Tag Archives: West Virginia

To Address Their Teacher Pension Problems, States Need to Better Understand West Virginia’s History of Reform

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Despite its relatively small size, the state of West Virginia has had a significant influence on national politics. Take for example West Virginia’s educators, whose two-week strike in 2018 sparked similar protests across the country.

Yet, stagnant salaries are not the only financial problem facing teachers and states: there is a growing teacher pension crisis.

Here again, West Virginia is at the center of the debate. The state reformed its pension plan in the early 1990s, but by 2005, reverted back to the statewide pension system. The West Virginia experiment is now frequently cited as a cautionary tale when other states attempt to refashion their teacher retirement systems. Critics argue that pension reform simply doesn’t work.

However, that reading of West Virginia’s pension reform is incomplete and based on commonly held myths about pensions and alternative retirement plans. Continue reading →

Media: “West Virginia shows states how not to reform teacher pensions” in GOVERNING magazine

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I have an opinion piece out today in GOVERNING magazine. Despite the insistence that West Virginia’s pension experience proves reform can’t work, a closer analysis actually reveals how the state’s missteps can be instructive for other states looking to address their own teacher pension problems:

…the limited success of the state’s DC plan wasn’t the result of an innate shortcoming of DC plans in general. Rather, the state’s design choices undermined the ability of the plan to provide a sufficient benefit to most teachers. Indeed, both plans were designed in such a way that at least 40 percent of teachers never qualified for any retirement benefits from the state at all.

Read the full op-ed here. And check out our new report on teacher pension reform in West Virginia here.