850","url":null,"abstract":"Retirement incentives are frequently used by school districts facing financial difficulties. They provide a means of either decreasing staff size or replacing retiring senior teachers with less expensive junior teachers. We analyze a one-time retirement incentive in a large school district paid to teachers willing to retire at the end of the 2016–2017 school year that required 1,500 teachers to accept the offer for it to be paid. The analysis uses an estimated structural model of teacher retention—enabling predictions through simulation of what teacher behavior would be in lieu of the incentive. As predicted by the model, too few teachers accepted the incentive and it was not paid. Simulations enable the decomposition of the would-be retirement incentive takers into those that retired because of the retirement incentive (i.e., marginal teachers) and those who would have retired without the incentive. We find that (1) most teachers who receive the retirement incentive would have retired regardless leading to substantial payments to teachers whose decisions are unchanged, (2) marginal teachers are likely to have retired within a couple years without the incentive limiting the period in which a salary gap can recoup the incentive’s costs, and (3) sharp increases in salary over the first years of teaching narrow the salary gap from which potential savings might derive. These mechanisms are common to most school districts so it is unlikely districts using retirement incentives will realize any cost savings if they replace retiring teachers with junior teachers.","PeriodicalId":47159,"journal":{"name":"Australian Educational Researcher","volume":"36 1","pages":"71 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88082996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-17DOI: 10.3102/0013189x221111388
Andrew J. Rotherham
This commentary discusses how the teacher pension debate is often predicated on the idea of generous benefits for teachers and whether those are deserved, when in practice most teachers are disadvantaged by a retirement system with long vesting periods and limited portability.
{"title":"Teacher Pension Reform Must Be About Cost and Design","authors":"Andrew J. Rotherham","doi":"10.3102/0013189x221111388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x221111388","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary discusses how the teacher pension debate is often predicated on the idea of generous benefits for teachers and whether those are deserved, when in practice most teachers are disadvantaged by a retirement system with long vesting periods and limited portability.","PeriodicalId":47159,"journal":{"name":"Australian Educational Researcher","volume":"38 1","pages":"116 - 118"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73217933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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