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Does merit pay reward good teachers? Evidence from a randomized experiment
Author(s) -
Dee Thomas S.,
Keys Benjamin J.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal of policy analysis and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.898
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1520-6688
pISSN - 0276-8739
DOI - 10.1002/pam.20022
Subject(s) - merit pay , teacher quality , percentile , certification , criticism , psychology , reading (process) , student achievement , quality (philosophy) , class (philosophy) , class size , mathematics education , social psychology , academic achievement , economics , incentive , statistics , mathematics , political science , computer science , management , microeconomics , operations management , metric (unit) , philosophy , epistemology , artificial intelligence , law
A common criticism of merit‐pay plans is that they fail to systematically target rewards to the most effective teachers. This study presents new evidence on this issue by evaluating data from Tennessee's Career Ladder Evaluation System and the Project STAR class‐size experiment. Because the students and teachers participating in the experiment were randomly assigned, inferences about the relative quality of teachers certified by the career ladder should be unbiased. The results indicate that Tennessee's career ladder had mixed success in rewarding teachers who increased student achievement. Assignment to career‐ladder teachers increased mathematics scores by roughly 3 percentile points but generally had smaller and statistically insignificant effects on reading scores. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.