K-12 Education

Our work on K-12 education issues includes research on a wide variety of topics. Topics include new teacher training, professional development, testing and accountability, teacher salaries, employee salaries and benefits, the physical conditions of schools, working conditions in urban schools, charter schools, reasons why teachers leave the profession, binding arbitration, collective bargaining, sexual harassment in schools, private school vouchers, consolidation of rural school districts, bonds, revenue, public school financing, and building public support for public schools and policies related to public education. We have polled on education issues in 35 states as well as nationally.

If you are interested in learning more about our research pertaining to K-12 education, please contact us. We would be happy to send it to you a booklet that describes all of our education projects over the past decade.

The following are some examples of our work that are publicly available.

Finality, Fairness, Stability: The Binding Arbitration Story
This report (PDF file) is based on statistical analysis of teacher salary data and town budgets that Abacus Associates conducted for the Connecticut Education Association. Our work helped to convince the Connecticut State Legislature that binding arbitration is a fair process that favors neither teachers nor the school district. After hearing testimony based on this data, the legislature abandoned attempts to weaken Connecticut's binding arbitration law.

Taking Back The Turnover Tide
This article (PDF file) is based on a survey conducted and report written by Abacus Associates for the New Jersey Education Association. We surveyed New Jersey public school teachers who had recently left the profession for reasons other than retirement. The goal of the survey was to identify the reasons teachers leave the profession and what could be done to convince them to continue to teach in public schools.