Are School Superintendents Rewarded for “Performance”?

[Excerpt] This chapter presents analyses of the compensation and mobility of school superintendents in New York State during the 1978-79 to 1982-83 period. The focus is on school superintendents because they are the chief operating officers of school districts, their salaries are determined through individual negotiations with school boards, and their salary data were made available to us. In contrast, school principals\u27 salary data were not available to us. Especially in large districts, principals tend to be members of a union and their salary increases negotiated collectively, which limits the likelihood of observing individual principals\u27 salaries being related to measures of their school\u27s performance

Merit Pay for School Superintendents?

Given the important role that school district administrators play in the educational process, one might expect their "performance" to be of fundamental importance in determining both how much students learn and the cost of public education to taxpayers. Yet, while public debate has considered the issue of merit pay plans for teachers, virtually no attention has been directed to the methods by which school administrators are compensated. This paper provides evidence on whether school superintendents are explicitly or implicitly rewarded for their "performance" by higher compensation and/or greater opportunities for mobility. We analyze panel data from over 700 school 'districts in New Ycrk State during the 1978-79 to 1982-83 period. Measures of performance are defined and then entered into salary level, salary change, and mobility equations. While evidence is provided that school superintendents are rewarded for "performance", the magnitude of the rewards appear to be quite small.

On Estimating the Effects of Increased Aid to Education

[Excerpt] The 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, of the National Commission on Excellence in Education decried the state of public education in the United States and suggested a number of reforms. Among their recommendations was increased federal aid for education. The view was that this would lead to desirable outcomes such as reduced class sizes and higher teacher salaries, with the latter aiding in the recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers. Somewhat surprisingly, previous research on the economics of education provides us with very few insights about what the effects of such proposals might be. For example, while there is an extensive literature on the determinants of cross-section variations in teachers\u27 salaries and teacher/student ratios, virtually nothing has been written on how changes in aid levels influence changes in salaries, teacher/student ratios, other expenditure levels, and local tax rates. Similarly, while there are many studies of how grants-in-aid affect overall expenditure levels and some studies of the determinants of cross-section variations in the share of expenditures spent on various categories (e.g., instructional and administrative), virtually nothing has been written on how changes in aid affect the various expenditure shares. To provide answers to some of these questions, our paper examines data from a panel of approximately 700 school districts in New York State over a five-year period (1978-79 to 1982-83) and tries to infer how school districts will respond to future changes in aid from how they responded to changes in state aid during the period. We focus on how past aid changes have influenced teacher salaries, tax rates, teacher/student ratios, and other staff/student ratios. The analyses exploit the fact that although school aid formulas change frequently in New York State, each district is usually guaranteed at least the same aid level as the previous year ( save harmless provisions). As a result, over any given two-year period, the percentage increase in aid varies widely across districts. This provides a convenient form of natural experiment

Determinants of the Compensation and Mobility of School Superintendents

Analyzing 197-83 panel data from more than 700 New York State school districts, the authors find evidence that school superintendents were rewarded, both by higher salary increases and by enhanced opportunities to move to belter-paying jobs, for having low school tax rates and high educational achievement within their districts, relative to the values of those variables in comparable school districts in the state. The rewards were, however, quite small. The analysis also suggests that the superintendents themselves did not significantly influence either school tax rates or educational test scores in their districts

Estimating the Narcotic Effect of Public Sector Impasse Procedures

This paper first describes in a relatively nontechnical fashion several econometric techniques that the authors believe should be useful to industrial relations researchers. Those techniques are then applied to an analysis of whether public sector impasse procedures create a narcotic effect, that is, a tendency for the bargaining parties, once they use the procedures, to become increasingly reliant on them in future negotiations. The authors reanalyze data from Thomas Kochan and Joan Baderschneider’s study of the impasse experience of police and firefighters under New York State’s Taylor Law during the 1968-76 period and find that while a narcotic effect did exist, as Kochan and Baderschneider argued, that relationship lasted only during the early years of the period and was actually reversed in later years. The authors conclude by explaining how such a pattern of results could occur, tracing the implications of their findings for public policy, and suggesting; other research questions that could be analyzed by the econometric methods they have described. (A comment by Kochan and Baderschneider follows this article.

A Posttermination Ribosomal Complex Is the Guanine Nucleotide Exchange Factor for Peptide Release Factor RF3

AbstractThe mechanism by which peptide release factor RF3 recycles RF1 and RF2 has been clarified and incorporated in a complete scheme for translation termination. Free RF3 is in vivo stably bound to GDP, and ribosomes in complex with RF1 or RF2 act as guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEF). Hydrolysis of peptidyl-tRNA by RF1 or RF2 allows GTP binding to RF3 on the ribosome. This induces an RF3 conformation with high affinity for ribosomes and leads to rapid dissociation of RF1 or RF2. Dissociation of RF3 from the ribosome requires GTP hydrolysis. Our data suggest that RF3 and its eukaryotic counterpart, eRF3, have mechanistic principles in common

Merit Pay for School Superintendents?

Given the important role that school district administrators play in the educational process, one might expect their \u27performance to be of fundamental importance in determining both how much students learn and the cost of public education to taxpayers. Yet, while public debate has considered the issue of merit pay plans for teachers, virtually no attention has been directed to the methods by which school administrators are compensated. This paper provides evidence on whether school superintendents are explicitly or implicitly rewarded for their performance by higher compensation and/or greater opportunities for mobility. We analyze panel data from over 700 school districts in New York State during the 1978-79 to 1982-83 period. Measures of performance are defined and then entered into salary level, salary change, and mobility equations. While evidence is provided that school superintendents are rewarded for performance , the magnitude of the rewards appear to be quite small

On the Molecular and Submolecular Structure of the Semiquinone Cations of Alloxazines and Isoalloxazines as Revealed by Electron-Paramagnetic-Resonance Spectroscopy

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66144/1/j.1432-1033.1981.tb05295.x.pd