Performance pay and teachers' effort, productivity and grading ethics

Description

"Performance-related incentive pay for teachers is being introduced in many countries, but there is little evidence of its effects. This paper evaluates a rank-order tournament among teachers of English, Hebrew, and mathematics in Israel. Teachers were rewarded with cash bonuses for improving their students' performance on high-school matriculation exams. Two identification strategies were used to estimate the program effects, a regression discontinuity design and propensity score matching. The regression discontinuity method exploits both a natural experiment stemming from measurement error in the assignment variable and a sharp discontinuity in the assignment-to-treatment variable. The results suggest that performance incentives have a significant effect on directly affected students with some minor spillover effects on untreated subjects. The improvements appear to derive from changes in teaching methods, after-school teaching, and increased responsiveness to students' needs. No evidence found for teachers' manipulation of test scores. The program appears to have been more cost-effective than school-group cash bonuses or extra instruction time and is as effective as cash bonuses for students"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.

Subjects

Series Statement

• NBER working paper series -- no. 10622.
• Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- working paper no. 10622.

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Other Editions

• Performance pay and teachers' effort, productivity and grading ethicsElectronic resourceNational Bureau of Economic Research2004-01-01
• Performance pay and teachers' effort, productivity and grading ethicsNational Bureau of Economic Research2004