Reward your best teachers for the great work they do! Is your school system considering teacher merit pay? Now is the time to know the potential pitfalls and learn from the experiences of other districts. Respected experts Ritter and Barnett provide a step-by-step approach to merit pay that draws on best practices from effective, successful programs. You’ll find: A user-friendly summary of existing merit pay programs and their strengths and weaknesses Six essential principles for designing a program that supports teacher professional development, schoolwide progress, and student achievement How-to’s and tools for every phase of program development, including collaborating with teachers to create balanced assessment tools

This book discusses various pay and compensation initiatives in use nationwide, highlighting: (1) How Are Teachers Compensated?" (current status of teacher compensation and the changing context of teaching); (2) "What Have We Learned from Attempts at Change?" (three approaches to compensating teachers, recent short-lived reform efforts, and other factors supporting compensation reform); (3) "The Elements of Pay and Compensation" (traditional pay, new approaches to pay, pay for behaviors or outcomes, and benefits as part of compensation); (4) "What Is the Relationship between Pay and Motivation?" (theories of motivation, implications of motivation theories for compensation, applications to education, and compensation factors motivating teachers); (5) "Rewarding Individual Teachers for Developing and Deploying Needed Knowledge and Skills" (knowledge- and skill-based pay and examples of such pay structures); (6) "School Bonuses for Improved Student Performance" (group-based performance awards, examples of performance awards, and gain-sharing programs); (7) "Designing and Implementing Alternative Teacher Compensation Systems" (compensation and school improvement, three design strategies, and stakeholder roles); and (8) "Compensation To Enhance Teacher Quality and Supply" (staffing and compensation challenges, issues, and innovations). Two resources present generic models of knowledge- and skill-based pay and principles for implementing change in compensation. (Contains approximately 335 references.) (SM)

Teacher incentive systems enable school districts to address the current concerns of their constituencies: teachers' concern with salaries, administrators' concern for attracting good people into the teaching profession, and community concern that increased expenditures for teacher salaries have not improved education. Accordingly, this handbook is designed to assist local school district planners in improving teacher quality and motivation. First, an analysis is provided of the causes of difficulty in attracting highly qualified teachers, motivating all teachers, and retaining superior teachers. Next, major alternative teacher incentive systems are identified, based on analogous systems in the private sector. These include compensation plans, career options, enhanced professional responsibilities, nonmonitary recognition, and improved working conditions. Findings from research and experience about the effectiveness of these alternative incentives are then summarized. Finally, guidelines are provided for selecting, adapting, and implementing teacher incentive programs. An appendix suggests complementary responsibilities for national and state agencies to help strengthen teaching through the improved use of incentives. A 68-item bibliography is included. (TE)

This bibliography includes scholarly journals, dissertations, papers, and books published primarily from 1980 through December 1984 that focus on teacher evaluation and merit pay. These materials are presented in separate chapters, according to the type of publication in which they appeared. In addition to materials identified and annotated from a literature search of several education databases, the authors wrote to public school districts with student populations of over 5,000 requesting copies of their teacher evaluation materials. They received 348 sets of evaluation documents and these materials are annotated in the chapter entitled School District Publications. Other materials prepared by school districts are included in the chapter entitled Papers.