To explore whether teachers' attitudes toward pay for performance are the result of experience or socialization, or whether teachers are already predisposed to prefer pay systems not based on performance, and whether some forms of performance pay might be preferred to others, a study was conducted of the pay system preferences of students preparing to be teachers at a large Midwestern public university. The study was guided by three research questions: (1) Do students preparing to be K-12 teachers view pay for performance as a desirable or undesirable attribute of a teaching job? (2) Do students preparing to be K-12 teachers prefer some forms of pay for performance (i.e., knowledge- and skill-based pay, group-based performance pay, or individual performance pay based on objective indicators such as student achievement) over others? and (3) Do students' work values and personality characteristics influence their preferences for performance pay or for different performance pay systems? These questions were addressed first by holding a series of focus group discussions about pay for performance with university students with education majors or pre-majors, and with students with other majors or pre-majors. Then, a survey of a sample of this population was conducted to assess preferences for different performance pay systems. The results suggest that prospective teachers do not find performance pay unattractive, at least as operationalized in the scenarios presented. Pay System Scenarios are appended. (Contains 4 tables and 2 footnotes.) [A previous version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Finance Association (Louisville, Kentucky, 2005).]