Salient Introductory Points
-Increased capital spending has not led to improved schooling outcomes
-Enrollment has rapidly increased, but quality has stagnated at alarming levels
-New buildings/quality of physical infrastructure do not equal improved outcomes
-Trained teachers are no more likely to be better than untrained teachers in improving outcomes
-By far and away, the most effective way to improve schooling is to improve teachers
-The question, thus, is how to improve teacher effectiveness.....alas, performance pay!
Characteristics of Successfully Designed Performance Pay Plans:
-Intrinsic Motivation must not be relegated, and in fact, can be strengthened through well-designed performance pay plans; the important point is in how the incentive pay is "framed"-as "recognition and reward for outstanding teaching" is critical
-Teaching to the Test is not a negative factor, according to research, as tests can, in fact, be a good way to measure classroom preparation and effort of teachers
-All Involved in the bonus pay; to not only focus on high achievers in the classroom, the performance pay must be inclusive for the performance of all students in the class
Results
---->"Overall, almost every child in an incentive school performed significantly better than comparable children in control schools."
----> Incentives trickle down and performance is raised in all subject areas, not just those being directly controlled for in the study
---->"Teacher education and training by themselves don’t seem to matter, but do so when combined with incentives." -Qualifications+Incentives=Success
----> Teachers are shown to support performance pay, but prefer administration through NGO structures and not the government
----> "Supplemental instruction...using locally-hired volunteers on a stipend..." is the "lowest hanging fruit."
----> **The "binding constraints" to educational quality are not teacher qualifications! They are actual PEDAGOGY AND EFFORT!! What teacher's are actually taught DOES matter!!
Where Do We Go From Here:
Thus, incentives "work." The big challenge and question for further research is how to assess performance in implementing incentive pay for teachers. Testing-based performance incentives are riddled with problems, some of which were mentioned by Muralidharan; teaching to the test and the abandoning of the majority of students to focus on those gifted students who might be able to skew testing results in teachers' favors. While there might be positive spillover from "teaching to the test," as mentioned, innovations must be introduced. The specific innovation, in this case, would be student-based assessments of teachers.
According to a recent article in The Atlantic Magazine, ("Why Kids Should Grade Teachers, October 2012), "Test scores can reveal when kids are not learning; they can't reveal why." Thus, if we are to truly assess teacher performance, assessment by methodologies which can actually point to areas that can be improved can have a much larger "spillover effect" than testing-based assessments. In research conducted by the "Measures of Effective Teaching Project," sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it was noted, succinctly, that, "Students were better than trained adult observers at evaluating teachers." These surveys were much "less volatile" than standardized test scores in reflecting ethnic or monetary disparities amongst students.
Timothy Daly, President of The New Teacher Project, notes, "The advent of student feedback in teacher evaluations is among the most significant developments for education reform in the last decade." Thus, we must be willing to experiment with introducing this key innovation into performance pay in the developing world to harness the needed positive multipliers to improve the quality of teaching for the world's most disadvantaged citizens.
