This concurrent, mixed-methods case study explores faculty valuation of economic and social rewards after participating in at least one of four educational development programs offered by our Center of Teaching and Learning (CTL) at a large, public, R1 institution. We wanted to know if the effectiveness of such programs might vary depending on the…

The inequitable distribution of principal effectiveness raises concern among policymakers. Principal sorting likely contributes to wider achievement and opportunity gaps between low- and high-need schools. As a possible policy tool, policymakers proposed performance-based compensation systems (PBCS). Tennessee was one of the states that supported…

This study is the first statewide analysis of the effectiveness of the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) program. Introduced in 2019, TIA is the most significant and unprecedented teacher merit-pay system in the U.S. Leveraging the Synthetic Control Method (SCM), we construct a counterfactual scenario to assess the causal impact of TIA on…

This article draws on recent insight regarding the distribution and mobility of highly effective teachers, student access to top-performing educators, and research on the effectiveness of strategic compensation reforms to argue that the single-salary pay schedule has resulted in disturbing inequities for students and inefficiencies in resource…

Private, Christian schools are in a position to be creative with their teacher compensation practices as it relates to the use of merit pay. However, there is a debate within the literature regarding the effectiveness of merit pay in schools, generally, as well as how to best structure such a plan. This study aims to understand how a subset of…

Theory suggests that strategic compensation can not only serve as a powerful motivational incentive to increase worker performance, but also improve the composition of the workforce through the attraction and retention of high performers and discouragement of lesser performers from entering or staying in the profession. This study tests the…

This paper examines how teacher opinions towards performance pay policies change when participating in a performance pay program. We use data from an RCT of 220 6th grade math teachers in 193 schools in rural China, where teachers were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups or the control group. We find that participation in the…

Salaries are one of the most powerful policy levers states and school districts can use to attract qualified, effective, and diverse teachers. What role do states play in supporting strategic use of salaries? This report examines the state teacher compensation policies that influence districts' potential strategic use of teacher pay. It analyzes…

Compensation of most US public school teachers is rigid and solely based on seniority. This paper studies the labor market effects of a reform that gave school districts in Wisconsin full autonomy to redesign teacher pay schemes. Following the reform, some districts switched to flexible compensation and started paying high-quality teachers more.…

Teachers are at the heart of the education process; in attempts to improve teacher quality there has been a trend in the US and elsewhere to incentivize teachers to put in more effort. This paper presents a theoretical framework for analyzing and designing different incentive schemes informed by the structure and quality of tasks constituting the…

A small number of districts in Ohio from a variety of locales have adopted merit pay provisions. Using Springer's (2009) taxonomy of teacher compensation, we analyzed compensation provisions of these districts. We asked: What are the characteristics of these districts? What criteria are used to determine merit? Who is determining who receives…

Schools in rural communities face many challenges in retaining effective teachers, many of which are beyond school leaders' control: need for educators to serve multiple roles, lower teacher salaries, and large percentages of students from low-income backgrounds. However, cultivating a school culture where teachers are supported to be effective…

Having a more effective teacher or principal can substantially improve students' academic outcomes. The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) program, established in 2006, provided competitive grants to help states and districts implement a multi-strategy approach to enhancing educator effectiveness. TIF grantees were required to measure educator…

This study examined the effects of strategic teacher compensation on the retention of teachers in a voluntary participation plan, especially the participation of hard-to-staff special education, high school mathematics, high school science, and high school language teachers. The first research question conducted a one-way chi-square analysis to…

We study a teacher incentive policy in Washington State that awards a financial bonus to National Board certified teachers in high poverty schools. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the bonus policy increased the proportion of certified teachers in bonus-eligible schools by improving hiring, increasing certification rates of…