Performance pay and teachers' effort, productivity and grading ethics
By: Victor Lavy.
Contributors: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series ;; working paper 10622; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;; working paper no. 10622.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Teachers -- Salaries, etc. -- Israel.
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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
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Mode of access: World Wide Web.