Or newer teachers are educating students with an easier, dumbed-down curriculum.

There is another possible reason that is often overlooked: veteran teachers are not interested in "teaching to the test" and know that there is a lot more to education than a test score. In my state, there is no test in my discipline so I am required to spend a lot of class time prepping my students for the reading and writing tests.

Or perhaps the new hires are focused on teaching for higher test scores. Not necessarily
the best education.

Apparently you never grasped the concept of a standardized test.

So let's see...is this how it goes? 1) teaching the the test is wrong, 2) Teachers have used tests as the top way to measure a student's learning, for hundreds of years, and 3) we are going to use SAT test scores as the key indicator for who to admit into college. Interesting........

I for one have never understood the issue with "teaching to the test"..... The issue most teachers have with the idea of standardized tests isn't that they are used to evaluate student performance. That's been done forever. The issue is that it's now being used to evaluate TEACHER performance. And no one wants to actually be measured on their performance.

If only Airlines would do same.

I know a teacher in Indiana who isn't allowed by her principal to teach spelling or writing. Why? Because they aren't covered on the tests. And I've seen some of these "tests." Ugh. Who would want to teach to those things? Everyone is assuming these tests are useful. I'm so glad that I sent my son to private school instead.

Teaching to the test shouldn't be a problem if the test is a good one - i.e. covering the material a student is expected to learn. A lousy test is like the parallel parking driving test. How many people have you ever heard of who were killed because they didn't know how to parallel park? If the test is bad, the educators should fix it, not gripe about teaching to it.

I am not understanding all the hub-bub about teaching to the test. I just turned 50, so I am not a new guy on the block. I distinctly remember that several of my high school classes had lessons or experiments that were very relevent to the ACT test material. Coincidence? I think not. I learned the lesson, and then I showed that on the ACT test. Amazing how that works. However, today it appears that the argument should be "don't worry about the low scores on standardized testing; we are really teaching them better, but it can't be measured to prove it."

Correlation does not imply causation..

The research is no surprise to me. I went to Catholic elementary school and a Chicago Public H.S. The difference was night and day. The Catholic School had no tenure system, and we were a grade level ahead of the public school down the street. The public high school, with a tenure system, was a collection of past their prime teachers more interested in punching a clock then teaching students. My advanced placement history teacher showed videos most days as he snoozed in the back of the room. One of my English teachers played R&B albums about every other day in class. What this had to do with English, I'm still trying to decipher. We had an assortment of other malcontent teachers who only got motivated when it was time to go on strike for "well deserved pay and benefit raises". Thank God I was relatively self-motivated and graduated from CPS not too far behind my friends in Catholic High School. I realized the error of my ways and enrolled in a Jesuit College with another fine group of motivated teachers.

"Teach to the test?" Why the hack not? Y'know -- do math and English correctly and accurately? What's wrong with that?

The Public Education (Unions) Monopoly is filled with whiners. Vouchers -- free the children.

Dave is right, a good test is a great way to find out if kids are learning the material that should be covered. Tests that are designed to test only the bare minimum of achievement are a waste of time. When I was in school, the schools used the IOWA test that ranked students across the country and the schools as well. It seemed like an accurate assessment of both.

Teachers in some districts face steep cliffs in their retirement benefits if they don't make it to a target number of years. If you were going to receive 100% of your retirement benefits after 25 years, but 0% after 24.5 years, what would you do? These draconian rules likely keep a lot of perhaps burnt out or otherwise disinterested teachers locked in place, with students suffering the consequences. They are also the best justification teachers unions have for rules that make it all but impossible to fire teachers -- with compensation so heavily backend loaded, districts would otherwise have a huge financial temptation to let a lot of teachers go in year n-1 to avoid having to pay out.

This study may be highlighting the benefits of removing an artificial barrier to teacher mobility to second careers or early retirement. It'd be better for everyone if teachers earned their retirement benefits year by year, not all in a huge lump sum.

Note that the WSJ wants better education to not cost the taxpayers anything extra....

Last year, it was reported that Arnie Duncan stated that there was no evidence that teachers with advanced degrees aided the majority of students. His goal was to do away with pay differential for advanced degrees and teacher tenure. This early retirement program is a way for school districts to get around both teacher tenure and the pay differential.

The program has nothing to do with testing, the program has to do with hiring more younger, cheaper teachers to fund the all day pre-school programs, aimed at starting kids in full time public school at age 3 or 4. The idea is to still provide 12 years of schooling, by making grades 11 and 12 optional. Some states have already moved in this direction in some districts.

Great - Rather than holding teachers accountable for performance, we reward them. Hard to understand what is so perplexing about improving education. It all starts with the teacher and we need to stop protecting the poor performers.

Could it be that experienced teachers were more interested teaching critical thinking then the test?

Over recent years test scores have gone up, but when compared to other leading nations we seem to be losing ground.

Hank, study after study shows that total U.S. education spending on a per high school student basis is among the highest in the world. Parents, voters, and homeowners all tend to value education and wallets are open appropriately. The problem is not in the total amount spent, but in the results achieved, which as we all know are basically dismal. We're spending the money, just not wisely.

Younger teachers are simply filling student's heads with Common Core garbage to pass the tests.....or maybe they're actively helping them cheat. I would put my money on that, especially in the school districts that are giving teachers bonuses based on student scores.

Everyone wins, the statistics look great, the politicians have something to bring the voters. The education consultants collect their fees. Except the students, who have a useless education......well when have they ever been first?

"The results were unexpected, as previous literature has shown that teacher experience correlates with student achievement."

Really? Unexpected? By whom? And I would be willing to bet that the "previous literature" was created and supported by teacher's unions. Of course, we aren't given any details.

@Ed ("Or newer teachers are educating students with an easier, dumbed-down curriculum."): wouldn't this bring down the scores? You're obviously a product of an "experienced" teacher..you and your ilk are the reason the US rank internationally is always so low.

In response to:
"4:57 pm August 19, 2013
Anonymous wrote :
.Younger teachers are simply filling student’s heads with Common Core garbage to pass the tests... ...t the students, who have a useless education…"

Really? And didn't the students already have a useless education by the older teachers who weren't (by your claim) filling their head with CC and passing the tests? Seems that for every new study that points to a new way to increase education, opponents bash it as so much cheating and manipulation. While completely ignoring the ante situation that the education was useless, is useless, and will probably STILL be useless whether the new way is adopted or not.
Education will ALWAYS be useless as long as these three things exist:
1. public sector unions;
2. left-wing hegemony overtexts and curriculum;
3. Families who 'check-out' of their kids' education and leave it completely to the schools (read: leftys and unions).

If parents insist on not being education partners and active in their kids' education, they cannot expect lefty unionists to provide a good education.

According to the Department of Education, the average 2011 secondary teacher's salary in the U.S. was $56,069. According to the CIA World Factbook, the 2011 per capita income in the U.S. was $50,000. In other words, on average, we pay teachers approximately the same as the national per capita income.

According to the OECD, the average 2011 secondary teacher's salary in Germany was $79,088. According to the CIA World Factbook, the 2011 per capita income in Germany was $39,400. So, Germans pay their teachers twice the national per capita income and the U.S. pays teachers approximately the same as the national per capita income.

Perhaps, we're not paying our teachers enough to attract the best talent. In addition, do standardized tests effectively measure student learning? Do we use standardized tests to measure the effectiveness of Wall Street traders or congressmen?

RE:old vs. young teachers. On average, I felt my older high school teachers were better in the mid-1960s. Of course, at that time, career women could be teachers or nurses and not much else.

My guesstimate is that the best most capable teachers -- the really dedicated educators -- stayed on the job because they are dedicated to providing education, and those at or near the bottom of the barrel in terms of ability and pride/satisfaction in their work were more likely to take the money and run.

A similar effect can be obtained by rating teachers on performance as educators, and culling the bottom of the barrel. Keep the ones that are performing well, and replace those who are not with new teachers that may do better (due to youth, enthusiasm, and willingness to work if nothing else).

Rokidtoo, there's a few problems with looking at just the average teacher's salary:

1. Generous retirement benefits are a very significant portion of a US teacher's total lifetime compensation, but don't show up at all in your average salary number. This highly backend-loaded structure is unfortunate because a) it makes it hard to recruit great new teachers when starting salaries look so low (what 22 year old new grad is thinking about retirement benefits?); and b) it is unfair to teachers who work hard for say 10-15 years then want to do something else.

2. Taxpayers pay for a lot more than just annual salary. I mentioned retirement benefits above, and then there's the 3 month summer vacation most teachers get. Moving past teachers though, there's significant costs that don't go towards teachers at all, such as multiple layers of administration: ie district, county, state, and federal departments of education, all expensive, and all on top of local administration. Perhaps this is where some of the worst inefficiencies lie?

In the end I think its all true -- the taxpayers are paying a lot, the teachers are not getting enough of what the taxpayers are paying (and certainly not in the form of straight salary), and the students are getting a lot less education than was paid for.

Getting rid of the older workers and obtaining better performance and results with the resulting younger work force is a company saving performance improving technique that has been used private sector for at least 6 decades. Some people know it as downsizing. The results would be amazing if we could do some serious downsizing of the Federal Government.

As a 14-year teacher in Taiwan,I think that this it was a large study costing much money but didn't work well.
I think that those researchers did neglect a key confounding variable,attitude of teacher or they had a bias view in this study.
Although they maybe had large samples and took pretests and posttests to compare the results and got a supporting evidence .
I think those subjects they picked were merely the elder who were really senior enough to retire but they ignored those teachers who are experienced and still passionate ,for instance ,10-15 or 15-20 year teachers.

It is not really easy to be a good enough (just good enough) teacher who requires experience,energy,knowledge,patient...
Besides this ,education is not just teaching to get high scores in test or not merely including Math and English.
It is easy to measure teaching effects with quantitative research approach ,such as standardlized tests, but it is always hard to measure education achievement which cost more time and more money .

That is why education is hundred years of great project.

Even though ,this research indicated an imortant fact coming soon in Taiwan .
The lowest birth rate on earth and the fastest ageing society
after Japan bring serious impacts on education.
There will be fewer students and more older teachers in school.
It also accompanying with the heavy loading of gorvenment finance.
It is a vicious circle that more elder teachers lack of passion and energy but fewer teaching jobs for the younger teachers.

There will be fewer generation shifts in our school.
Maybe We will see more and more grand pa teachers teaching
in the classrooms without enough energy to lead thier classes which having spoiled children with spoon-feeding parents.

All in all , education is not just teaching and Taiwan education system must think what is coming soon and how to face ,how to solve it .
We won't hope see a collapsed primary or high educatin system.

Education is the root of country .

With 22 years in the field, three advanced degrees, and the top scores in my public high school, I may not fit the biased model so many opinions bemoan on this page. Here are a few of my observations:
It's harder than ever to get students to achieve, when they come from more broken homes with fewer books and less parental oversight. Many lower achieving students revel in their bad ass reputations with their peers, and could indeed do better. Sometimes I can motivate them, sometimes I can't (and I have graduate degrees in psychology, in addition to others).
Tenure protects teachers from the revolving door of inept, vindictive, unbalanced administrators, who annually switch up the emphases upon which they evaluate classroom performance. I'll grant you, as in any profession, some teachers are retired on the job. We should definitely weed them out, but not because administrator X simply doesn't like them Student evaluations need to become part of the mix. It's the piece of the equation that all the bosses purposely ignore, for students may contradict politically motivated administrators. I once received a letter of reprimand for involving parents in a budget crisis conversation, emailing hundreds of them to attend board meetings, get the facts, and apply pressure as they saw fit. One of my electives was canceled the next year, and not because of declining enrollment. I had 44 kids in that class (one section).
So many who hate teachers need to be become better informed, and not by the opinions of FOX/CNN or any other television talking heads. Convene some meetings to get students' opinions about who really does the job for them, and take it from there. Even "hard" teachers will get good reviews. I'm one of them, and I'm proud of it.

I find this study a little suspect. I am a veteran teacher who gives the profession her all. I work hours longer than the defined day and am always revising how I teach. I have already incorporated the Common Core Standards into next year's lessons even though that is not required until next year. It may be true that there are a few teachers who NEED to retire because they have quit trying, but this study seems to suggest that experience is not important. Why do you think so many young teachers leave the profession in the first five years? Because the job is damned hard, that is why! Experienced teachers are vital in any school as they form the backbone of the school. They know the curriculum, they know how to discipline, and they can work through the politics of the school.

I find this study a little suspect. I am a veteran teacher who gives the profession her all. I work hours longer than the defined day and am always revising how I teach. I have already incorporated the Common Core Standards into this year's lessons even though that is not required until next year. It may be true that there are a few teachers who NEED to retire because they have quit trying, but this study seems to suggest that experience is not important. Why do you think so many young teachers leave the profession in the first five years? Because the job is damned hard, that is why! Experienced teachers are vital in any school as they form the backbone of the school. They know the curriculum, they know how to discipline, and they can work through the politics of the school.

Shame on this blogger for presenting a working paper that was neither approved by the nor peer reviewed nor even approved by the NBER Board of Directors. The paper itself clearly states:

"NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-
reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official
NBER publications"

The blogger clearly has forgotten Stats 201 where we learn 'a mere correlation does not imply causation'.

The savings in salaries are offset by the fact the additional bodies are added to the health plan and the pension system has to start making more payouts. The savings are artificial if you don't fully fund your pension system and you don't count additional health costs. It could be that some retiring teachers didn't take the tests too seriously as they saw them as defective and demotivating for students. Some experienced teachers are over the hill and some were never on the hill so many variables are commingled and impossible to separate.

The paper this links to is about air pollution and infant health. Cite your sources WSJ.

Any parents with kids in public schools finds this to be totally believable.