All Articles Tagged "merit pay"
Do Threats Improve Worker Performance?
Photo: Creatas
A group of academics, trying to tackle the country’s education problem, have suggested that the merit pay system we have in place for teachers needs to be changed.
The study, led by Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt, proposes that teachers get paid a lump-sum bonus amount with the threat that if they don’t reach certain goals, they’ll have to pay the money back. “Rather than tap into teachers’ ambition, they’d tap into their anxiety,” writes The Atlantic. The tactic is called “loss aversion.”
The academics conducted a study with kindergarten through eighth grade teachers in a low-income Chicago community participating. They found that those teachers who were at risk of paying back their bonuses if the students didn’t excel actually “over performed.”
Of course, this doesn’t definitively prove anything. But The Atlantic recommends that education reformers keep an eye on this sort of practice. And if it happens in one job field, it could happen in others.
Do you think this is the best way to motivate teachers specifically, and workers in general?
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Merit Pay for Principals Prompts Questions
(Chicago News Cooperative) — Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a plan Monday to award merit pay to Chicago Public Schools principals who perform well on a new set of evaluative metrics as critics questioned whether the program will lead to gains in student achievement. The performance rewards—which may be based on student test scores, school climate and leadership skills, among other factors — are part of an overhaul of principal preparation and evaluation at CPS. They will be paid for over the next four years by a new $5 million fund created through charitable donations, Emanuel said. The district plans to implement a similar incentive program for teachers, he said. “You can’t throw merit pay out there like a Hail Mary pass,” Emanuel said, emphasizing that the effort to upgrade principal performance will also include targeted recruitment, training and mentoring. Performance pay for teachers and administrators has grown in popularity, but research has not shown a clear link between bonuses and improved student performance.
