Teacher Practical Guidance:

Merit Pay

Category: External

Rank Order

92

Effect Size

-0.02

Achievement Gain %

-1

How-To Strategies

Justification for Merit Pay

  • Human beings are motivated by self-interest; when pursued competitively system change and school improvement can occur.

 

  • Current teacher compensation (salary schedule step system)  is not aligned with teacher quality.

 

  • Since teacher quality is such an important variable, quality teachers should be rewarded.

 

  • Poor performance by students on international assessments indicate the need for change and improvement in teacher quality.

 

  • Increasing number to teacher evaluation protocols can be used to identify high quality teachers.

 

  • Principal evaluation of teachers has been shown to be positively associated with student achievement performance.

 

  • Merit pay systems are a way to reduce the influence of teacher unions and collective bargaining process which protects bad teachers and stifles reforms. Tompkins pg. 37

 

 

Issues and Barriers to Merit Pay

  • It doesn’t work. Recent meta-analysis reviews indicate a negative impact on student achievement.

 

  • Merit pay. represents a loss of teacher union influence, threatens collective bargaining, and fosters competition rather than cooperation and collaboration.

 

  • Difficulty with determining fair compensation for test scores.

 

  • Lack of effective teacher evaluation systems.

 

  • Challenges of evaluating teachers with no direct relationship to academic achievement (art, music, PE, etc).

 

  • Resistance of stakeholders.

 

  • Developing and implementing accurate and credible measures of educator performance is elusive.

 

  • Developing district capacity to implement merit pay is challenging.

 

  • Lack of alignment of merit pay with district goals and culture of work environment.

 

  • Administrator conflict avoidance

How-To Resources

References

Berkovich (2011). No we won’t. Teacher resistance to educational reform. Journal of Educational Administration. 49, 563-578.

 

Cohen, Moffit, & Goldin. (2007). Policy and practice: The dilemma. American journal of Education. 113, 515-548.

 

Dee & Keys (2004). Does merit pay reward good teachers? Evidence from a randomized experiment. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 23, 471-488.

 

Fitzpatrick, Brehm, Burns, & Renbarger. (2024). Design Characteristics of Effective US Teacher Pay-for-Performance: Implications from Meta-Analysis. Report.

 

Harris, D. (2008). Approaches to alternative teacher compensation: Promises and pitfalls. UW Center for Educational Research.

 

Johnson (1984). Merit pay for teachers: A poor prescription for reform, Harvard Educational Review. 54, 175-186.

 

Latham (2006). Work motivation: History, theory, research and practice. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications.

 

Murnane & Cohen. (1986). Merit pay and evaluation problem: Why most merit pay plans fail and few survive. Harvard Education Review, 56, 1-17.

 

Pham, Nguyen & Springer. (2021). Teacher merit pay: A meta-analysis. American Educational Research Journal.

 

Podgursky & Springer (2007). Teacher performance pay: A review. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 26, 909-949.

 

Tompkins (2017). Superintendent’s response to the revised school code requiring merit pay in selected Michigan school districts. Dissertation.

Merit Pay

DEFINITION

When teacher pay is tied to some measure of the performance outcomes of their students. link

DATA

  • 2 Meta Analysis reviews

  • 65 Research studies

  • 1 Confidence level. Hattie (2023) p. 155

 

QUOTES

Teacher pay is primarily based on the input model of compensation, commonly defined in the collective bargaining contract as the “single salary scale and step schedule.” The salary and step schedule rewards teachers equally when they achieve certain levels of longevity and additional training and degrees…over 95% of the nation’s public schools maintain the salary and step schedule as the primary approach for determining teacher pay. Tompkins, pg.1

 

Merit pay has been attempted as an educational reform tool on a regular basis throughout the history of American education.  In particular, it has been presented as an opportunity to bring accountability to teachers, especially in the context of measuring effectiveness based on student achievement. Tompkins, pg. 27

 

 

The data indicates that low morale and problems of administration are the primary reasons school districts drop merit pay. Management’s perception that the positive impact of bonuses on performance of superstars would be more than offset by the negative effects on the performance of effective teachers who do not receive bonuses, do not know why they were passed over, and cannot be told how to become superstars. Murnane & Cohen (1986)