Performance Incentives: Their Growing Impact on American K-12 Education,   ISBN:9780815780793

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Summary:

The concept of 'pay for performance' for public school teachers is once again growing in popularity and use. U.S. education is now at a critical juncture that requires thoughtful and informed consideration of this policy innovation. Merit Pay offers the most up-to-date and complete analysis yet of the promising - yet still controversial-mechanism. Matthew Springer of Vanderbilt University, director of the National Center on Performance Incentives, brought together an interdisciplinary team of analysts to address the issues surrounding merit pay for teachers. Their purpose was to identify the potential strengths and weaknesses of performance-based pay and address key conceptual and implementation issues that have dominated the debate.Among the specific questions addressed include: How does pay-for-performance work in other sectors, and what can the education sector learn from those experiences? What do the teachers themselves think of merit pay? What has been the experience of jurisdictions that have implemented incentive pay? They examine recent examples in Florida, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. They discuss different strategies for measuring teacher accomplishment, thus establishing the basis for their merit pay. Most important, what has been the impact on student achievement? The notable contributors include Dale Ballou (Vanderbilt), Jay Greene (University of Arkansas), James Guthrie (Vanderbilt), Eric Hanushek (Hoover Institution), Brian Jacob (University of Michigan), and Michael Podgursky (University of Missouri).