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The 2023-2024 AASA Superintendent Salary & Benefits Study marks the twelfth consecutive edition of this report. The 2023-2024 version employed a slightly revised and updated survey instrument. The survey tracked the demographics, salary, benefits, and other elements of the employment agreements of school superintendents throughout the country. This year's study results are based on 2,706 complete responses -- the highest response rate since inception of the study in 1999. The survey was distributed online and relied on superintendents responding to 66 items with the understanding that the report of findings would contain no personally identifiable information. Therefore, readers must consider the data descriptive and not necessarily representative of all superintendents. The study is intended to provide superintendents with actionable information needed to negotiate and manage their compensation and benefits.

Retirement plans can create strong financial incentives that have important labor market implications, and many states have adopted alternative plan designs that significantly change these incentives. The authors use longitudinal data to investigate the impact of Washington State's 1996 introduction of a hybrid retirement plan on late-career attrition. The unique setup of Washington's plans allows them to provide empirical evidence on the influence of financial incentives created by statutory retirement eligibility thresholds. Findings show that despite facing very different financial incentives, teachers enrolled in the hybrid and traditional plans respond similarly to reaching a key retirement eligibility threshold. The authors hypothesize that teachers are anchoring to the eligibility thresholds, muting the influence of the financial incentives. They also provide evidence that, in the presence of bright-line eligibility thresholds that can anchor workers' separation behavior, commonly used structural models may overpredict workers' responsiveness to the financial incentives embedded in retirement plans. [This paper will be published in "ILR Review."]

Over the last two decades, twenty-two states have moved away from traditional defined benefit (DB) pension systems and toward pension plan structures like the defined contribution (DC) plans now prevalent in the private sector. Others are considering such a reform as it is seen as a means of limiting future pension funding risk. It is important to understand the implications of such reforms for end-of-career exit patterns and workforce composition. Empirical evidence on the relationship between pension plan structure and retirement timing is currently limited, primarily because, most state pension reforms are so new that few employees enrolled in those alternative plans have reached retirement age. An exception, and the subject of our analysis, is the teacher retirement system in Washington State, which introduced a hybrid DB-DC plan in 1996 and allowed employees in its traditional DB plan to transfer into the new plan. Our analysis focuses on a years-of-service threshold, the crossing of which grants employees early retirement eligibility and, in many cases, a large upward shift in retirement wealth. The financial implications of crossing this threshold are far greater under the state's traditional DB plan than under the hybrid plan. We find that employees are responsive to crossing the yearsof-service threshold, but we fail to find significant evidence that the propensity to exit the workforce varies according to plan enrollment.

In 2019, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) began exploratory data collection for the School Pension Survey (SPS). The SPS is a new data collection of elementary/secondary school teacher pension data collected at the school district level. The SPS was developed primarily in response to public demand for data on teacher and other school district employee pension costs--costs that are largely not included in education spending data released by NCES through its annual National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) and School District Finance Survey (F-33) collections. The pilot SPS, collected for fiscal year (FY) 2017 (school year 2016-17), was designed to assess whether the SPS is a viable, efficient method of collecting school pension data. This report provides comprehensive detail on the pilot collection--including survey background, data collection methodology, availability of SPS data, analysis of data collected, data editing procedures, assessments of data quality, and factors supporting and limiting the collection of pension data through the SPS. Key observations and findings from this report include the following: (1) Within the states selected for the SPS, comprehensive pension data were able to be collected for a high percentage of school districts; (2) There are notable limitations to collecting pension data though the SPS; and (3) The SPS represents a significant step toward achieving more complete reporting of school spending.

Adequately saving for retirement requires both planning and knowledge about available retirement savings options. Teachers participate in a complex set of different plan designs and benefit tiers, and many do not participate in Social Security. While teachers represent a large part of the public workforce, relatively little is known regarding their knowledge about and preparation for retirement. We administered a survey to a nationally representative sample of teachers through RAND's American Teacher Panel and asked teachers about their retirement planning and their employer-sponsored retirement plans. We find that while most teachers are taking steps to prepare for retirement, many teachers lack the basic retirement knowledge necessary to plan effectively. Teachers struggled to identify their plan type, how much they are contributing to their plans, retirement eligibility ages, and who contributes to Social Security. These results suggest that teacher retirement reform may not be disruptive for teachers and that better, simpler, and clearer information about teacher retirement plans would be beneficial.

Retirement benefits are integral to teacher compensation; yet, most pension plans are designed to reward teachers who remain in a system for a full career while levying substantial penalties on those who do not. Even teachers who devote their lives to the profession but do not stay in a single system for their entire careers are not served well by many of these plans. States must facilitate a dynamic educational workforce while placing teachers on a path to a secure retirement. Unfortunately, many teachers' retirement plans today fall short of these objectives. This report discusses final salary defined benefit (DB) plans, pension borders, issues with how benefits accrue, and pension plan reforms and why conservatives should champion for them.

This twelfth edition of "Measuring up to the Model: A Ranking of State Charter School Laws" evaluates each state's public charter school law against the 21 essential components of a strong charter school law. These 21 components are drawn from the National Alliance's "A New Model Law for Supporting the Growth of High-Quality Public Charter Schools: Second Edition" (ED613003). Key takeaways include: (1) For the sixth year in a row, Indiana has the nation's strongest charter school law in the country, ranking No. 1 (out of 45); (2) The Top 10 includes a mixture of states with more mature movements (Indiana at No. 1, Colorado at No. 2, Minnesota at No. 4, Florida at No. 7, Louisiana at No. 8, and the District of Columbia. at No. 101) and states with newer movements (Washington at No. 3, Alabama at No. 5, Mississippi at No. 6, and Maine at No. 9); (3) States that are enacting laws for the first time and states that are overhauling their laws are bypassing states that were previously more highly ranked, such as Massachusetts, Arizona, and New York; and (4) Maryland has the nation's weakest charter school law, ranking No. 45 (out of 45). [For the eleventh edition, see ED609763.]

The 2020-21 AASA Superintendent Salary & Benefits Study marks the ninth consecutive edition of this study. The 2020-2021 version employed a slightly revised and updated survey instrument. The survey tracks the demographics, salary, benefits, and other elements of the employment agreements of school superintendents throughout the country. The study is intended to provide superintendents with actionable information needed to negotiate and manage their compensation and benefits. [For the 2019-20 report, see "2019-20 AASA Superintendent Salary & Benefits Study: Non-Member Version" (ED619866).]

In "Are Texas Teacher Retirement Benefits Adequate?," authors Chad Aldeman and Anthony Randazzo analyze the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS) of Texas and find it is not serving all of its members well. Most members will leave their teaching service in Texas with inadequate retirement benefits, and the unfunded liabilities the system has accrued over time harm today's teachers and retirees. From the benefit side, only about one-quarter of the educators who join TRS will secure an adequate retirement benefit. Long-serving veterans who put in 20 years or more can earn enough retirement income to live off, but TRS leaves all other members with inadequate savings. And even for those who do secure a larger pension, the income is not consistently adjusted for inflation, leaving retirees with a steadily eroding benefit. This situation is a particular concern in Texas, where the state has chosen not to provide most of its educators with Social Security coverage. The lack of Social Security coverage across its school districts makes it even more important for the state to ensure that all of its public-sector employees receive adequate retirement benefits during their service. From a financial perspective, TRS has accumulated an unfunded liability of $50.6 billion, which eats into state and school district budgets, keeps teacher compensation low, and keeps retirees from receiving cost-of-living adjustments on their pensions. With the national economy in the midst of a recession in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, TRS' unfunded liabilities are likely to rise even further in the coming years. The authors recommend that Texas legislators open up a different type of defined benefit retirement plan, called a Guaranteed Return (GR) plan, for teachers and other education employees. Texas county and municipal employees are already covered by GR plans and have been for decades. Adopting a similar model for education employees -- whether on its own or as one of multiple retirement plan options -- would allow Texas to improve the retirement security of educators while also reducing the risk that the state adds to its already large unfunded liabilities. [This report was funded by Equable Institute.]

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 is, if they don't return the form with a choice clearly indicated within their first 180 days--state law dictates that they be automatically enrolled in the first option, the defined-benefit (DB) plan. As might be expected, many new Ohio teachers--about three-quarters of them in recent years--take no action and thus end up in the DB plan. Ohio deserves credit for giving its teachers choices on their retirement plan, but the stakes for teachers to make the right decision are high. If they enroll in the DB plan--or default into it--educators cannot reverse their decision. And because the Buckeye State is one of fifteen states that do not cover teachers under social security, the plan that workers choose will provide their only retirement benefits while working in Ohio public schools. This brief explains the three choices available to teachers and models out how workers would earn retirement benefits under each plan. That analysis shows that Ohio educators would be better off under one of the alternatives than under the DB plan. If state policymakers intend to provide the greatest retirement benefits to the most workers, they should be open to changing the default option. [Foreword by Aaron Churchill.]

How much do teachers value compensation that is deferred until retirement? This question is important because the vast majority of public school teachers are covered by defined benefit (DB) pension plans that "backload" a large share of compensation to retirement relative to the compensation structure in the private sector. There is little evidence, other than Fitzpatrick (2015), however, about whether DB pensions are consistent with teacher preferences for current and deferred compensation. This study examines a unique setting in Washington State, where teachers enroll in a hybrid, DB-Defined Contribution (DC) pension system, and have choices over their DC contribute rate. These choices reveal preferences about the value teachers place on current versus retirement compensation. We find that teachers choose to contribute an average of 8.18 percent, significantly more than the minimum required contribution of 5 percent. This suggests that teachers value retirement compensation significantly more than previously estimated by Fitzpatrick. Potential explanations for the difference in findings from prior evidence are discussed, including estimation strategies, differences in state settings, overall plan generosity, and the potential for teachers to view DB and DC pensions as different products.

Many states enhanced benefits in teacher retirement plans during the 1990s. This paper examines the school staffing effects of one such enhancement in a major urban school district with mostly high poverty schools. Pension rule changes in 1999 for St. Louis public school teachers resulted in very large increases in pension wealth for active teachers, as well as a powerful increase in "push" incentives for earlier retirement. Simple descriptive statistics on retirement patterns before and after the enhancements suggest much earlier retirement resulted. Shorter teaching spells imply a steady state with more teaching vacancies and a larger share of novice teachers in classrooms. To better understand the long run effects of these changes and alternatives policies, the authors estimate a structural model of teacher retirement. Simulations of retirement behavior for a representative senior teacher point to shorter completed teaching spells and earlier retirement age as a result of the enhancements. By contrast, moving from the post-1999 to a DC-type plan would extend the teaching career of a representative senior teacher by roughly three years. Simulations of voluntary DC conversation plans suggest that many senior teachers would enroll, thereby reducing workforce turnover, and overall pension costs.

Defined benefit (DB) pension systems determine the size of pension payments using an employee's "final average salary". Thus, employees enrolled in DB pension systems face an incentive to "salary spike" -- strategically increase late career pensionable compensation -- to increase their retirement income. This is an important issue given that public pension systems face increasing scrutiny due to ongoing concerns about their fiscal sustainability. This paper develops an empirical method to quantify the prevalence of salary spiking by identifying cases where end-of-career compensation deviates from expected levels of compensation. We apply this method to the teacher pension systems in Illinois and examine how salary spiking changed in response to policy reform. The results suggest that salary spiking is very common, with about half of late career employees observed as having pensionable compensation that exceeds expectations. Policies designed to dissuade salary spiking by internalizing its costs across districts appear to reduce the prevalence of salary spiking, but there may be unintended consequences for individuals who are "not actually spiking," as such discouraging the assignment of supplementary responsibilities to late career employees.

In response to financial pressures, the New York State Assembly has created new, less-generous retirement plans for teachers. Teachers and other education employees are enrolled in one of two plans, the Teachers' Retirement System of the City of New York (TRS) and the New York State Teachers' Retirement System (NYSTRS). How far have the benefits fallen, and does the current tier (Tier VI) provide sufficient retirement benefits to its members? In order to answer these questions, this paper begins by outlining a framework for determining whether a given plan's retirement benefits are "adequate" or not, and then examines whether New York City's TRS plans meet that test. Based on this comparison, it finds that the current Tier VI plan does not provide fully adequate retirement benefits even to the longest-serving veterans. Some portion of teachers will reach at least a minimal adequacy threshold, but the typical teacher would need to serve 23 years before doing so. New York has a history of pension reform efforts that preserve the benefit structures for current workers while enrolling new workers in a less-generous benefit tier. As such, this paper concludes with recommendations for how policymakers might do a better job of providing adequate retirement benefits to future teachers. [This report was funded by Equable Institute.]

The 2019-20 AASA Superintendent Salary & Benefits Study marks the eighth edition of this study, employing an annually revised and updated survey instrument. This survey tracks the demographics, salary, benefits, and other elements of the employment agreements of school superintendents throughout the country. This year's study is based on more than 1,300 responses (approximately a 13 percent response rate). The study is intended to provide superintendents with actionable information needed to manage and negotiate their compensation and benefits. [For the 2018-19 report, see "2018-19 AASA Superintendent Salary & Benefits Study: Non-Member Version" (ED619865).]

New teachers are facing lower pay and less generous retirement benefits than the prior generation, yet their financial and retirement knowledge, concerns, and preferences have received little attention. To investigate these areas, the author developed a 39-item survey instrument and administered it to 314 preservice teachers in undergraduate teacher education courses at the University of Central Florida, who were primarily female elementary and early childhood education juniors and seniors ages 18-25. Florida public employees are offered an unusual choice between a traditional pension plan and a defined-contribution plan similar to a 401(k) in which they can select their own investments, and 54% of surveyed preservice teachers preferred the 401(k)-like plan structure. However, their preferences may be ill-advised, given that in a mock portfolio allocation exercise intended to assess retirement investing sophistication, preservice teachers directed more than half their retirement money to low-risk money market and bond funds, which will likely underperform stocks over several decades. Furthermore, they anticipated that low salaries will impede their ability to save for retirement. For comparison, the survey was also administered to 205 U.S. college students or graduates ages 18-25 on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform for $1.00 each. Worrisomely, preservice teachers had significantly lower financial knowledge and retirement investing sophistication. These findings suggest a need for financial education targeting Florida preservice teachers, particularly given that the Florida Retirement System substantially cut its benefits in 2011. [This book was edited by Ismail Sahin and Wenxia Wu.]

Today, nine out of 10 Americans age 65 and older depend on Social Security benefits to lead a comfortable and secure retirement. Among all Americans over age 65, Social Security makes up more than half of their household income. This brief outlines the history of Social Security benefits in the public sector, describes the safe harbor rule and how it is intended to work, and then shows its limitations. As a concrete example, it then analyzes the pension formulas covering approximately 1.2 million active public school teachers in the 15 states and the District of Columbia that do not offer universal coverage for teachers. Similar to previous work, it shows that the pension formulas in those states do not protect teachers from receiving retirement benefits that are worth less than they would otherwise receive under Social Security. Those workers should be covered by Social Security immediately. The brief concludes with suggestions about how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could amend its rules to protect these workers and more closely align its policies with congressional intent.

Voters in Marin County have long been willing to pass parcel taxes to fund their schools. In 2016, taxes faced unprecedented opposition from local activists; taxes in Kentfield and Mill Valley were defeated or passed by previously unheard-of narrow margins, respectively. What changed? This case study uses district financial and demographic data as well as interviews and focus groups with advocates and education leaders to answer this question. It was clear that: (1) The current financial situation is not sustainable. Because of rising pension costs, other rising costs, and factors such as declining enrollment, Marin districts are making cuts to services or plan to do so in the near future; (2) There is a tension between teacher compensation and recruitment. Despite their financial constraints, districts feel immense pressure to increase teacher salaries in order to recruit and retain teachers in high-cost Marin County. Increasing pension costs are diminishing the flexibility afforded by the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) to fund local programs and priorities; (3) There is strong support for teachers and programs for students, but even in Marin County, where the community is engaged and well-informed, there is limited public awareness of district flexibility to respond to the impacts of rising pension costs; and (4) Due to growing concern that dollars are not reaching schools, but instead being used to fund pensions, parcel taxes have faced increasing opposition in Marin County. This case study also offers lessons for local and state education leaders, including: (1) Districts facing real and unavoidable cost increases simply need more funding; (2) Education leaders must continue to build awareness of the impact of rising pension costs, and work together to identify solutions; and (3) Given the increasing vulnerability of local taxation, state and local advocates should prioritize a statewide funding solution. With this report, the authors aim to build deeper understanding among policymakers, advocates, and state and local decision-makers about the funding challenges felt by local school districts, and how these challenges are affecting students, educators, and the broader community. This report sheds light on how these local pressures are playing out in Marin County and is meant to provide one illustrative case study and share insights and lessons learned that may be instructive to state and local leaders as they seek to improve education funding and quality in California.

After many years of labor peace, public school teachers have engaged in strikes and work stoppages in record numbers during the past two years. Chief among the demands of striking teachers was higher pay. Discontent was also expressed with working conditions, which teachers and their unions connected to flat or declining state spending on education. This report argues that underfunded defined-benefit pension plans and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) are the hidden drivers of labor unrest in the public sector. As these legacy costs have risen, teacher salaries have flatlined or even declined in value. Policy recommendations include: (1) In the name of equity and affordability, states should move away from defined-benefit pensions and toward defined-contribution plans; (2) More of the money currently spent on education should show up in the paychecks of working teachers; (3) States should consider eliminating retiree health-care benefits for newly hired teachers--indeed, for most government employees. These kinds of benefits have been sharply pared or eliminated throughout the private sector; and (4) To implement these reforms, states could offer teachers a deal wherein raises in salary are matched with switching to a defined-contribution plan. This would have the double benefit of giving younger teachers, with lots of time to save for retirement, a bigger raise in the here-and-now, as well as reducing the government employers' long-term pension liability.

Higher education appropriations are often referred to as the "balance wheel" for state budgets, receiving greater than average funding reductions during economic downturns and above average increases during periods of economic growth. However, this trend has gradually diminished with each recession as higher education funding no longer returns to pre-recession levels. The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association's (SHEEO) annual State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report documents this ratcheting down. The purpose of this policy brief is to provide background information to help SHEEOs better understand the current status of state pension obligations. The authors first review how most public pensions have become underfunded. Next, they review the common reforms states have taken to address the financial health of their retirement systems. Finally, the authors highlight several complicating factors that may limit the effectiveness of the reforms or lead to future funding challenges.

To improve the finances of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, which serves almost 1.5 million workers and retirees, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation in spring 2019 that gradually raises plan contributions by the state, school districts, and employees. Additional contribution hikes may be necessary to close the plan's funding gap, however, if optimistic actuarial and investment assumptions about the future fail to materialize. Revising the plan's benefit structure, which now favors long-tenured teachers, could also improve retirement security for teachers who spend less than a full career in the pension system, especially because most Texas teachers are not covered by Social Security. [This report was funded by Equable Institute.]

At first glance, the recent teacher-retirement reforms in Ohio seem to bring good fiscal news to school systems in the Buckeye State. With Senate Bills 341 and 342--and a series of cutbacks on retiree healthcare--the Cleveland Metropolitan School District is projected to spend less on retirement costs in 2020 than it does today. But these reforms come at a big price. While much of the burden was taken off school districts, it now falls heavily on the shoulders of Cleveland's newest teachers. This report projects the city's future retirement obligations and illuminates how retirement reform can help solve the pension-funding problem--and some of the accompanying challenges. [For the summary report, see ED598726.]

As state leaders consider needed updates to the Commonwealth's school funding formula, they should remember just how well the approach taken by Tom Birmingham, former Massachusetts state Senate president, and co-author of the 1993 Education Reform Act worked. Beginning in 1993, Massachusetts' SAT scores rose for 13 consecutive years. The state's scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shot up, too. By 2005, Massachusetts students became the first to score best in the nation in all four major NAEP categories (fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math). Since then, they have repeated the feat on every subsequent administration of NAEP except one. While American students as a whole lag behind their international peers, the 2007 and 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study results showed that Massachusetts students were competitive with their counterparts in places like Japan, Korea, and Singapore. In 2007, the Bay State's eighth graders even tied for first place internationally in science. The current formula for funding K-12 public education calculates a "foundation budget," which is the minimum needed for a school district to provide its students with a quality education. Another formula determines how much each district can afford to contribute, and the state fills the gap between that amount and the foundation budget. Some wealthier districts contribute more than is required, but every district receives a minimum annual state contribution of about $1,750 per student. State funding, known as Chapter 70, jumped by 227.4 percent per pupil between 1993 and 2019, rising from $1.592 billion to $5.212 billion (see figure 1). This rate of increase exceeded the rate of increase in per pupil net school spending by municipalities (excluding Chapter 70 funding) of 156.8 percent, rising from $3.704 billion to $9.513 billion during that time frame. It also exceeded growth in statewide enrollment, which rose by 16.3 percent, from 809,496 to 941,411 over that period. It also exceeded the rate of increase of the consumer price index for all urban consumers in Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA which rose by 83.7 percent over that time period. As legislators contemplate the financial needs of local school districts, they should keep in mind that they face an enormous parallel funding challenge over the next 17 years. Unlike in some other states, the Commonwealth--not municipalities--is responsible for the unfunded liability of two pension funds that serve municipal employees: the Massachusetts Teachers Retirement System (MTRS) and the Boston Teachers Retirement System BTRS). Massachusetts currently faces a combined $41.26 billion unfunded liability for the pension systems of state employees, Massachusetts teachers and Boston teachers. Of that, (figure 5) shows nearly two thirds, or 65.6 percent of the total obligation is attributable to unfunded local teacher pensions. Legislators would be wise to keep these pension and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) obligations in mind as they fashion updates to Chapter 70. As mentioned previously, the foundation funding formula has been revised and updated several times in recent years. Some additional tweaking is warranted, but the fact remains that wholesale changes are not in order. The communities left behind are the older industrialized cities and towns, such as listed in Figure 8, from Worcester and Orange to Springfield and Lawrence. Lawmakers should focus on the fiscal needs of these communities. They should also tie this additional investment to a policy strategy that is most likely to lead to better educational accountability and student outcomes in those key cities and towns. Whatever new funding comes from the state should be tied to reform. Over the last decade, Massachusetts has retreated from some of the key reforms that drove significant progress on student achievement for all students, e.g., adoption of weaker academic standards in English Language Arts (ELA), math, science, and history, the transition to the watered down (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments) MCAS 2.0, the loss of an independent district accountability agency, and the erosion of legislative support for proven school reform innovations, including charter schools. Over that time, the Commonwealth has experienced declining MCAS and SAT scores, and Massachusetts is among a minority of states in which National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores have fallen between 2011 and 2017. The opportunity for change that comes with significant new money should not be lost. To ensure that additional resources provide a return on taxpayer investment, Pioneer offers eight recommendations in this report.

Pensions have been at the forefront of recent debates over teacher pay, but the issues are complicated and political. As such, this document is an attempt to inform readers about how pension plans work for the 90 percent of public school teachers enrolled in them. Using objective data and analysis, we explain how teachers earn benefits in those plans, and how the plans interact with other goals in our education system, including attracting and retaining high-quality teachers and providing equitable resources to disadvantaged students. While there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, this document concludes with ideas on ways states could redesign their retirement systems to better meet the needs of teachers and the general public. As a disclaimer, this report focuses on questions affecting public policy choices. Teachers should consult a qualified financial professional before making any consequential financial decisions.

West Virginia's attempt to reshape its teacher retirement system in the 1990s and early 2000s is often cited as a cautionary tale to block other teacher pension reform efforts across the country. Critics argue that because West Virginia replaced its pension fund with a defined contribution (DC), 401(k)-style plan in the early nineties, and then reverted back to the original pension plan in 2005, that pension reform can't work. But that version of West Virginia's story is misleading and incomplete. In Bellwether's new report, "Teacher Pension Reform: Lessons and Warnings From West Virginia," we modeled the wealth accumulation for teachers in the pension fund, before and after the reform, as well as the intervening DC plan. We found that all of the plans were poorly constructed from the outset and fail to provide a significant retirement benefit to a majority of West Virginia's educators. The problem was not that pension reform cannot work, or that DC plans are inherently a better option. Rather, the key takeaway is that states should carefully examine their current retirement system and consider what reforms are necessary to ensure they provide high-quality retirement options to all educators in the plan. Teacher pensions present a growing financial crisis across the country, to the tune of $500M. West Virginia's experiences with reform can be instructive for states as they seek to navigate their pension problems. When states consider incorporating DC plans, they should consider including five key features: Automatically enroll employees into the program; Set the shortest possible vesting period for teachers to qualify fully for their retirement benefits; Establish employer and employee contribution rates that, at minimum, total between 10 and 15 percent of salary; Provide low-cost options and life cycle funds that adjust an employee's portfolio as she gets closer to retirement; and Create an actionable and accountable plan to pay down unfunded liabilities. Pension reform is not an escape from the obligations owed to current and retired teachers; rather, it is a change that allows state the opportunity to re-think how to provide tomorrow's teachers with a more valuable benefit than they could have hoped for under existing plans. Failing to learn the lessons from West Virginia will, in the end, come at great cost to teachers and states alike.

Teachers and other employees of the School District of Philadelphia receive their retirement benefits from the Pennsylvania state retirement plan for schools, which includes both a defined-benefit pension plan and a modest retiree health benefit. The cost of the former is expected to rise quite substantially and, as this technical analysis will show, presents a daunting burden for the district in the near future. This report analyzes and projects the future retirement obligations in Philadelphia and highlights the nature and scale of the pension-funding problem. [For the summary report, see ED598726.]

On January 10, 2019, Governor Newsom released his Budget Proposal for the 2019-2020 fiscal year, which includes around $60 billion in state funds for K-12 schools. The budget bill and implementation bills will be deliberated and modified in each house in the upcoming months after which they are expected to incorporate significant revisions that will be proposed by the Governor in May 2019 and signed and enacted by July 2019. There is considerable alignment between the Governor's Budget Proposal and the key findings from "Getting Down to Facts II" (GDTFII), which was released in September 2018. GDTFII--a collaboration of over 100 researchers from across the country--published 36 studies on the current status of California's PreK-12 public education system. This policy brief describes the elements of the Budget Proposal that coincide with key findings from GDTFII, discusses the current context in California in that domain, and brings to bear additional research from GDTFII as evidence to inform budget and policy discussions that unfold over the next several months.