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We provide a side-by-side comparison of school and teacher growth measures estimated from different value-added models (VAMs). We compare VAMs that differ in terms of which student and school-level (or teacher-level) control variables are included and how these controls are included. Our richest specification includes 3 years of prior test scores for students and the standard demographic controls; our sparsest specification conditions only on a single prior test score. For both schools and teachers, the correlations between VAM estimates across the different models are high by conventional standards (typically at or above 0.90). However, despite the high correlations overall, we show that the choice of which controls to include in VAMs, and how to include them, meaningfully influences school and teacher rankings based on model output. Models that are less aggressive in controlling for student-background and schooling-environment information systematically assign higher rankings to more-advantaged schools, and to individuals who teach at these schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the pension system for public school teachers in the U.S. According to the author, teacher pension system have significant recruitment implications while the retirement benefit system for teachers has major impact on the K-12 school finance. It mentions that all public school teachers are almost universally covered by traditional defined benefit pension system which requires that both teachers and employers make an annual contribution to a pension trust fund.

Comments on the article "How to Improve the Supply of High-Quality Teachers," by Eric A. Hanushek and Steven G. Rivkin. Skepticism of Hanushek and Rivkin on proposals to focus educational resources on traditional teacher credentials; Division between economists and the education policy community on the question of teacher quality and licensing; Effect of family background on student achievement.

Assesses aspects of teacher recruitment and retention in public and private schools in the United States. Comparison of private school salaries to those in public schools; Reason private schools retain teachers more so than public schools; Methodology used in the study.

Presents a letter to the editor in response to the article "In Search of the Qualified Teacher," by Michael Podogursky in the Spring 2006 issue of "Education Next."

The specifics of how growth models should be constructed and used for educational evaluation is a topic of lively policy debate in states and school districts nationwide. In this article, we take up the question of model choice—framed within a policy context—and examine three competing approaches. The first approach, reflected in the popular student growth percentiles (SGPs) framework, eschews all controls for student covariates and schooling environments. The second approach, typically associated with value-added models (VAMs), controls for student-background characteristics and under some conditions can be used to identify the causal effects of educational units (i.e., districts, schools, and teachers). The third approach, also VAM-based, fully levels the playing field so that the correlation between the growth measures and student demographics is essentially zero. We argue that the third approach is the most desirable for use in school evaluation systems. Our case rests on personnel economics, incentive-design theory, and the potential role that growth measures can play in improving instruction in K-12 schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]