However, research to date finds little evidence of a strong positive effect of teachers»
pay on student achievement.
Yet only a handful of studies have evaluated the impact of teacher merit
pay on student achievement.
Education took center stage in Iowa's 2006 legislative session, resulting in measures to boost teacher salaries, start a pilot program that bases teacher
pay on student achievement, expand preschool, and establish statewide graduation requirements.
Not exact matches
The state was prepared to use part of its federal Race to the Top money to
pay Wireless Generation to develop software to track
student test scores,
achievement and so on, creating a system similar to the Achievement Reporting and Innovation System, or ARIS, that it developed for the ci
achievement and so
on, creating a system similar to the
Achievement Reporting and Innovation System, or ARIS, that it developed for the ci
Achievement Reporting and Innovation System, or ARIS, that it developed for the city schools.
«It is unfortunate that DOE is trying to stifle the autonomy of charter schools when their time would be better spent
on evaluating what great teachers and leaders in the very best charter schools, traditional district schools and nonprofit providers are doing to make pre-kindergarten an investment that
pays off in increased
student achievement,» Merriman said.
Consider your own views
on performance
pay, whether
student achievement should count in your performance review, what type of data will help your instruction, and how you want to be evaluated.
A Little Rock, Arkansas, performance -
pay program lasted only three years and was not renewed by the local school board, despite evidence of positive effects
on student achievement in math, reading, and language.
One reason districts are looking at bonus
pay more closely is research pointing to the impact teacher quality has
on student achievement.
Tampa, Fla — Florida's new merit -
pay system for teachers relies too heavily
on such conventional factors as teachers» educational attainment and years of service and should take into consideration
student achievement, a legislatively created advisory panel has concluded after seven months of heated debate.
To the extent that the most important staffing decisions involve sanctioning incompetent teachers and rewarding the very best teachers, a principal - based assessment system may affect
achievement as positively as a merit -
pay system based solely
on student test results.
Such
pay innovations should also boost
student achievement and, because they are based
on performance, strengthen the argument for dramatically raising teacher salaries — at least for those with the highest levels of professional expertise.
Concerned that this system makes it difficult to retain talented teachers and provides few incentives for them to work to raise
student achievement while in the classroom, many policymakers have proposed merit -
pay programs that link teachers» salaries directly to their apparent impact
on student achievement.
When they insist that ideas like school choice, performance
pay, and teacher evaluations based
on value - added measures will themselves boost
student achievement, would - be reformers stifle creativity, encourage their allies to lock elbows and march forward rather than engage in useful debate and reflection, turn every reform proposal into an us - against - them steel - cage match, and push researchers into the awkward position of studying whether reforms «work» rather than when, why, and how they make it easier to improve schooling.
If policymakers really want to close
achievement gaps between rich and poor
students, she writes, they should stop focusing
on schools and start
paying attention to what happens before children ever get to kindergarten.
Since it is possible that
student achievement is higher whenever
pay schedules are flexible, regardless of the connection to teacher classroom effectiveness, I estimated the impact of each of these three sets of factors
on math
achievement.
To see whether the education sector is an exception to general economic theory, a number of performance
pay experiments have been carried out, and in Israel and India such studies have shown positive impacts
on student achievement.
If reducing poverty and lifting
student achievement are the goals, dollars would be better allocated by cutting the taxes
on earned income
paid by two - parent, working families with children.
Among many influential projects conducted under the auspices of EdLabs, Fryer has developed and implemented programs to test the impact of incentives
on student achievement, teacher
pay - for - performance concepts, and an effort to apply charter - school practices to a district turnaround school in Houston.
With one exception (immigrants benefited less than native - born
students from a performance
pay regime), I found only small differences in the impact of performance
pay on the math
achievement of subgroups in the population.
But our findings also suggest that the teachers who were
on the highest rungs of the career ladder (and received the largest
pay increases) were not consistently better at promoting
student achievement.
In other words, are
students essentially
paying the cost of training these teachers
on the job, in the form of lost academic
achievement?
I would welcome the opportunity to determine who
on my staff would receive differentiated
pay, especially if value - added
student achievement and standardized test scores are tracked as a part of the measurement.
On a budget of $ 500 billion, that means $ 50 billion is
paid out every year for something that has little correlation with
student achievement.
This study is evaluating these performance - based compensation systems to examine issues like the impact of
pay - for - performance
on student achievement and educator effectiveness, and helping to answer pressing policy questions about how the programs are designed, communicated, and implemented.
During his eight years in Tallahassee, the governor established a far - reaching accountability system, including limits
on social promotion in elementary school; introduced a plethora of school choice initiatives (vouchers for the disabled, vouchers for those in failing schools, tax - credit funded scholarships for the needy, virtual education, and a growing number of charter schools); asked school districts to
pay teachers according to merit; promoted a «Just Read» initiative; ensured parental choice among providers of preschool services; and created a highly regarded system for tracking
student achievement.
First, states and districts can discontinue costly practices that have not been shown to enhance
student achievement, including
paying educators for out - of - field master's degrees and salary premiums for experience; following «last in, first out» personnel provisions; relying
on regular classroom instructional aides; and adhering to mandated limits
on class size.
☐ Is overseen by an elected school board ☐ Submits to a financial audit
on a regular basis ☐ Follows state class - size mandates ☐ Adheres to health, safety, and civil rights laws ☐ Teaches a curriculum aligned to state standards ☐ Is a brick - and - mortar school (not an online one) ☐ Doesn't teach religion ☐ Is in session at least six hours a day, 180 days a year ☐ Follows state teacher -
pay guidelines ☐ Participates in annual assessments ☐ Has at least one librarian, nurse, and counselor ☐ Does not practice selective admissions ☐ Demonstrates at least minimal growth in
student achievement ☐ Employs unionized teachers ☐ Keeps
student suspensions to a minimal level
Most rely
on colleges and universities to supply workers, and
pay and promote people for experience and education levels rather than for their success in raising
student achievement.
Other school characteristics associated with better
student achievement included: more time spent
on English instruction; teacher
pay plans that were based
on teachers» effectiveness at improving
student achievement, principals» evaluations, or whether teachers took
on additional duties, rather than traditional
pay scales; an emphasis
on academics in schools» mission statements; and a classroom policy of punishing or rewarding the smallest of
student infractions.
See LA School Report (Ratliff Supports Proposal Linking Teacher
Pay to Test Scores) and LA Times (Deasy and new board member Ratliff laud teacher report, Group urges teachers» raises based
on student achievement).
Obama and the Gates Foundation share some goals that not everyone embraces:
paying teachers based
on student test scores, among other measures of
achievement; charter schools that operate independently of local school boards; and a set of common academic standards adopted by every state.
Currently the funding is used to
pay for reductions in class size and conventional professional development; neither has been proven to have a significant or sustainable impact
on student achievement.
Investing time in planning will
pay off in maximizing time during instruction and a greater impact
on student achievement.
Seventy - one percent of those surveyed said teachers should be
paid on the basis of their work, rather than
on a standard salary schedule, and 54 percent said a teacher's salary should be «somewhat closely» tied to the
achievement of his or her
students.
In your last letter you referenced the contradiction we place in our schools when we expect teachers to collaborate, yet put a price
on student achievement in «
pay for performance.»
«This study drew
on teacher survey responses from randomized experiments exploring three different
pay - for - performance programs to examine the extent to which these programs motivated teachers to improve
student achievement and the impact of such programs
on teachers» instruction, number of hours worked, job stress, and collegiality.
Research suggests that leadership is second only to teacher quality among school influences
on student learning, but more needs to be known about whether efforts to improve leadership
pay off for
student achievement and whether these efforts can achieve results at the scale of an entire district.
Catalyst for Change is the final summative report for the Denver
Pay - for - Performance initiative that focused
on developing a link between
student achievement and teacher compensation, and launched a national movement in performance - based reform.
One school of education reformers, including many of today's performance -
pay advocates, would evaluate teachers primarily
on the basis of their
students»
achievement.
He wants states to use funds to ease limits
on charter schools, tie teacher
pay to
student achievement and move for the first time toward common academic standards.
According to the annual Phi Delta Kappa / Gallup poll, 71 percent of Americans said teachers should be
paid on the basis of their work, and 54 percent said salary should be «somewhat closely» tied to
student achievement.
And this «
achievement» linked to
student growth to merit
pay relies heavily
on a VAM - aligned rubric.
Yet again, researchers have determined that
paying teachers a bonus based
on student performance does not improve the
achievement of those
students.
A landmark Colorado law that ties teacher evaluations to the progress of their
students on achievement tests could help build momentum for a national movement that seeks to overhaul how instructors» tenure and
pay is earned, education leaders say.
Critics of merit
pay say that it is unsupported by research, and that evaluating an individual teacher's performance based
on student standardized testing is extremely difficult, given the many factors outside the classroom that can affect
student achievement.
When asked what should determine teacher
pay, 86 percent said a teacher's education and training should be either the most important or an important factor, followed by 77 percent who said their
students»
achievement and progress
on a range of measures including standardized tests, classroom observations and parent feedback; 77 percent said whether the teacher is at a low - performing school where
students need the most help; 64 percent who said
students»
achievement and progress
on standardized tests; and 57 percent who said seniority in the number of years of classroom teaching experience.
If the objectives missed are related to TLR responsibilities, argue that there should be flexibility in relation to
pay progression - other teachers without TLR responsibilities would have progressed if they had achieved the same standards (or maybe even lower standards)
on classroom practice and
achievement by
students taught.
In another question, ConnCAN asks about a policy that would «Promote and
pay teachers and school leaders based
on an evaluation system that takes into account
students»
achievement growth as well as contributions to the school, leadership skills, and professional practice.»
In addition, Hartford
pays Achievement First $ 500 a year for each Hartford
student who attends
Achievement First — Hartford Academy (and that is
on top of the grant
Achievement First gets from the state of Connecticut).
Related, and
on this point we agree, «teacher
pay incentives is one area that we know a good deal about, based
on analysis of actual policy variation, and the results are not terribly promising... experiments generally show performance bonuses, a particular form of
pay for performance, have no significant
student achievement effects, whether the bonus is rewarded at the individual teacher level» (p. 89).