59 is the new 30, unless you are a teacher

Thomas Friedman wrote of golfer Tom Watson's run at this year's British Open, "Watson makes us feel like 59 is the new 30." I read this inspiring piece about Watson's near victory over the world's greatest golfers, many of whom are half his age, while travelling back from a truly depressing - but incredibly important - conference innocuously titled "Educator Staffing, Quality, and Teacher Retirement Benefit Systems." The conference, the brainchild of economists Mike Podgursky and Bob Costrell , was sponsored by the Southwest Regional Education Laboratory Regional Education Laboratory - Southwest and examined how teacher retirement systems might be used to improve educator retention and recruitment.

Costrell captured the perverse incentives facing teacher pension systems with his slide that showed:

• Pension "spike" "pulls" some teachers to stay on the job into their 50s, to receive enhanced benefits (an incentive to "put in your time").
• Pension "valley" (or "cliff") "pushes" some teachers out, by mid to late 50s (Tom Watson's age) to begin first draw (losing pension payments by staying on the job).

Tom Carroll , President of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, took this issue further, noting that 53 percent of teachers in America are baby boomers and we face a "tsunami of teacher retirements" in the next five years. It is damaging to America's students and age discriminatory, he argues, that states are encouraging waves of relatively young teachers out of the profession. He shared data from the U.S. Department of Education's "Schools and Staffing Survey" that showed 70 percent of these veteran teachers wanting to continue working in education, but they are going to leave the profession because it is economically punitive for them to stay in it beyond state-mandated retirement ages (averaging around 54 to 57).

Carroll argues for a new model of school staffing called "Cross-Generational Learning Teams" that would partner experienced teachers with new teachers in a way that would retain novice teachers in the profession (currently, half of new teachers leave within five years of entering the classroom), while also keeping veteran teachers from retiring when they still have a lot to offer.

This is not just a good idea in terms of improving teacher quality, but may very well be an economic imperative if states are to keep from going broke. State Teacher Pension Systems (Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff referred to them as "Teacher Retirement Ponzi Schemes") are facing fiscal implosion across the country. Pennsylvania, for example, is facing a catastrophe. Janet Hansen, Director of the Committee for Economic Development , highlighted the fiscal pain Pennsylvania school districts will face in coming years because of ballooning teacher pension obligations:

As 59-year-old Tom Watson showed the world, we need to re-conceptualize how we view age and retirement. This is certainly true in public education, and it is critical for coming up with creative ways to redesign teacher retirement systems for the realities of life and work in the 21^st century? This is not only an economic necessity but is also a key to improving the quality of instruction delivered to America's children.