Comments on: New Study Shows Merit Pay System for Teachers Works

By: mcp_43

mcp_43 — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 21:46:40 +0000

According to the article, a “good” teacher is one who is in the 84th percentile or above. That is about 1 teacher in 6. If your school has 6 sections or less of a grade, the expected number of “good” teachers teaching that grade is at most 1. If there are only 3 sections of a grade, the expected number of “good” teachers is 1 “good” teacher for every 2 grades. If there is only 1 section of each grade, the expected number of “good” teachers is 1 or 2 “good” teachers for the entire school. The article does not mention the method used to rank the teachers. Remember, whatever is used to rank people will be generated at the cost of everything else.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 19:38:56 +0000

In the second study, how did those student gains come about?

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 19:37:34 +0000

Am I missing something. Better teachers make better students, yes. There was no mention that these better teachers received merit pay.

By: Education News Round-Up | Certification Map

Education News Round-Up | Certification Map — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 21:09:51 +0000

[...] Harvard Study Suggests Merit-Based Pay for Teachers Works Determining teacher salary by teacher performance has been hotly contested by teachers’ unions and those skeptical of measuring effectiveness by standardized test scores. But a new study by Harvard, the University of Chicago and UC San Diego finds that teachers who are paid based on merit perform better than those who aren’t. According to The Washington Post: “The authors split teachers in the study into a control group, who were not offered any rewards, a ‘gain’ group, which was promised rewards of up to $8,000 at the end of the school year, and a ‘loss’ group, which was given $4,000 upfront and asked to pay back any rewards they did not earn. … The conclusion: It worked, and it worked almost twice as well when the money was given at the start and then taken away.” [...]

By: Ray Fisman

Ray Fisman — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 13:25:27 +0000

I wrote about the same study in Slate, and have gone through it fairly carefully. I would describe the results as tentative yet promising, rather than definitive. It would be a big mistake to take it as clear, emphatic, and “conclusive” evidence on the merits of merit pay. I hope and expect the study’s authors would agree.