Study finds that except for temporary gains, students did not progress faster in classrooms where teachers were offered bonuses
A teacher at Linden's School 10 sets up a classroom for the new school year. TRENTON — Paying teachers bonuses to improve student test scores may not work after all, according to a new study researchers say is the first scientifically rigorous test of merit pay.
Vanderbilt University researchers studied a program in Nashville that offered bonuses of $5,000 to $15,000 to middle school math teachers if their students scored higher than expected on a statewide exam, according to a report released today.
After three years, the program proved to be a bust, the study said. Except for some temporary gains, students did not progress any faster in classrooms where teachers were offered bonuses.
The small study could be a cautionary flag to the Obama administration and state governments — including New Jersey — that consider tying teacher pay to students’ academic performance as a central piece of their education reform efforts.
Gov. Chris Christie is expected to propose a statewide performance pay program for New Jersey teachers next week. Today, the governor’s spokesman questioned whether the Vanderbilt study would have any impact.
"The study has limitations, which its authors acknowledged," said Michael Drewniak, Christie’s spokesman. "It does not support any sweeping conclusions."
But officials at the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said the study’s results were no surprise to teachers who have fought the introduction of pay-for-performance for years.
"We’ve maintained for a long time that many proponents of merit pay promote an oversimplified scheme that’s not likely to work in the real world," said Steve Baker, a NJEA spokesman. "This was a real world test where you reward people for supposedly helping their students achieve better test scores, and frankly, it failed."
The Nashville experiment was studied by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education in cooperation with the nonprofit RAND Corporation.
About two thirds of Nashville’s middle-school math teachers volunteered to participate in the experiment. Half of the 296 teachers were placed randomly in a control group, while the rest were eligible for bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 if their pupils scored significantly higher than expected on a statewide exam.
The bonuses amounted to as much as 30 percent of teachers’ yearly salaries in Nashville, where teachers are paid between $36,000 to $64,000, union officials said.
Over the next three years, 34 percent of the eligible teachers received a bonus at least once because their students did well on the exam. Eighteen of the teachers received bonuses all three years.
However, the study concluded students in the classes where teachers received bonuses did not progress any faster than those in classes taught by instructors were not eligible for the cash.
Pay-for-performance is not "the magic bullet that so often the policy world is looking for," said Matthew G. Springer, director of Vanderbilt’s National Center on Performance Incentives.
At least in this experiment, "it doesn’t work," Springer said.
However, researchers said the experiment was limited. The Nashville teachers who received bonuses did not receive any additional mentoring or professional development. Principals and fellow teachers did not know who participated in the experiment or who received cash awards.
Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., said he did not believe the study had much value and said he was concerned it would only confuse the issue.
"The fact that that teachers don’t respond to cash bonuses like rats do to food pellets does nothing to diminish my confidence that it’s good for schooling if teacher pay better reflects the contributions that teachers make," Hess said. "Serious proponents of merit pay believe the point is not any kind of short-term test score bump but making the profession more attractive to talented candidates."
The study was released at a two-day conference, "Evaluating and Rewarding Educator Effectiveness," at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College that drew participants from Colorado, Georgia, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and other places conducting their own experiments with performance pay.
The study did not shake the faith of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and other education officials who have encouraged states to adopt merit pay programs.
"While this is a good study, it only looked at the narrow question of whether more pay motivates teachers to try harder," said Sandra Abrevaya, a spokeswoman for Duncan.
The study did not address the Obama administration’s push to "change the culture of teaching by giving all educators the feedback they need to get better," Abrevaya said.
In New Jersey’s application for $400 million in the federal Race to the Top competition for education reform money, the state proposed spending $63.5 million to provide merit pay and incentives for teachers willing to work in the lowest-performing schools. Though the state failed to win the Race to the Top money, the governor has said tieing teacher pay to student performance is an important part of education reform in New Jersey.
"I don’t believe that we should be rewarding failure," Christie said earlier this month. "That’s why I believe in merit pay."
Liz Willen of The Hechinger Report at Columbia University’s Teachers College contributed to this report.