School finance reform: Do equalized expenditures imply equalized teacher salaries?

Meg Streams, J. S. Butler, Joshua Cowen, Jacob Fowles, Eugenia F. Toma

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

Kentucky is a poor, relatively rural state that contrasts greatly with the relatively urban and wealthy states typically the subject of education studies employing largescale administrative data. For this reason, Kentucky's experience of major school finance and curricular reform is highly salient for understanding teacher labor market dynamics. This study examines the time path of teacher salaries in Appalachian and non-Appalachian Kentucky using a novel teacher-level administrative data set. Our results suggest that the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) provided a salary boost for all Appalachian teachers, resulting in a wage premium for teachers of low and medium experience and equalizing pay across Appalachian and non-Appalachian districts for teachers of high experience. However, we find that Appalachian salaries fell back to the level of non-Appalachian teachers roughly a decade following reform, at which point the pre-KERA remuneration patterns re-emerge.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)508-536
Number of pages29
JournalEducation Finance and Policy
Volume6
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2011

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education

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