I spent the last two days at a top-notch conference on teacher performance pay hosted by the Kennedy School's Program on Education Policy and Governance.
For a number of reasons, I support performance pay but this event made me appreciate just how much we need to learn about the ins and outs of making such programs work well?and understanding what ?work? actually means.
All of the papers presented were very interesting; they are certainly worth your time if you follow differentiated compensation issues.?Some of the most fascinating findings relate to the effectiveness of school-wide bonuses, the public's perception of merit pay initiatives, whether high performing teachers earn more outside of education, and the results of international programs.
Rick Hanushek ended the event, presenting an eye-opening paper on the financial implications for students with teachers of different levels of effectiveness.
Many of the presentations were delivered by full-fledged economists, so if you dive into some of these papers, be prepared for references to endogenous relationships, production functions, measures of external validity, and stochastic effects.
But don't be deterred. Though the methodologies are often complex, each paper is grounded in the stuff most of us deal with every day: public policy, politics, funding, instruction, standards, assessments, and student learning.
I left the conference encouraged and with lots of new information and probably even more questions. Thanks to PEPG and the excellent scholars and respondents for an edifying 36 hours.
?Andy Smarick
UPDATE: The links are fixed. Sorry for the error.