Attracting and Retaining Teachers in High-Need Schools: Do Financial Incentives Make Financial Sense?

This study synthesizes what we know and do not know about policies to attract and retain teachers in high-need schools and assesses the relative cost-effectiveness of two types of policies. Research consistently shows that teacher quality is likely to be lower in schools with higher proportions of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This pattern is likely a result of several factors but the most well-documented is teachers’ mobility choices within and across districts. Although there are numerous programs across the country intended to attract and retain highly-skilled teachers in high-need schools, there is very little assessment of their effectiveness. Given the lack of evidence on specific interventions, I use the results from existing studies of teacher mobility and attrition to compare the effect of salary incentives and induction or mentoring programs. Although financial incentives are arguably the most straightforward policies for states and districts to adopt, high-need schools may be better served if policymakers and researchers devoted more attention to more cost-effective alternatives.

Private Contributions and Public School Resources

In the wake of school finance reforms that limit local tax revenue and, more recently, state budget cuts that have threatened K-12 education spending, an increasing number of schools and school districts have appealed to parents and communities for voluntary contributions to augment school resources. Of course, not all schools benefit equally from these contributions leading to a common concern that voluntary contributions create inequities in school funding across communities. In this paper we examine the size and distribution of voluntary contributions to California’s K-12 public schools in 2001. In addition, we examine how contributions have affected the distribution of resources across schools. Our results indicate that while some schools have been quite successful in raising voluntary contributions, overall, contributions have not led to large inequities in the distribution of resources among high- and low-income schools. Specifically, schools raising particularly high levels of contributions, over $500 per pupil, do tend to have more resources, but these schools are rare and very small. Over ninety-nine percent of California elementary students attend schools where contributions have almost no effect on inputs.Voluntary Contributions, Public School Finance, School Resources

Idiosyncratic Risk and Expected Returns in REITs

The Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) argues that all unsystematic risk can be diversified away thus there should be no relationship between idiosyncratic risk and return. Ooi, Wang and Webb (2009) employ the Fama-French (1993) three-factor model (FF3) to estimate the level of nonsystematic return volatility in REITs as a proxy for idiosyncratic risk. They find a significant positive relationship between expected returns and conditionally estimated idiosyncratic risk contrary to the MPT. In this research, I examine other potential sources of systematic risk in REITs which may explain the seeming violation of the MPT found by Ooi et al (2009). I re-examine the proportion of idiosyncratic risk in REITs with Carhart’s (1997) momentum factor, which is largely applied on the FF3 to control for the persistency of stock returns as supplemental risk in the finance literature. Next, I conduct cross-sectional regression and test the significance of the relationship between idiosyncratic risk and expected returns. I further analyze the role of property sector on idiosyncratic risk as well as on its relationship with expected returns. I argue three conclusions. First, momentum has a relatively minor effect on the idiosyncratic risk consistent with the financial literature. Second, the effect of momentum is not strong enough to cause a significant change in the relationship between idiosyncratic risk and expected returns. Third, a REIT portfolio diversified across property sectors neutralizes the relationship between idiosyncratic risk and expected returns, though the contribution of each property sector is not statistically significant

The Daily Tulean Dispatch, October 5, 1942

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The Daily Tulean Dispatch, October 22, 1942

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The Daily Tulean Dispatch, November 2, 1942

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The Daily Tulean Dispatch, December 15, 1942

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The Daily Tulean Dispatch, December 5, 1942

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The Daily Tulean Dispatch, December 11, 1942

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The Daily Tulean Dispatch, December 15, 1942

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