According to the Economic Policy Institute, the nation is short by more than 100-thousand teachers. And according to MEA data, one in five Michigan teachers quit in their first five years.
WLNS 6
February 21, 2020
Wage growth for workers in the United States economy has lagged over the past few decades. The Pew Research Center notes how, after inflation, today’s real average wage has the same purchasing power as it did four decades ago. For teachers, the wage situation is even more dire. Average weekly pay for public school teachers has actually decreased by $27 from 1996 to 2017, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Inside Big Data
February 21, 2020
Burroughs quoted findings from an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute that put the state at 48th on the list of most underpaid teachers—behind only Washington and Arizona. “In the last four years, the weekly pay of Virginia teachers has fallen 31 percent behind the pay of other college-educated workers in the state,” he wrote. Consequently, Burroughs continued, the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) found that “the turnover rate for Virginia K-12 educators is higher than 44 states and the District of Columbia.”
Truthdig
February 21, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute found that the percentage of schools that were working to fill a vacancy but couldn’t tripled from the 2011-12 to 2015-16 school years. During this same period, the percentage of schools that found it very difficult to fill a vacancy doubled. While some teachers are retiring, being promoted or leaving for personal reasons, dissatisfaction with teaching itself is unfortunately another cause of departures. For many years as an administrator, I fell into the trap of thinking I could fix the teacher retention problem from the top down. But as it turns out, education’s leaky bucket is fueled by a confluence of forces that can confound even the most discerning district leaders. Salary raises, benefits, professional development and even mentoring may not address other critical issues that are driving teachers away.
The 74 Million
February 21, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has assembled research from the last year that examines the impact of the administration’s policies on wages, manufacturing and trade, taxes, Labor standards, housing, and immigration.
St. Louis/Southern Illinois Labor Tribune
February 21, 2020
Also in 2017, a review from the Economic Policy Institute came to a similar conclusion, finding, “extensive research on educational vouchers in the United States over the past 25 years shows that gains in student achievement are at best small.”
Enid News & Eagle
February 21, 2020
A blog article posted by the union-funded Economic Policy Institute in August carried the title “It’s the beginning of the school year and teachers are once again opening up their wallets to buy school supplies.”
The article cited a federally funded survey of teachers that reported the average Michigan teacher spends $628 a year on school supplies and is not reimbursed for that expense. Only teachers in California claimed to have spent more ($664).
Michigan Capitol Confidential
February 21, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute has gone through one exercise along this line. How much income would middle class Americans be making today, EPI researchers asked, if the United States had the same distribution of income today as our nation had back at the end of the 1970s?
The Good Men Project
February 21, 2020
According to the independent, non-profit Economic Policy Institute, privatization of TVA would divide its electric power system into independent, and no longer accountable or coordinated, component parts. The new private owners of these assets would immediately raise electric power rates claiming there would be additional cost – yes, like profits and more managers. Right now, BPA and TVA sell power at cost. You can’t get better than that.
Forbes
February 21, 2020
Even when workers can afford to attempt a strategy of mass filings, they might find that firms that conduct arbitrations cannot readily supply hundreds or thousands of arbitrators at once. This means the Dashers might wait years for their cases to go forward, unless they reach a settlement with DoorDash first. (DoorDash sought to stay the case until it reaches a settlement in a separate class-action case, a request Alsup rejected.) A recent study by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimated that about 55 percent of non-union private-sector workers are subject to individual arbitration clauses. This translates to millions of employees who are required to resolve their workplace disputes in a system that lacks the infrastructure to do so.
The Washington Post
February 21, 2020