Check out our (w/ Roy McKenzie & @gzamarro.bsky.social ) recent blog post on Arkansas teacher retention! We're working to create interactive visuals to help tell the story at the local level. We'd love to hear what you think! oep.uark.edu/2024-25-arka...

I'm honored and super excited to be moving into the UofA Ed Reform Endowed Chair in Education Accountability and Transparency as a tenured associate prof in August.

We also provide evidence that in the presence of bright-line eligibility thresholds that can anchor workers’ separation behavior, commonly used structural models may overpredict workers’ responsiveness to the financial incentives embedded in retirement plans.

Despite facing very diff financial incentives, teachers enrolled in TRS2 and TRS3 respond similarly when reaching a key retirement eligibility threshold. We think that teachers are likely anchoring to the eligibility thresholds, muting the influence of the financial incentives.

In 1996, WA introduced a hybrid ret plan (TRS3) that reduced the value of the traditional pension and added a 401k-like component. The new plan smoothed the usual late-career jumps in pension wealth but left retirement eligibility age and service the same as the old plan (TRS2).