Incentives,Selection, and Teacher Performance: Evidence from IMPACT

Teachers in the United States are compensated largely on the basis of fixed schedules that reward experience and credentials. However, there is a growing interest in whether performance‐based incentives based on rigorous teacher evaluations can improve teacher retention and performance. The evidence available to date has been mixed at best. This study presents novel evidence on this topic based on IMPACT, the controversial teacher‐evaluation system introduced in the District of Columbia Public Schools by then‐Chancellor Michelle Rhee. IMPACT implemented uniquely high‐powered incentives linked to multiple measures of teacher performance (i.e., several structured observational measures as well as test performance). We present regression‐discontinuity (RD) estimates that compare the retention and performance outcomes among low‐performing teachers whose ratings placed them near the threshold that implied a strong dismissal threat. We also compare outcomes among high‐performing teachers whose rating placed them near a threshold that implied an unusually large financial incentive. Our RD results indicate that dismissal threats increased the voluntary attrition of low‐performing teachers by 11 percentage points (i.e., more than 50 percent) and improved the performance of teachers who remained by 0.27 of a teacher‐level standard deviation. We also find evidence that financial incentives further improved the performance of high‐performing teachers (effect size = 0.24).     

Teacher Skill Development: Evidence from Performance Ratings by Principals

We examine the dynamic nature of teacher skill development using panel data on principals’ subjective performance ratings of teachers. Past research on teacher productivity improvement has focused primarily on one important but narrow measure of performance: teachers’ value-added to student achievement on standardized tests. Unlike value-added, subjective performance ratings provide detailed information about specific skill dimensions and are available for teachers in non-tested grades and subjects. Using a within-teacher returns-to-experience framework, we find, on average, large and rapid improvements in teachers’ instructional practices throughout their first 10 years on the job as well as substantial differences in improvement rates across individual teachers. We also document that subjective performance ratings contain important information about teacher effectiveness. In the district we study, principals appear to differentiate teacher performance throughout the full distribution instead of just in the tails. Furthermore, prior performance ratings and gains in these ratings provide additional information about teachers’ ability to improve test scores that is not captured by prior value-added scores. Taken together, our study provides new insights on teacher performance improvement and variation in teacher development across instructional skills and individual teachers.     

浅析教师人格魅力对学生的影响

教师的人格魅力是教师的性格、气质、能力等个性特征的总和,是教师个人整体的精神风貌,它对学生有很大的影响,能够促进学生人格的发展。教师要注意塑造自己高尚的人格,发挥人格力量的独特魅力去影响学生。     

高校教师绩效管理两级循环联动模式研究

目前我国学者对于高校教师绩效管理的研究处于起步阶段，高校在进行教师绩效管理时存在“借来”主义，没有针对我国高校特有的组织结构及教师特点，构建有效的绩效管理模式，导致教师绩效管理效率低、组织战略目标无法达成等问题。基于 PDCA 循环理论构建校-院、院-系两级循环的教师绩效管理模式，实施两级循环的整体联动，能够有效适应我国高校的组织结构及教师工作特点，从而提高高校教师绩效管理效率。     

Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from an Advancement Program

This paper examines the effects of a comprehensive performance pay program implemented in high‐need schools using administrative data from Louisiana. Exploiting the within‐student variation in the timing of implementation, we find a large and significant effect beginning with the second year of the program on math achievement. Similar but generally insignificant point estimates are observed in social studies. As for English Language Arts and science, there are no effects of the program. We provide evidence against changes in the composition of teacher workforce and postadoption student sorting as potential explanations for our results. We then show aggregate findings from a web‐survey that teachers may have altered their teaching practices following performance‐based compensation. Finally, under certain assumptions, we calculate the net present value of earnings impact to be close to a million dollars per school‐year for math.     

Would a Value‐Added System of Retention Improve the Distribution of Teacher Quality? A Simulation of Alternative Policies

In this paper, we consider several features of teacher‐retention policies based on value‐added measures of effectiveness under a variety of empirically grounded rules and parameters. We consider the effects of policy design by varying the standard above which satisfactory teachers are expected to perform. We simulate recently adopted policies that remove teachers based on consecutive unsatisfactory performance and compare these to policies that remove teachers based on poor performance on average over a multiyear period. We also consider the precision of the performance measure and the underlying variation in teacher quality on policy effects. Finally, the simulation makes a step forward by incorporating recent empirical findings of a relationship between teacher quality and natural attrition from the profession. Our results indicate that deselection policies based on value‐added measures have the potential to improve teacher quality, although understanding the role of policy design, self‐selected exits, and the underlying variation in teacher quality is essential for determining policy effects.     

Employee Satisfaction in Agencies with Merit-Based Pay: Differential Effects for Three Measures

While many studies have sought to understand the association between merit-based pay and organizational performance, few have assessed the psychological well-being of employees in agencies with such incentive schemes. We show that employees in agencies with merit-based pay are less satisfied with their organization than are those working in agencies that do not implement the incentive systems. We also show that this negative effect is larger in the case of organizational satisfaction than for pay satisfaction or employee satisfaction with the job itself.     

Strategic Involuntary Teacher Transfers and Teacher Performance: Examining Equity and Efficiency

Despite claims that school districts need flexibility in teacher assignment to allocate teachers more equitably across schools and improve district performance, the power to involuntarily transfer teachers across schools remains hotly contested. Little research has examined involuntary teacher transfer policies or their effects on schools, teachers, or students. This article uses administrative data from Miami‐Dade County Public Schools to investigate the implementation and effects of the district's involuntary transfer policy, including which schools transferred and received teachers, which teachers were transferred, what kinds of teachers replaced them in their former schools, and how their performance—as measured by their work absences and value‐added in math and reading—compared before and after the transfer. We find that, under the policy, principals in the lowest performing schools identified relatively low‐performing teachers for transfer who, based on observable characteristics, would have been unlikely to leave on their own. Consistent with an equity improvement, we find that involuntarily transferred teachers were systematically moved to higher performing schools and generally were outperformed by the teachers who replaced them. Efficiency impacts are mixed; although transferred teachers had nearly two fewer absences per year in their new positions, transferred teachers continued to have low value‐added in their new schools.     

The role of teacher quality in retention and hiring: Using applications to transfer to uncover preferences of teachers and schools

Many large urban school districts are rethinking their personnel management strategies, often giving increased control to schools in the hiring of teachers, reducing, for example, the importance of seniority. If school hiring authorities are able to make good decisions about whom to hire, these reforms have the potential to benefit schools and students. Prior research on teacher transfers uses career history data, identifying the school in which a teacher teaches in each year. When such data are used to see which teachers transfer, it is unclear the extent to which the patterns are driven by teacher preferences or school preferences, because the matching of teachers to schools is a two‐sided choice. This study uses applications‐to‐transfer data to examine separately which teachers apply for transfer and which get hired and, in so doing, differentiates teacher from school preferences. Holding all else equal, we find that teachers with better pre‐service qualifications (certification exam scores, college competitiveness) are more likely to apply for transfer, while teachers whose students demonstrate higher achievement growth are less likely. On the other hand, schools prefer to hire “higher quality” teachers across measures that signal quality. The results suggest that not only do more effective teachers prefer to stay in their schools but that schools are able to identify and hire the best candidates when given the opportunity © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Pay‐as‐You‐Go Financing and Capital Outlay Volatility: Evidence from the States over Two Recent Economic Cycles

Pay‐as‐you‐go (pay‐go or cash) and pay‐as‐you‐use (pay‐use or debt) are two mechanisms to finance capital projects. While pay‐go faces multiple constraints, pay‐use smoothes outlays, stabilizes tax rates, and improves inter‐generational equity. Thus, pay‐use has dominated infrastructure financing for decades. In recent years, there has been revived academic interest in pay‐go as an alternate financing mechanism; however, there is a large gap in the literature and inadequate evidence on the effects of pay‐go, especially its effects on capital outlay volatility. This paper fills in the niche. Examining state experience over the two recent economic cycles, this paper finds evidence that suggests that pay‐go is associated with lower volatility in capital spending in the long run, but may increase short‐run variability. We recommend that states couple pay‐go in boom years with pay‐use in lean years. In unison, the two mechanisms can reduce aggregate volatility and increase long‐run stability of capital expenditures.     

Negotiating the meaning of brands

How does a brand become meaningful, and how does certain lifestyle values become integrated into a brand so that the brand appears like a trustworthy statement? The paper investigates the ongoing negotiation processes between brand maker and brand users as a key to understand how brands become meaningful. The result of the negotiation processes is the creation of a common consent of meaning, which the brand rests upon. This implies that a brand can only be meaningful if the brand maker and brand users can create this brand habit.     

Teacher career paths,teacher quality,and persistence in the classroom: Are public schools keeping their best?

In this paper we examine the mobility of early‐career teachers of varying quality, measured using value‐added estimates of teacher performance. Unlike previous studies that have examined these issues, we focus on the variation in these effects across the effectiveness distribution. We find that, on average, more effective teachers tend to stay in their initial schools and in the teaching profession. But there also appears to be heterogeneity in mobility behavior across the performance distribution and evidence that teacher mobility is affected by student demographics and achievement levels. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

How do Principals Assign Students to Teachers? Finding Evidence in Administrative Data and the Implications for Value Added

The federal government's Race to the Top competition has promoted the adoption of test‐based value‐added measures (VAMs) of performance as a component of teacher evaluations throughout many states, but the validity of these measures has been controversial among researchers and widely contested by teachers’ unions. A key concern is the extent to which nonrandom sorting of students to teachers may bias the results and lead to a misclassification of teachers as high or low performing. In light of potential for bias, it is important to assess the extent to which evidence of sorting can be found in the large administrative data sets used for VAM estimation. Using a large longitudinal data set from an anonymous state, we find evidence that a nontrivial amount of sorting exists—particularly sorting based on prior test scores—and that the extent of sorting varies considerably across schools, a fact obscured by the types of aggregate sorting indices developed in prior research. We also find that VAM estimation is sensitive to the presence of nonrandom sorting. There is less agreement across estimation approaches regarding a particular teacher's rank in the distribution of estimated effectiveness when schools engage in sorting.     

Teacher recruitment and retention in public and private schools

Private school salaries are substantially below those in public school systems. Nonetheless, private school heads are as satisfied as public school principals with the quality of their new teachers and substantially more satisfied with their experienced instructors. This difference remains after controlling for school and community characteristics and for the principal's tenure and educational priorities. In addition, appraisals of experienced and new teachers suggest that private schools are more successful in retaining the best of their new teachers and in developing the teaching skills of their faculties. Apparent reasons include greater flexibility in structuring pay, more supervision and mentoring of new teachers, and freedom to dismiss teachers for poor performance. These findings suggest that improvement in the quality of public school performance will require the use of accountability tools such as pay-for-performance and dismissal.     

The Productivity Costs of Inefficient Hiring Practices: Evidence From Late Teacher Hiring

We use matched employee–employer records from the teacher labor market to explore the effects of late teacher hiring on student achievement. Hiring teachers after the school year starts reduces student achievement by 0.042 SD in mathematics and 0.026 SD in reading. This reflects, in part, a temporary disruption effect in the first year. In mathematics, but not in reading, late‐hired teachers remain persistently less effective, evidence of negative selection in the teacher labor market. Late hiring concentrates in schools that disproportionately serve disadvantaged student populations, contributing to challenges in ensuring an equitable distribution of educational resources for all students.     

Inconvenient Truth? Do Collective Bargaining Agreements Help Explain the Mobility of Teachers within School Districts?

We utilize detailed teacher‐level longitudinal data from Washington State to investigate patterns of teacher mobility in districts with different collective bargaining agreement (CBA) transfer provisions. Specifically, we estimate the log odds that teachers of varying experience and effectiveness levels transfer out of their schools to other schools in the district in Washington kindergarten through 12th grade (K‐12) public schools. We find little consistent evidence relating voluntary transfer provisions in CBAs to patterns in teacher mobility, but do find evidence that patterns in within‐district mobility by teacher experience and effectiveness vary between districts that do not use seniority in involuntary transfer decisions and those that use seniority as a tiebreaker or the only factor in these moves. In models that consider teacher experience, the interaction between teacher experience and school disadvantage in teacher transfer decisions is more extreme in districts with strong involuntary seniority transfer protections; novice teachers are even more likely to stay in disadvantaged schools, and veteran teachers are even more likely to leave disadvantaged schools. On the other hand, models that consider value‐added measures of teacher effectiveness suggest that more effective teachers are less likely to leave disadvantaged schools in districts that do use seniority in involuntary transfer decisions, that is, seniority transfer provisions could actually make the distribution of output‐based measures of quality more equitable. Taken together, these results suggest that seniority transfer provisions may have differential impacts on the distributions of teacher experience and effectiveness.     

关于高校思政课教学中教师角色的思考——康德伦理思想给我们的启示

提高高校思想政治理论课教学质量,关键在思政课老师。思政课老师在教学中如何演好自己的角色,我们可以从康德的伦理思想中得到一些启示":善良意志唤起我们的责任之心";"人是目的"提醒我们把学生视作目的而非仅仅是工具;"意志自律"昭示我们要重视主体性发挥。     

Cream‐Skimming,Parking and Other Intended and Unintended Effects of High‐Powered,Performance‐Based Contracts

As performance‐based contracting in social welfare services continues to expand, concerns about potential unintended effects are also growing. We analyze the incentive effects of high‐powered, performance‐based contracts and their implications for program outcomes using panel data on Dutch cohorts of unemployed and disabled workers that were assigned to private social welfare providers in 2002 to 2005. We employ a difference‐in‐differences design that takes advantage of the fact that contracts gradually moved from partial performance‐contingent pay to full (100 percent) performance‐contingent contracting schemes. We develop explicit measures of selection into the programs and find evidence of cream skimming and other gaming activities on the part of providers, but little impact of these activities on program outcomes. Moving to a system with contract payments fully contingent on performance appears to increase job placements, but not job duration, for more readily employable workers.     

How Should We Estimate the Performance Effect of Management? Comparing Impacts of Public Managers’ and Frontline Employees’ Perceptions of Management

Many areas of public management research are dominated by a top-focused perspective in which emphasis is placed on the notion that managers themselves are usually the best sources of information about managerial behavior. Outside of the leadership literature, managers are also the typical survey respondents in public management studies. An alternative perspective on management can be provided by subordinates’ perceptions of what management is doing. Surveys of subordinates and of managers each pose potential advantages and potential disadvantages when it comes to measuring management, and each approach is likely to prove more fruitful for measuring certain management functions. Using a unique data set of parallel surveys on management with managers and their subordinates as respondents, we examine the differences and relationships between Danish school managers’ and teachers’ perceptions of management functions and the implications of such relationships for organizational performance. We find a surprisingly low correlation between manager and teacher responses regarding the same management functions. Teacher responses are better predictors of student performance for management aspects that are visible to and mediated by teachers. However, manager responses better predict performance for manager expectations that are less visible to employees.     

Do school accountability systems make it more difficult for low‐performing schools to attract and retain high‐quality teachers?

Administrative data from North Carolina are used to explore the extent to which that state's relatively sophisticated school‐based accountability system has exacerbated the challenges that schools serving low‐performing students face in retaining and attracting high‐quality teachers. Most clear are the adverse effects on retention rates, and hence on teacher turnover, in such schools. Less clear is the extent to which that higher turnover has translated into a decline in the average qualifications of the teachers in the low‐performing schools. Other states with more primitive accountability systems can expect even greater adverse effects on teacher turnover in low‐performing schools. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.