On Tuesday, the results of a three year study were released: offering big bonuses to teachers does not help improve student test scores. The study was conducted by Vanderbilt University’s National Center on Performance Incentives and tracked 300 math teachers from grades five through eight in the metropolitan Nashville school system. Half the teachers were offered bonuses as high as 15,000 for improvements in the standardized test scores, half were not. The final results showed no difference in student scores between the two groups. This is the first study of its kind.
This study was viewed as a blow to the Obama administration, which is pushing to link teacher pay and tenure to how students perform on standardized tests along with other measures of achievement. The US Department of Education said that the study is too narrowly focused. “It only looked at the narrow question of whether more pay motivates teachers to try harder,” said spokeswoman Sandra Abrevaya. “What we are trying to do is change the culture of teaching by giving all educators the feedback they need to get better while rewarding and incentivizing the best to teach in high-need schools, hard-to-staff subjects.”
The American Federation of Teachers praised the study and argued that teachers need other resources, including better training and more supportive administrators. Teachers unions have traditionally opposed merit pay, arguing that test scores are not an accurate measure of student achievement.
The study looked only at individual bonuses, not extra pay to teams of teachers or an entire school. Also important to note is that over the three years, about half of the teachers left the study because some retired, moved to other schools or stopped teaching math.
Resources used: AP News, Huffington Post
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Christi Grab is Parentella’s Editorial Director and author of The Unexpected Circumnavigation: Unusual Boat, Unusual People Part 1 – San Diego to Australia. She is currently working on book two of the series.
