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April 3, 2007
The merits of merit payDo children learn more when their teachers get incentives and bonuses? According to this article from Education Week, researchers at Vanderbilt University are putting merit pay "under the microscope."
With a five-year, $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, the newly established National Center on Performance Incentives has put together an ambitious agenda to study such efforts in Nashville, Tenn., across the state of Texas, and in two other locations yet to be named.
Center investigators say their Nashville project is the first randomized experiment in the United States to test the merit-pay idea, although field trials in Chile, Kenya, and Israel have done so, with mixed findings.The center’s researchers hope to shed light on whether teachers behave differently when the prospect of bonuses is dangled before them, whether student achievement improves as a result, and whether the existence of such programs will ultimately attract a different mix of teachers into the field.
And surprisingly, the unions are on board with the research plans. Jamye Merritt (ironic, isn't it), president of the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association, pointed out that the research component of this plan "will benefit everyone to once and for all know if this will make a difference." But she also argues that she doesn't think it will make a difference because "teachers are already working as hard as they can." What do you think? Is merit pay all it's cracked up to be? Leave us a comment.
Posted April 3, 2007 5:30 PM | Teachers
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