The most rigorous study ever shows what we’ve said all along. Merit pay is bunk.

Released today, the results of the most rigorous study ever conducted to see the relationship between student performance and merit pay demonstrates what we’ve said all along. It doesn’t work.

Let’s say it one more time. It doesn’t work.

EdWeek:

The implementation of the pay program “did not set off significant negative reactions of the kind that have attended the introduction of merit pay elsewhere,” the study’s authors write. “But neither did it yield consistent and lasting gains in test scores. It simply did not do much of anything.”

The findings arrive in a highly charged teacher-quality policy environment, in which many states and districts, with support from the Obama administration, are overhauling current practices for preparing, evaluating, and compensating teachers.

And they come at a particularly inopportune time for the U.S. Department of Education, which is scheduled to announce a fresh slate of grantees this month under a federal program designed to seed merit-pay programs for teachers and principals.

One more time. It doesn’t work.

Advertisement