{"id":2686,"date":"2010-11-09T11:10:06","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T15:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=2686"},"modified":"2010-11-09T11:33:06","modified_gmt":"2010-11-09T15:33:06","slug":"the-pension-plan-research-i-dont-have-time-to-read-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=2686","title":{"rendered":"The pension-plan research I don’t have time to read right now…"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest Education Finance and Policy<\/a> issue is currently downloadable (apparently free of charge for the world for now) and all about teacher pensions. I am currently overloaded with prior commitments, so the chance of my reading this in a timely fashion is roughly nil. The questions I'll bring when I do read it:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Do the articles recognize that the condition of teacher pensions varies all over the map, or do they craft a one-size-fits-all description and solution? Some pension plans are seriously underfunded, but I'll be much more skeptical if the same arguments are used in different places regardless of the real conditions of actual pension funds. California, Illinois, and New Jersey have more serious problems than Florida, but I strongly suspect we'll see cookie-cutter rhetoric in all of those states. <\/li>\n
  2. Do the articles recognize the difference between short-term and long-term problems? Following a recent David Brooks panic-fest, Ezra Klein wrote a cogent and thoughtful blog entry<\/a> about the scope of pension-plan problems, relying for perspective on an October 2010 paper<\/a> from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. (That's another piece of writing I don't have time to read right now…) <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The best instant argument for pension-plan changes (and the one most likely to make sense to teachers) is the penalty imposed on teachers who move. Someone who teaches 32 years in one state is probably going to have a higher pension, all else being equal, than someone who teaches eight years each in four states. One of the reasons why I chose the defined-contribution plan when first hired at USF in 1996 was the uncertainty of academic employment for a tenure-track assistant professor. (I had one year when those in the defined-contribution plan could switch to the Florida Retirement System, with the option to pay cash for the difference in value. The year? 2008.) The problem with trying to address the mobility issue is that defined-benefit retirement systems are bounded by state. There are various ways to patch together a quasi-system that could address the problem, but it's a patch at best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The latest Education Finance and Policy issue is currently downloadable (apparently free of charge for the world for now) and all about teacher pensions. I am currently overloaded with prior commitments, so the chance of my reading this in a timely fashion is roughly nil. The questions I'll bring when I do read it: Do the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-Hk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2686"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2689,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions\/2689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}