To achieve the goal of attracting and retaining talented professionals in education, performance-based compensation systems (PBCS) must offer salaries that are both fair and sufficiently competitive at each point across an educator's career continuum. Although many states, especially with the support of the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grants,…

This article draws on research from outside of education to evaluate some common myths about performance pay and to consider future directions for designing and evaluating performance pay systems in K-12 education. The five common myths surrounding performance pay include: (1) Performance pay systems improve performance; (2) Performance pay…

The formula is simple: Highly effective teachers equal student academic success. Yet, the physics of American education is anything but. Thus, the question facing education reformers is how can teacher effectiveness be accurately measured in order to improve the teacher workforce? Given the demand for objective, quantitative measures of teacher…

In "The Politics of Teacher Pay Reforms"--a paper presented at the National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference in February--Dan Goldhaber, a research professor at the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington and an affiliated scholar with the Urban Institute's Education Policy…

In "Value-Added and Other Methods for Measuring School Performance: An Analysis of Performance Measurement Strategies in Teacher Incentive Fund Proposals"--a paper presented at the February 2008 National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference--Robert Meyer and Michael Christian examine select performance-pay plans…

In response to a growing dialogue at the local, state and national levels around the idea of restructuring teacher pay to include performance measures, the American Association of School Administrators surveyed a randomly selected sample of its members to gauge their feedback and interest in pay-for-performance programs. AASA launched this survey…

In "Teacher Incentives in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from India"--a paper presented at the National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference in February--Karthik Muralidharan (Harvard University) and Venkatesh Sundararaman (The World Bank) present findings from a randomized experiment conducted in…

In "Teacher Incentives in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Kenya"--a paper presented at the National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference in February--Paul Glewwe (University of Minnesota), Nauman Illias (The Brattle Group), and Michael Kremer (Harvard University) review findings from recent…

In "Characteristics and Determinants of Teacher-Designed Pay for Performance Plans: Evidence from Texas' Governor's Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) Program"--a paper presented at the February 2008 National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference--Lori Taylor, Matthew Springer, and Mark Ehlert describe the teacher…

Examines the necessary requirements for implementation of merit pay systems based on individual performance. These requirements include defining performance objectives for each position and paying higher salaries to better performers. (CT)

Merit pay is resisted by teacher unions yet the public and teachers favor merit advances. Merit pay can work if an employee's value is assessed unprejudicially. Board members and administrators can destroy plans through poor management and unjust programs. (MD)

Prior to implementation of a Merit Award Program for school district administrators, survey responses (102 of 122) and interviews with a sample of 15 administrators found low expectations and skepticism among potential awardees. Postprogram responses (96 of 122) found increased negative attitudes regarding the desirability of such an award and the…

In Tennessee, varied data-gathering devices have been employed in an attempt to determine whether an educator is qualified for a given level on the state's career ladder program and, thereby, should attain the meaningful financial benefits linked to that status. In its first year of operation, the Tennessee program employed several domains of…

This report examines three performance-based funding (PBF) plans: (1) merit pay for teachers and/or administrators; (2) career ladders; and (3) formula-driven incentive payments to schools. The report contends that present-day problems in public schools result largely from the organizational structure of the educational enterprise. Being based on…

This report evaluates existing merit pay plans and shows the components of successful plans and the reasons some plans fail. Critical determinants of successful plans are the evaluation system and equal treatment for all deserving teachers. (MD)