How Late-Career Raises Drive Teacher-Pension Debt. Rapid Response

Teacher salary decisions are often made with little connection to the pension obligations they entail. In this paper, authors Marguerite Roza and Jessica Jonovski model the impacts of late-term raises on teacher pension obligations showing that on average each dollar raise triggers $10 to $16 in new taxpayer obligations. The authors provide suggestions to mitigate such impacts while improving incentives for early and mid career teachers.