Opinion: The Truth About Performance Pay for Teachers

(Oct. 5) -- If someone offered you $15,000 if for dramatically boosting your job performance, would you do it?

For teachers, the answer appears to be no, at least according to a recent, and widely reported, study out of Vanderbilt University. But the real answer for teachers might actually be yes, if the bonuses are accompanied by thoughtful training and dedicated support.

In that three-year study by Vanderbilt's National Center on Performance Incentives, a group of math teachers was offered bonuses if their students improved their test scores, and they were compared with a separate group of teachers that wasn't offered bonuses. None of the teachers was offered additional help or guidance. The study showed that the teachers offered money performed no better than the comparison group.

For critics of performance pay, the results proved that rewarding high-performing educators with monetary bonuses doesn't work, and across the county, there were attention-grabbing headlines such as "Teacher Merit Pay Doesn't Work." One observer declared that the study showed that paying teachers for their performance was a waste of time.

The study came at a particularly inopportune time for the U.S. Department of Education, which was giving out more than $440 million in Teacher Incentive Fund grants to help states and districts develop performance-based pay systems.
But critics of performance pay are misreading the results.

Indeed, it's no surprise that the study showed no effects, and few believe that teachers can dramatically improve student performance if they are offered only bonuses and no extra training.

The problem with our nation's educational system is not that teachers don't care about students or money. Rather the issue is that too many educators don't have the support, tools or proper incentive structure to succeed. In fact, the teachers in the study told the researchers that the prospect of bonuses didn't change their behavior because they were already trying as hard as they could.

Indeed, previous, smaller-scale studies of performance pay for teachers have shown that the reforms do work, but only if teachers receive support and targeted incentives to improve their skills.

Consider the Mission Possible program created by Guilford County Schools in North Carolina. An early grantee of the Department of Education's Teacher Incentive Fund, the Guilford initiative provides teachers with intensive and specialized training, smaller class sizes and performance bonuses, and it has had a positive impact on increasing student graduation rates, with the participating schools significantly outperforming others in the county.

The Vanderbilt researchers also didn't investigate performance pay and its effect on recruitment. But many school district leaders believe that the programs attract talented teachers who want to be rewarded for their success with students. In fact, after D.C. public schools announced a new bonus system, which pays teachers for improvements in test scores, teaching applications soared 300 percent.

Reforming the way teachers are paid signals to teachers that their performance matters -- that educators should be treated like other professionals.

Currently, most states use salary schedules that increase teacher pay based on years of experience and graduate school credits. But researchers have shown that neither of these characteristics shows much of a relationship to a teacher's ability to improve student learning, and the Obama administration understands that the current approach to paying teachers doesn't do enough to attract effective educators.

Any program that receives one of the Department of Education's Teacher Incentive Fund grants must provide targeted professional development as well as financial incentives for teachers. Districts must also conduct teachers' evaluations multiple times each year and provide educators with incentives to take on leadership roles.

Meanwhile, the most important finding in the Vanderbilt study was one that didn't make the headlines. It was the one that showed that teachers are trying their best but still can't raise student achievement.

So the question moving forward is, How can we better channel teachers' dedication and energy through thoughtful and comprehensive reforms in order to boost achievement for all students?

Hopefully the Department of Education's Teacher Incentive Fund grants will offer some promising answers.

Robin Chait is the associate director for teacher quality at the Center for American Progress. Ulrich Boser is a senior fellow there.