Teacher Compensation and Teacher Quality

This CED report examines teacher pay and other compensation issues. Schools must be able to compete effectively for college-educated workers who have more career choices and see themselves as more mobile professionally than did earlier generations. Traditional compensation policies for teachers (salary schedules that reward only longevity and academic credentials, and pension policies that penalize mobile teachers and those who do not spend a lifetime career in teaching) are out of sync with the objective of expanding the pool of talented individuals who are willing to teach

United States Pension Benefit Plan Design Innovation: Labor Unions as Agents of Change

Labor unions played an historic role creating the occupational pension system in the private and public sectors in the post-World War II era. That system, which was dominated by defined benefit pension plans, is in decline. The transition to a new system is economically and socially painful, and has been accelerated by two financial crises in the past decade. This paper uses a case study of a private sector union to demonstrate how labor unions can influence the renegotiation of the pension contract for American workers. The case study describes how one union evaluated the pension crisis from a sustainability viewpoint, and responded pro-actively by developing a hybrid pension plan that attempted to align the interests of all stakeholders through equitable risk sharing. The hybrid plan developed by this union eventually had a broader influence on the pension community at large and the public policy debate around the pension crisis

It Takes a Federalist Village: A Revitalized Property Tax as the Linchpin for Stable, Effective K-12 Public Education Funding

Public education in the United States is a big business. In the fall of 2011, more than 55.5 million students from kindergarten through 12th grade were expected to enroll in the nation\u27s public schools at a total cost of $599,145,678,000. Though it is a service provided by local governments, its cost is borne by local, state, and, to a more limited extent, federal taxpayers. Providing public education is a massive undertaking and no one level of government can solely bear its cost. Governmental revenue sources, from which allocated shares of expense are presently borne, differ. Local funding is provided predominately through taxes on real property, state funding comes primarily from individual income or retail sales taxes, and federal contributions are from income taxes. Funding public education is a perpetual challenge, and the 2008 recession further complicated the situation. Indeed, the recession has made it difficult to maintain even the status quo, and recently states have almost universally reported cuts in their share of support for education. The trend toward diminished funding for public education must be arrested and reversed. In seeking that reversal, policymakers must be aware of the differences among funding sources; property, income, and retail sales taxes do not share the same characteristics. The differing characteristics contribute to funding complexities and must be accommodated in order to work toward an optimal package

It Takes a Federalist Village: A Revitalized Property Tax as the Linchpin for Stable, Effective K-12 Public Education Funding

Public education in the United States is a big business. In the fall of 2011, more than 55.5 million students from kindergarten through 12th grade were expected to enroll in the nation\u27s public schools at a total cost of $599,145,678,000. Though it is a service provided by local governments, its cost is borne by local, state, and, to a more limited extent, federal taxpayers. Providing public education is a massive undertaking and no one level of government can solely bear its cost. Governmental revenue sources, from which allocated shares of expense are presently borne, differ. Local funding is provided predominately through taxes on real property, state funding comes primarily from individual income or retail sales taxes, and federal contributions are from income taxes. Funding public education is a perpetual challenge, and the 2008 recession further complicated the situation. Indeed, the recession has made it difficult to maintain even the status quo, and recently states have almost universally reported cuts in their share of support for education. The trend toward diminished funding for public education must be arrested and reversed. In seeking that reversal, policymakers must be aware of the differences among funding sources; property, income, and retail sales taxes do not share the same characteristics. The differing characteristics contribute to funding complexities and must be accommodated in order to work toward an optimal package

Bankruptcy: The Divergent Cases of the City and the County of San Bernardino

The cases are the two separate jurisdictions of the City of San Bernardino and the County of San Bernardino, California, U.S.A. The matched pair offers a unique opportunity for a research design that compares a bankrupt city government with a jurisdiction sharing the essential demographic, economic, and geographical features, though as a county a different level of government. The two cases offer insights into bankruptcy as not simply a function of economic forces or recent poor policy choices but as a result of a pattern of decision-making, a structure of government, and the constraints placed on leadership by structure and electoral politics. The analysis of this comparison allows us to unbundle leadership and show that differences in strategy, transparency, civic culture, trust and accountability explain the divergent outcomes

A More Perfect Union: A National Citizenship Plan

A More Perfect Union: A National Citizenship Plan sets forth the resources, activities, and partnerships that would be required to naturalize as many eligible immigrants as possible. It calls for a national mobilization in support of citizenship, identifying the roles of government, immigrant service agencies, and other sectors of society in a coordinated plan. It describes a program that could serve as a linchpin of an emerging U.S. immigrant integration strategy.Access the complete report via the download link below. An executive summary and individual chapters may be downloaded at http://www.cliniclegal.org/DNP/citzplan.html

Counting Working-Age People with Disabilities: What Current Data Tell Us and Options for Improvement

This book offers a systematic review of what current statistics and data on working-age people with disabilities can and cannot tell us, and how the quality of the data can be improved to better inform policymakers, advocates, analysts, service providers, administrators, and others interested in this at-risk population.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1162/thumbnail.jp

The Innovation Cascade: A Five-Level Framework for Building Enterprise Innovation Systems

This Major Research Paper (MRP) describes a framework for creating more innovative, lower-cost enterprise innovation systems (EISs). Through a literature review, I have identified and described ten driving forces behind the performance of EISs: innovation ecosystems, innovation strategy, enterprise architecture, innovation inputs, the innovation process, portfolio management, innovation working practices, innovation accounting, innovation culture, and innovation tools. Drawing from the literature, I have gathered and analyzed 250 innovation approaches, such as horizon scanning or value proposition design, to describe the five overarching areas involved in creating EISs: ecosystem, strategy, architecture, people, and infrastructure. Through eleven practitioner interviews and system mapping, I have shaped the five areas into a prototype framework, which I call the Innovation Cascade. The Innovation Cascade provides EIS builders with a process for creating or improving an EIS by framing missing areas or highlighting tensions between the five areas of an EIS. To test the Innovation Cascade, I conducted a case study with the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS). In the case study, I mapped OMERS’s EIS to the Innovation Cascade, designed an EIS research function for OMERS, and offered ten recommendations for improving OMERS’s EIS. Through the case study, I determined the Innovation Cascade is effective for building or enhancing EISs and propose next steps for further refining it. Finally, I have suggested three other models to augment the Innovation Cascade. First, five modes that EISs can exhibit: informal, linear, distributed, embedded and emergent. Second, patterns or predictable configurations each area can exhibit. Third, five steps that match each area of the Innovation Cascade with appropriate tools and actions. Together, the three models and the Innovation Cascade offer a framework for EIS builders to design, improve, maintain and understand EISs, as well as communicate EISs to stakeholders

Fact Finding Report : Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations

This Fact Finding Report is submitted jointly to the Secretaries of Labor and Commerce. After release of this Report, the Commission plans a series of hearings and conferences with representatives of business organizations, labor organizations, other organizations that have presented testimony or statements, and the interested public to receive comments, reactions and suggestions as to the statement of facts and its implications for private and public policies and for the recommendations of the Commission.Within a period of six months of the presentation of this Report, the Commission plans to present a final report with recommendations to the two Secretaries