Kirsten Schmitz's blog

  • We know that traditional pension plans can push veteran teachers out of the classroom. But could pension reform draw them back in?
  • It was May of 2012 and, like many others, Kansas’ state-based teacher retirement plan was in trouble. As a response, legislators voted in a new retirement option, called a cash balance plan. We take a look at what the plan offers, and how it's worked out after its 2015 implementation.
  • The Census Bureau’s annual Public Education Finances compiles total education spending and revenue across the entire country. The latest data, released earlier this summer, shows teacher benefits continue to eat away at school budgets.
  • Change isn’t easy, and the large-scale shift from defined benefit pension plans to 401k-style plans has had its bumps and missteps. A new report from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College (CRR) helps document how that transition is going.
  • 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.