Vanderbilt Press Release

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Researchers at Vanderbilt University’s new National Center on Performance Incentives have been awarded a contract from the Texas Education Agency to evaluate that state’s educator incentive program, which offers financial awards to teachers, principals, and other staff members that show a positive impact on student achievement. The $380,000 contract will fund a three-year study of the program.

“The signature activity of our evaluation will be analyses of performance-based pay programs at approximately 100 Texas schools and their impact on student achievement; teacher turnover, mobility and quality; and teacher behavior and institutional and organizational dynamics,” Matthew Springer, principal investigator on the new grant and director of the National Center on Performance Incentives, said.

The Texas Governor’s Educator Excellence Award Program is a performance-based pay program funded at $10 million annually aimed at improving teaching and student achievement. Core partners in the evaluation include researchers at the University of Missouri, Texas A&M University, and Corporation for Public School Education K-16.

The National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development was created with a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education in the spring of 2006. In addition to the Texas project, the center is conducting an experiment in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools to determine the impact, if any, of financial incentives for teachers on student performance.

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