Commentary: Asking the Right Question on Performance Pay—and Getting a Surprising Answer

• Author: Kate Walsh
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12840
• Published date: 01 November 2017
• Date: 01 November 2017

Asking the Right Question on Performance Pay—and Getting a Surprising Answer 931

Commentary

Kate Walsh

National Council on Teacher Quality

Asking the Right Question on Performance Pay—

and Getting a Surprising Answer

Kate Walsh has served as president of

the National Council on Teacher Quality

since 2003.

E-mail: kwalsh@nctq.org

T he idea of paying effective teachers more

than less effective teachers has been hotly

debated for more than two decades, ever

since it became possible to estimate an individual

teacher ’ s effect on student learning. A new study

by Michael Jones and Michael T. Hartney, “Show

Who the Money? Teacher Sorting Patterns and

Performance Pay across U.S. School Districts,” tackles

a promising benefit of performance pay long asserted

by proponents but largely unexamined by researchers:

whether performance pay improves district

recruitment efforts.

Most research on performance pay has focused on its

purported benefit as a motivator, hypothesizing that

higher pay motivates teachers to work harder and

become more effective—a notion that troubles me

because it suggests that many teachers are not already

working as hard as they can. The recruitment question

pursued by Jones and Hartney seems more to the

point, as is the use of performance pay as a strategic

retention tool. Higher pay targeted to great teachers

should encourage them to stay in the classroom while

nudging less effective teachers who do not qualify for

higher pay to consider other careers.

Jones and Hartney unearth compelling evidence

that performance pay can indeed help districts

recruit more academically skilled teachers. Of

necessity, their approach is somewhat crude, yet it

is still illuminating. They use the federal Schools

and Staffing Survey (SASS) data set to determine

whether a district uses performance pay and compare

that response to the average SAT score of the

undergraduate institutions attended by the teachers in

the district in question, a common proxy for teachers ’

academic abilities.

I would not have anticipated this design would

produce much statistical firepower in either direction,

since most districts ’ idea of performance pay is

modest. Moreover, I suspect that few teacher recruits

are even aware that a district offers some kind of

performance pay system. (For example, the many

analyses of the federal Teacher Incentive Fund grants

have shown that teachers employed in those schools

were often unaware of the bonus system.)

Yet Jones and Hartney clearly find that districts

implementing some form of performance pay saw

an increase in the academic aptitude of new teachers

(using the SAT proxy). Districts that implemented

performance pay recruited teachers from institutions

whose average SAT scores were 30 points higher than

those recruited by districts without performance pay.

We are intrigued that school districts just dipping

their toes into these waters from 2003 to 2007 were

able to get such strong results. As a proponent of

performance pay as a recruitment device, I still own