The Merits of Merit Pay
Does paying teachers based on how well their students perform lead to better teaching?
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There’s no shortage of polarizing issues when it comes to education, but few topics can get a person’s hackles up faster than merit pay for teachers.
Performance-incentive programs that tie teacher pay to student achievement have been tested in public schools around the nation for several years. All of the major studies on performance pay have focused only on the motivational impact of incentives, says UT researcher Elizabeth Barkowski.
In other words, the assumption has been that monetary awards will both motivate teachers to improve student achievement and also attract and retain teachers more effective at doing so. This same assumption has informed the design and evaluation of incentive programs, the theory being that a teacher’s behavior can and will change when they stand to make more money.
Barkowski’s review of past research reveals no significant or meaningful improvements from the use of performance pay. Simply dangling more money in front of teachers doesn’t make them better teachers. That doesn’t mean linking pay to performance can’t work, she says. It just needs to be done more strategically.
The current statewide initiative implemented in Texas incorporates not only performance pay, but also other components that support teachers in raising student performance. “You’ll see this new approach termed ‘strategic compensation,’” Barkowski says, “because, ideally, it aligns district programs, classroom instruction, and compensation systems with the goals of increasing teacher quality and maximizing student achievement.”
One feature of many strategic compensation programs is additional pay for teachers in needy schools and subjects. Districts are allowed to examine their own local market and determine financial incentives for hard-to-fill positions, such as math, science, and special education, or for high-need schools. Incentives can include student-loan forgiveness, housing allowances, or stipends for earning specialized certifications.
Barkowski is currently assessing the impact of one Texas school district’s strategic-compensation program. The program, which has been in effect for three years, incorporates a combination of strategies to recruit, develop, and retain highly effective teachers.
“There’s some urgency to getting research-based answers soon about what compensation strategies work, in what kinds of schools and with what student populations,” Barkowski says. “It’s reasonable to say that the solution won’t be as simple as offering more money for producing better-performing students and then finding that suddenly scores of top Ivy League students will want to become teachers. There are excellent, highly effective teachers in classrooms right now, and we need to establish what will keep them in the field and help them realize their full potential as education professionals in a variety of school contexts.”
Read about a new UT-based project to study teacher incentives here.