Initiatives are underway in states and school districts across the nation to offer teachers incentives to improve their performance and by extension, to improve student success. But while millions of dollars are flowing to these projects, a fundamental question remains unanswered: do they work?

Answering that question was the aim of over 300 education researchers, teachers, policymakers, students, and journalists at a national conference Feb. 28 and 29 hosted by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University.

“We have spent decades debating this issue without learning very much empirically,” Matthew Springer, the center’s director, said. “The purpose of this conference was to not only help policymakers interested in pay for performance recognize its potential strengths as well as weaknesses, but also address many of the key conceptual and implementation issues that have dominated the debate.”

Due to the intense national interest in this topic, competition for seats at the conference was keen. Originally intended for 100 people at the Wyatt Center, the conference was moved to the Marriott at Vanderbilt to accomodate an additional 200. Even with this extra space, dozens of individuals wishing to register had to be turned away.

A priority of many attendees, including the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, which is the center’s sponsor, is to ensure that education policy as rewarding teachers for performance is built upon proven strategies.

“Attendance at this conference is an indicator of the interest in pay for performance policies to shape teacher performance. We know that policy doesn’t wait for research, policy is made,” Russ Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences, said. “The transformation in education that we will see over the next 25 to 50 years will be tremendous if whenever possible policy initiatives take place in a context where data can be collected to determine if they are working and for whom. We believe Vanderbilt’s Peabody College is the preeminent college of education for many of the research questions in which we are interested.”

A final compilation of the papers presented at the conference will be published later this year. Drafts of the papers can be read on the center’s website.

Contact: Melanie Moran, (615) 322-NEWS
melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu