Title: 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: Performance awards, Rating of, Salaries, Teachers
Places: Israel