Research Brief
No Evidence That Incentive Pay for Teacher Teams Improves Student Outcomes
May 30, 2012
Team Pay for Performance
Experimental Evidence from the Round Rock Pilot Project on Team Incentives
Published In: Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, v. 34, no. 4, Dec. 2012, p. 367-390
Posted on RAND.org on January 01, 2012
Education policymakers have shown increased interest in incentive programs for teachers based on the outcomes of their students. This article examines a program in which bonuses were awarded to teams of middle school teachers based on their collective contribution to student test score gains. The study employs a randomized controlled trial to examine effects of the bonus program over the course of an academic year, with the experiment repeated a second year, and finds no significant effects on the achievement of students or the attitudes and practices of teachers. The lack of effects of team-level pay for performance in this study is consistent with other recent experiments studying the short-term effects of bonus awards for individual performance or whole-school performance.
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