Excerpt: At a time when millions of baby-boomer teachers are nearing retirement, their decisions on when to leave the classroom are guided more by the early retirement incentives built into state pension plans than by educational considerations, according to new research by a pair of economists. Those pension formulas devised by state legislatures encourage teachers to retire in their mid-50s, while penalizing them for teaching longer than that, states an article appearing in the Winter 2008 issue of the magazine Education Next.  MORE >>