NCPI’s director, Matthew Springer, provides insight on the history and current status of performance pay as a teacher compensation reform. As Richmond County (Georgia) mulls the merits of aligning teacher pay more closely with measures of performance, Dr. Springer discusses the importance of sound policy considering the relative newness of performance pay in the field of education. An experiment on the impact of teacher performance pay in progress by NCPI should provide further insight about the merits of such policy innovation in the near future.