Performance Incentives

Book excerpt: The concept of pay for performance for public school teachers is growing in popularity and use, and it has resurged to once again occupy a central role in education policy. Performance Incentives: Their Growing Impact on American K-12 Education offers the most up-to-date and complete analysis of this promising—yet still controversial—policy innovation. Performance Incentives brings together an interdisciplinary team of experts, providing an unprecedented discussion and analysis of the pay-for-performance debate by • Identifying the potential strengths and weaknesses of tying pay to student outcomes; • Comparing different strategies for measuring teacher accomplishments; • Addressing key conceptual and implemen - tation issues; • Describing what teachers themselves think of merit pay; • Examining recent examples in Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas; • Studying the overall impact on student achievement.