Recommended Reading

 

1. The Phony Funding Crisis
2. The Tradeoff Between Teacher Wages and Layoffs to Meet Budget Cuts

   Marguerite Roza, July 2009

   School districts faced with large budget gaps could avoid some or all teacher layoffs by rolling back salaries. While this option may not work for all districts, a new analysis shows that district officials--and teachers unions--could both serve students and teachers by trimming classroom pay.

   Marguerite Roza based her analysis on the fact that 93 percent of school districts in the U.S. negotiate and structure teacher-pay according to a fixed salary schedule, consisting of annual as well as step increases. Step increases average 3.16 percent a year. The annual increase for the salary schedules she calculated at the average Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the 1997--2007 period at 2.87 percent. The total for the two, at 6.03 percent, may not make sense this year, says Roza.

   In a simple chart, she provides five possible decision-options showing how, if salaries are rolled back, fewer teachers get laid off and class sizes increase by fewer students.

   In a fifth option, Roza indicates no layoffs would be needed and class sizes would not increase were the district to achieve the 5 percent cut in teaching costs by rolling back salaries 8.16 percent—a move that still would allow the teachers to get their annual salary step increase.

3. Educating the Public By William G. Howell and Martin R. West

   The 2008 Education Next-PEPG Survey found that providing respondents with accurate information about teacher salaries decreased support for raising them; providing information about charter schools increased support for them among liberals but lowered it among conservatives.

4. Invisible Ink in Collective Bargaining: Why Key Issues Are Not Addressed By Emily Cohen, Kate Walsh and RiShawn Biddle

5. Real Education, Charles Murray

6. Golden Apples by RiShawn Biddle

7. DeRolph did what it intended: School funding has been fixed 

8. Our View: Ohio flunking test on schools' costs  Dayton Daily News

9. Education fix carries poisonous price tag
10. The Constitutional Amendment: Bad and expensive

11. Teacher pay: (a) too high or (b) too low (also see the graphic)

12. Causes of high tuition will continue until accountability arrives on campus

13. Ohio’s State/Local Tax Burden Among Highest in Nation (for the full report, click on the link and scroll to the bottom)

14. Ohio’s 2007 Business Tax Climate Ranks 49th (for the full report, click on the link and scroll to the bottom)

15. US Chamber of Commerce's State-by-State Report Card on Educational Effectiveness

16. The Six Habits of Fiscally Responsible Public School Districts from the Mackinaw Center in Michigan.

17. Education Myths : What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools and Why it Isn't So  by Jay P. Greene (with a summary article HERE.)

18. A Better Bargain: Overhauling Teacher Collective Bargaining for the 21st Century   (pdf)

19. Education Next

    	What Americans Think about Their Schools
    	NCLB Uses a Flawed Measuring Stick to Judge School Performance
    	New Study Finds Inequities in Spending Among Texas Schools
    	New study shows schools of choice, both public and private, are better at boosting civic values among students
    	New research shows parents of students in high-poverty schools value teachers who raise achievement, while in more-affluent schools, parents prefer teachers who keep students satisfied.
    	Accountability Lost; Student learning seldom a factor in school board elections   By Christopher Berry and William G. Howell