Education Economics Commons^™

Teacher Turnover And Teacher Retirement, Dillon Fuchsman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Teachers have an important impact on students in the short- and long-term, but only teachers’ experience consistently predicts high teacher quality. This dissertation, divided into three chapters, investigates two topics that are related to teachers’ experience levels: turnover and retirement.

The first chapter studies the relationship between voluntary beginning teacher turnover and teachers’ levels of conscientiousness. It uses the data from the Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study and the effort that teachers put on a survey taken during their first year in the profession as a proxy for teachers’ levels of conscientiousness. The results of this chapter indicate that teachers putting …

To And Through College: Investigating Attitudes Towards, Enrollment In, And Graduation From College, Elise Swanson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Postsecondary access and degree completion are increasingly important concerns for individuals and policymakers. This dissertation presents evidence on three distinct strategies for increasing students’ level of preparedness for higher education, rates of postsecondary enrollment, and rates of postsecondary degree completion. The first is an intervention aimed at increasing eighth-grade students’ familiarity with college life. Results from an experimental study indicate that students assigned to participate in campus visits demonstrate higher levels of knowledge about college, are more likely to have conversations with school personnel about college, put forth higher levels of effort while completing a college-related survey, and express a …

Economic Literacy: Measuring The Economic Human Capital Of Arkansas K-12 Teachers, June Marie Freund

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Economic literacy is recognized as a deficit quality in the United States, no more prevalent than during the last great recession. It is paramount the K-12 educational system lead the movement to educate the public on economic content and issues, as it is the one institution that has direct contact with all citizens. The question then must be asked, how economic literate are teachers entrusted with the responsibility of imparting economic knowledge to his/her K-12 grade level student. A sample of Arkansas teachers at each grade level K – 12 were tested using national normed economic literacy tests designed to …