PAA Pay for Performance contact: Pamela Grundy, pamgrundy@parentsacrossamerica.org
PAA Opposes Tying Teacher Salaries to Test Scores
The idea of “pay for performance,” which involves supplementing teacher pay or providing bonuses based on student test scores, is one of the latest educational fads to sweep the country.
Research and experience, however, indicate that such schemes are more likely to damage our children’s education than to improve it. As one analyst notes, “test-based pay is more useful politically than it is effective educationally.”
For more details, see our position paper: Tying Teacher Salaries to Test Scores Doesn’t Work
To download a Pay for Performance fact sheet, click here.
.
Pay for Performance in Federal Legislation
Pay for performance, or merit pay, was a key piece of the Race to the Top legislation. To obtain Race to the Top funds, states were required to . . .
.
Pay for Performance and Private Foundations
The Gates Foundation has become a major source of funding for pay-for-performance projects . . .
.
Communities Challenging Pay for Performance
In Charlotte, North Carolina, PAA affiliate Mecklenburg ACTS has launched a parent petition that calls on Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools to remove student test scores from its pay for performance system. For more information, see: www.mecklenburgacts.org.
.
Pay for Performance Around the Nation
Florida: In March of 2011, the Florida State Legislature passed legislation that requires Florida public schools to institute pay for performance.
.
Key Pay for Performance Documents
Vanderbilt University POINT Study
This highly regarded study showed that offering teachers performance-based bonuses did not improve student test scores. During the three years covered by the study, students of teachers offered substantial bonuses for better test scores scored no better than the students of teachers in a control group not offered bonuses.
