Nashville, TN. – September 10, 2007 – Teachers in U.S. public schools are almost universally paid according to rigid salary schedules based on years of experience and education coursework or degrees. In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in performance-based pay for K-12 teachers among some states and school districts. An article in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management examines the economic case for these programs.

The article contains an overview by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University (NCPI) of six large-scale performance-related pay programs currently in operation or about to be launched in U.S. schools. Included are pioneering programs in several states, as well as the United States Department of Education’s $500 million Teacher Incentive Fund.

“There are some well known problems in the use of performance-related pay programs in any organizational context, however we are not persuaded that these are any more severe in K-12 education,” says Michael Podgursky, lead author of the study and Professor of Economics at University of Missouri – Columbia, who suggests that, in the long run, a pay scheme tends to attract employees who prosper under it, as teachers are likely to do under such programs.

Critics claim that it is difficult to monitor teacher performance because individual incentives might damage teacher cooperation. The dangers of only evaluating teachers based on certain dimensions of their performance, which may lead to “teaching to the test,” and input-versus output-based pay systems are also discussed.

A major challenge for performance-based pay programs is deciding how to assess teachers. “The fact that most studies to date conclude that teacher graduate degrees – the most common educational credential – have a marginal effect at best on student achievement, reiterates that there is little empirical support for the current credential-based teacher compensation system,” says Podgursky. In response to fears that assessments of student achievement alone may reflect unfairly upon teachers, some researchers have stressed the value of supervisor assessments to pick up elements of teacher performance not captured by student test results. Researchers have found that promotions and awards based on principal evaluations are associated with higher classroom teacher effectiveness.

“The direct evaluation literature on incentive plans is slender,” says study co-author and NCPI Director Matthew Springer, adding that it is nonetheless “consistent in finding positive program effects.” Although it may not be robust enough to fully illustrate how performance-based pay programs for teachers should be designed, “it is sufficiently promising to support more extensive field trials and policy experiments in combination with careful follow-up evaluations.”

This study is published in Volume 26, Issue 4 of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

For a review of this research study, please see the September 12, 2007 issue of Education Week.
For a review of this research study published in Science Daily, click here.
For a review of this research study published by Kansas City InfoZine, click here.