A study on performance based compensation.
A Tweet by Alfie Kohn sent me to this study of the impact of performance-based compensation on student performance.
There is great interest in understanding the potential of teacher incentives to improve student achievement. This paper sheds light into this question by examining the recent introduction of performance-related pay in Portugal’s public schools. Our approach is based on a diff erence-in-di fferences analysis drawing on two complementary control groups. These control groups either were exposed to a lighter version of the intervention (the case of public schools in the Azores and Madeira) or were not exposed at all (the case of private schools). All students in
all schools were administered the same national exams.Our results consistently indicate that the increased focus on individual teacher performance caused a signi cant and sizable relative decline in student achievement, as measured by national exams. However, the decline in achievement is less sizable when considering school-level results, suggesting an increasing importance of grade inflation.
