August 2016

Rising costs and arbitrary incentives are harming Nevada's ability to attract and retain a high-quality teacher workforce.
If states and districts consider funding teacher retirements as separate from their investments in K-12 education, it becomes much easier for legislators and governors to kick the funding liabilities down the road and leave them for others to sort out. It also creates the odd situation like the one we see in Maryland in which the state is both raising and cutting education funding.
States penalize employees for changing states or leaving the teaching profession. Here are four ways that state pension plans limit a teacher's ability to choose her own path.
While nearly all of us could benefit from a brush-up on retirement saving practices, teacher-specific advice is hard to come by. To better understand how best to tackle the unique challenges educators face, I connected with NerdWallet's Arielle O'Shea.
How do we get more STEM teachers? One idea is to convince folks leaving a STEM job to start a second career in the classroom. But, career-changers, particularly in STEM fields, would most likely have to accept both a significant pay cut and lower retirement benefits. This happens because these individuals will have two separate retirement saving plans. And, unfortunately, they will be unlikely to realize the full benefits of either.
As state and local policymakers seek to expand pre-k opportunities and improve support for early childhood teachers, they must also ensure educators are given a viable path to save for retirement.