The National Center on Performance Incentives has been deemed one of Peabody’s “Seven Great Ideas” in an article of the winter 2010 issue of the Peabody Reflector. The article celebrates the 225th anniversary of Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of education and human development – and recognizes the evolution of education research at the institution including seven key innovations that continue to make a lasting impression on the field of education.

NCPI was highlighted for its rigorous research related to teacher compensation and pioneering the nation’s first randomized experiments to study the impact of incentive pay for educators. One such experiment was the recently completed Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT) (click here to learn more about POINT). “We tested the most basic and fundamental question related to performance incentives – Does bonus pay alone improve student outcomes? – and we found that it does not,” explains Matt Springer, director of NCPI and assistant professor of public policy and education at Peabody. From these findings, NCPI encourages the research and policy communities to “raise the level of debate” and “test more nuanced solutions” for compensating effective educators. NCPI continues to pursue these objectives with ongoing research and evaluation of various types of incentive pay programs across the country, including those in Texas and New York City, among others.

NCPI shared the honor of being named a “great idea” with other notable Peabody innovations, including Knapp Farm, Lloyd Dunn and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Susan Gray and Head Start, READ 180, The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury, and Responsiveness to Intervention.

To read a copy of ”Seven Great Ideas” or other articles featured in the Peabody Reflector’s winter 2010 issue, click here. The Peabody Reflector is published biannually by Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of education and human development.