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True Pay-For-Performance Is Vital To School Reform: What Kids Learn Must Drive What Teachers Make

Teacher effectiveness is becoming a focal point of public dissatisfaction with the education system. Evaluation of teachers is seldom linked to their salaries, and merit pay when attempted usually fails because criteria are too subjective. Raises should be tied to what a given class learns in a given year, above an agreed baseline, adjusted for student aptitude.

IP-13-1992 (December 1992)
Author: John Kaufman

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Executive Summary

  • Teacher effectiveness is becoming a focal point of public dissatisfaction with the education system.
  • Evaluation of teachers is seldom linked to their salaries, and merit pay when attempted usually fails because criteria are too subjective.
  • Raises should be tied to what a given class learns in a given year, above an agreed baseline, adjusted for student aptitude.
  • A district testing specialist would give fall tests for the baseline and spring tests to measure progress, blind from the teacher.
  • Salary adjustments, up or down, would be figured from a board-approved table of pro progress/aptitude variables for a composite of all the teachers classes.
  • Performance raises would then become the only kind given, since longevity arid graduate study are not in themselves relevant to school productivity.