The purpose of this paper is to review and critique a groundbreaking research report. The research article under review in this paper is: "A Big Apple for Educators: New York City's Experiment with Schoolwide Performance Bonuses: Final Evaluation Report" (see ED521920). In 2007-08, a program called the Schoolwide Performance Bonus…

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) expects all Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grantees to conduct an evaluation of their programs. Experience with earlier rounds of TIF grants has shown that evaluations can provide valuable information for managing and improving TIF-supported activities, as well as evidence that these activities have had a…

The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) provides grants to support performance-based compensation systems for teachers and principals in high-need schools. The study measures the impact of pay-for-performance bonuses as part of a comprehensive compensation system within a large, multisite random assignment study design. The treatment schools were to…

The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) provides grants to support performance-based compensation systems for teachers and principals in high-need schools. The study measures the impact of pay-for-performance bonuses as part of a comprehensive compensation system within a large, multisite random assignment study design. The treatment schools were to…

The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) provides grants to support performance-based compensation systems for teachers and principals in high-need schools. The goal of the grants is to increase the number of high-performing teachers in high-need schools by rewarding educators for improving students' achievement. The report on which this snapshot is based…

Research indicates that effective teachers are critical to raising student achievement. However, there is little evidence about the best ways to improve teacher effectiveness, or how schools that serve the students most in need can attract and retain effective teachers. Traditional salary schedules, which pay teachers based on their years of…

Research indicates that effective teachers are critical to raising student achievement. However, there is little evidence about the best ways to improve teacher effectiveness, or how schools that serve the students most in need can attract and retain effective teachers. Traditional salary schedules, which pay teachers based on their years of…

Performance related pay is not common in Australian universities. A number of Australian universities have begun to show interest in implementing more individualised pay arrangements. Swinburne University of Technology, in Melbourne, has chosen, contrary to the wishes of many of its staff, to be a path-breaker and has introduced a performance…

The study reviewed in this document examined whether offering schoolwide performance bonuses to teachers had an effect on student achievement or teacher retention in New York City public schools. Researchers analyzed data on students and teachers from 396 high-need public elementary, middle, and high schools from 2007-08 through 2009-10. Of these…

Basing the compensation of accounting professors on merit pay in order to encourage better teaching, research and service is controversial. This study uses data from a survey of the 852 accounting programs in the United States to empirically examine the influence of merit-based salary plans. Findings indicate a strong positive association between…

The primary claim of this Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance report and the abridged Education Next version is that nations "that pay teachers on their performance score higher on PISA tests." After statistically controlling for several variables, the author concludes that nations with some form of merit pay system have,…

A significant number of educator compensation reform efforts are under way throughout the country. These school-, district-, and state-level programs come in all shapes and sizes--some are small and focus only on a cohort of teachers or schools, whereas others are large and target entire districts or groups of districts. The structure of these…

The body of research on the design, implementation, and effects of performance-based compensation systems has influenced the design and evaluation of the 2010 Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grants. In the sections presented here, the authors describe the key components of 2010 TIF grants and the conceptual framework for the evaluation. The remainder…

Performance pay plans for teachers are a hot topic across the nation, so the country's largest program is bound to attract attention. But caution is advised. This is a state-sponsored program evaluation of Texas' most recent incentive pay program rather than research, and it suffers from two major constraints: data not collected and questions not…

Since 2008 Texas's District Awards for Teacher Excellence (D.A.T.E.) program has provided grants to districts for the implementation of locally designed incentive pay plans. The 2010-11 school year is the third year of the D.A.T.E. incentive pay plans with approximately $197 million in annual state funding. This research brief summarizes the key…