Teacher Bonuses

It’s no big secret that students in this country aren’t achieving as well as those in many other countries. In searching for ways to improve student outcomes, many school districts have tried teacher bonuses. It does sound like this policy could be a winner. Unfortunately, according to several recent studies the students of teachers who were offered incentive bonuses scored only slightly better on some standardized tests. And these differences were extremely small and not statistically significant according to senior statistician Dan McCaffrey of the Rand Corporation. The corporation’s research showed that in the short term teacher bonuses alone do not improve student performance. More studies will need to be done to see if other measures might improve student outcomes. For example, beside monetary measures tied to student achievement scores, research might include such things as teacher practices via observation and professional development.