The impact of collective bargaining for teachers on resource allocation in public school districts

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical evaluation of the impact of teacher bargaining on the demand for school inputs, the compensation of school personnel, and the level of educational expenditure in public school districts. It is demonstrated that the major impact of bargaining for teachers has been on a regional rather than on a district by district level, and, contrary to the results of previous studies, bargaining does appear to have a substantial and significant effect on teachers' salaries. The empirical analysis is carried out on a sample of public school districts located in the state of California.     

The bargaining power of teachers’ unions and the allocation of school resources

This paper examines how district size affects the bargaining power of teachers’ unions and the allocation of school resources. Our identification strategy exploits the fact that 33 states mandate collective bargaining while 5 states prohibited it. In states that mandate collective bargaining, we find that beginning salaries and the premium paid to experienced teachers increase with district size while the teacher–pupil ratio declines with district size. In contrast, in states that prohibit collective bargaining we find a negative relationship between district size and the premium paid to experienced teachers. District size also has a stronger positive effect on beginning salaries and a weaker negative effect on teacher–pupil ratios in states that prohibit collective bargaining. Collectively, our results suggest that more powerful unions bargain for more generous returns to teacher seniority at the expense of staffing ratios and base salaries.     

Compensating differentials in teachers' salaries

Using a sample of 1419 school districts from six states, this paper investigates the importance of compensating wage differentials in the teaching profession. Particular attention is paid to the role of locational amenities such as crime, climate, and the cost of living in the determination of teacher's salaries. Evidence is produced supporting the hypothesis that nominal wages adjust, ceteris paribus, to geographical variation in the cost of living to keep real wages constant. Wages are also found to be quite responsive to changes in the climate.     

Are baseball players paid their marginal products?

Previous researchers found that baseball players under the reserve clause had been paid considerably less than their contributions to club revenues. We ask, has the new contractual system of free agency and final-offer arbitration brought baseball salaries into line with marginal revenue products? Using public data for the 1986 and 1987 seasons, our basic answer is yes, major league salaries generally coincide with estimated marginal revenue products, though significant deviations exist. Experienced players are paid in accord with their productivity; young players, however, are paid less than their marginal revenue product, on average. This result is closely related to the market structure within baseball.     

The Impact of Managerial Quality on Employee Turnover

Abstract

This paper empirically examines, at the organizational level, the impact of quality public managers on turnover. Quality managers can influence turnover through human capital management, budgeting, setting tasks and providing goals. However, their ability to affect turnover depends on managerial level, which in this study are the upper and middle levels. Managerial quality is operationalized with superintendent and principal salaries and turnover is operationalized with the retention rate of teachers in school districts. The findings reveal that quality middle managers exert a significant and negative effect on organizational turnover and quality upper level managers do not directly influence turnover.     

A model of local demand for education

A careful modeling of the spending behavior of local school districts in New Jersey is presented. The theoretical model relies on the common hypothesis of political competition leading to a median outcome as well as the assumption that school superintendents act as budget maximizers. The model is estimated for a sample of 177 school districts under three different aid formulas. Pooling of the cross sections suggests that the response of school expenditures to changes in variables other than those associated with school aid parameters has remained constant over time. The results are discussed in the context of recent theories regarding the effect of intergovernmental aid on the level of public expenditure.     

Does it Pay to Work for Free? Negative Selection and the Wage Returns to Volunteer Experience

This paper offers the first instrumental variables estimates of the wage returns to volunteer experience. The returns are substantial and differ considerably by gender. The results imply that the unequal valuation of volunteer experience by gender is more important in explaining the gender earnings gap than is the unequal valuation of part‐time paid work experience. The results also indicate negative selection into unpaid work. In a simple model of optimal volunteering, negative selection implies that a lower cost of volunteering would produce both an expanded and higher‐skilled pool of volunteers, and greater societal benefits from volunteer work.     

THE IMPACT OF ETHNIC HETEROGENEITY ON EDUCATION SPENDING: A SPATIAL ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF UNITED STATES SCHOOL DISTRICTS

In the public finance literature it is well understood that a community's spending can be affected by neighboring communities’ spending. It is relatively straightforward to see why these spillovers exist. For example, if a school district increases its spending on public education, this could affect the spending level of neighboring school districts. This paper uses spatial analysis to test the hypothesis that a school district's ethnic heterogeneity affects support for public education. Using a Spatial Lag Model and a national panel of U.S. school districts, I find that spatial dependence does exist in the data and that ethnic heterogeneity is negatively related to school district spending.     

民办高校教师个人所得税纳税筹划分析

随着中国社会经济的发展,"科教兴国"战略的实施,民办高校也越来越多,民办高校老师的收入也受到了关注。文章主要对现实中民办高校教师的纳税现状进行简要分析,从工资薪金福利化、工资、薪金收入均衡、利用工资、薪金所得税率超额累进税率的特点提出筹划建议。     

Employment and remuneration of Irish chartered accountants: evidence of

Literature on gender-based salary differentials has proliferated in recent years but there have been few studies on salary differentials in the accounting profession. This paper examines factors influencing remuneration of Irish chartered accountants. Responses to the Leinster Society of Chartered Accountants (LSCA) annual salary survey in 1995 and 1996 were analysed. Employee-related and employer-related factors influencing remuneration were examined including gender, work experience, level of responsibility, employment contract and size and industry. Gender was a significant explanatory variable in explaining differences in salaries paid to employees working in non-audit businesses. Gender, however, was not found to be significant in explaining differences in salaries paid in audit practices. As partners in auditing firms are not included in this research (because partners do not earn a salary) this finding must be interpreted cautiously.     

School Finance Reform and Private School Enrollment: Evidence from California

Abstract: This paper uses the school finance reforms in California in the 1970s to examine whether the constraints such reforms impose on school districts lead to switching to private schools. Misspecifications of demand in previous work have led to understatement of reform effects. An empirical model of schooling share equations is derived from a discrete choice framework. Large biases are shown to result from failure to account for heterogeneity of demanders and school-district-specific fixed effects. Simulations indicate that the changes in public provision potentially resulting from reform explain a sizeable portion of the growth in the private school share.     

Is intrajurisdictional resource allocation equitable?: An analysis of campus-level spending data for Texas elementary schools

Considerable research has focused on the allocation of resources across jurisdictions. However, much less work has been directed toward understanding the pattern of intrajurisdictional resource allocation. This study adds to the local public economics literature by carrying out an empirical study of variation in spending per pupil across elementary schools within Texas school districts. Results from estimating a district fixed-effects model reveal that the discretionary resources of school districts are skewed toward schools in low-income, minority neighborhoods, beyond the amounts that would be allocated based on the state aid formula. The findings suggest that attempts by Texas state lawmakers to raise the level of resources allocated to poor schools have been reinforced by district-level decisions regarding intrajurisdictional discretionary spending. However, the dollar magnitude of this incremental funding is relatively small, and hence impacts on educational outcomes are also likely to be small.     

中小学骨干教师培养模式研究

加强中小学骨干教师的培养,在全面实施素质教育的今天势在必行,对于提高教师队伍的整体素质具有决定性的作用,而且会对培养具有创新精神和实践能力,适应现代社会需要的学生产生直接和深远的影响。本文作者通过对不同类型的骨干教师培养模式进行研究,在中小学骨干教师培养目标、中小学骨干教师培养原则、中小学骨干教师培养管理、中小学骨干教师培养模式以及中小学骨干教师培养中应注意的问题等方面进行了阐述,与同仁共享。     

Does the quality of public-sponsored training programs matter? Evidence from bidding processes data

This paper analyzes the link between training quality and labor-market outcomes. Multiple proxies for training quality are identified from bidding processes in which public and private training institutions compete for limited public funding in Peru. Information about exact dates of program enrollment is analyzed to show whether the first-come-first-served assignment rule randomized eligible individuals across courses of varying quality. Generalized propensity score (GPS) is implemented to estimate dose–response functions in the context of multiple treatments. We find that beneficiaries attending high-quality training courses show higher earnings and better job-quality characteristics than either beneficiaries attending low-quality courses or nonparticipants. The returns are particularly robust for women, making the provision of high-quality training services cost-effective. Furthermore, the most important training attribute is expenditures per trainee. Class size and infrastructure are weakly related to the expected impacts, while teacher experience, curricular activities, and market knowledge seem to bear no relationship with the expected impacts. External validity was assessed by using five cohorts of individuals over an eight-year period.     

Racial Fractionalization and School Performance

The literature on racial “peer effects” suggests that diversity improves at least some students' school performance. However, a literature in economic development posits that diversity may negatively affect school performance by undermining the efficient provision of education. This article empirically tests this claim, which we call the “public goods channel,” by examining the relationship between racial diversity and student performance in Ohio's school districts. We find that moving from a completely homogenous school district to one in which two racial groups have equal population shares is associated with a 7–17.5 percentage point decline in the passage rate on the state math exam, holding per pupil spending across districts constant. These results suggest that racial diversity is negatively associated with school performance but that the public goods channel is not responsible for this relationship.     

Efficiency in public schools: Does competition matter?

The focus of many recent school reforms has been on changing the incentives faced by school administrators, mainly through increased competition. In this study, we assess whether competition amongst public schools influences the efficiency in which these schools operate, using a two-stage estimation procedure and data from the state of Illinois from 1997–1998. We find some evidence that public school districts become more efficient as neighboring districts become more efficient. However, such spillovers only occur if districts operate within a financially flexible environment.     

An analysis of the factors affecting the supply and demand for teacher quality

This paper analyzes the factors that have influenced the supply and demand for teacher quality in Arkansas' public schools. The paper relies on results from a basic skills test, given to all Arkansas public school teachers in 1985, to measure teacher quality. Relying on these data, a simultaneous equation model is constructed to disentangle the supply and demand forces that determined the level of teacher quality in a county. Price and income elasticities are also calculated and compared to elasticity estimates found in other studies.     

Using DEA for measuring teachers’ performance and the impact on students’ outcomes: evidence for Spain

This research contributes to the ongoing debate about differences in teachers’ performance. We introduce a new methodology that combines production frontier and impact evaluation insights that allows using DEA as an identification strategy of a treatment with high and low quality teachers within schools to assess their performance. We use a unique database of primary schools in Spain that, for every school, supplies information on two classrooms at 4th grade where students and teachers were randomly assigned into the two classrooms. We find considerable differences in teachers’ efficiency across schools with significant effects on students’ achievement. In line with previous findings, we find that neither teacher experience nor academic training explains teachers’ efficiency. Conversely, being a female teacher, having worked five or more years in the same school or having smaller class sizes positively affects the performance of teachers.     

初中教师在职培训的影响因素及对策——基于武汉市的一项实证研究

本文在对武汉市初中教师在职培训进行实证研究的基础上,提出应通过加强对中小学教师在职培训需求的研究和预测、建立教师在职培训质量标准等措施进一步提高教师在职培训的针对性和实效性。     

The Value of Secondary School Quality*

Improving the quality of state‐funded secondary school education has become a major policy aim in the UK. However, without a valuation of the social benefits derived from public provision of educational services, the rational evaluation of policy to this end is difficult. Utilizing the argument that dwellings near better schools command a price premium, this paper presents results from an empirical exercise aimed at providing such a social valuation of increased school quality. Using a large set of data for England, and an instrumental variable approach, results indicate an elasticity of dwelling purchase price with respect to exam performance by schools at around +0.05. One implication is that society would value a general increase of five percentage points in exam performance by about £450 million per annum.