Rewards and Reform offers a comprehensive view of student, teacher, managerial, and organizational incentives and shows how they are linked to school reform goals. Noted experts in education policy, practice, and research, as well as respected thinkers and practitioners from the public and private sectors, consider a variety of incentive approaches.Drawing from such diverse sources as studies of performance incentives, reforms in Vermont, school structuring in New York City, private sector research on management, and current theories of motivation and organizational development, the book explains the underlying issues surrounding incentives and reform and provides a framework for future research and policy. The book shows, for example, how workplace redesigns could answer teachers' needs for autonomy and participation--and so bolster the professional nature of teaching. It also examines alternative ways of thinking about teacher compensation.

Does the performance of your local government leave something to be desired? Maybe youre not satisfied with the services your government provides, or maybe the cost for these services is far too much. If so, take heart; you can do something about it. Steps to Local Government Reform is your step-by-step guide to undertaking reform on the local level. Public manager Allyn O. Lockner combines years of experience in the public sector to show how you, as a resident or an elected local official, can work with others to successfully implement change within your community. Lockner explains how to make numerous choices regarding the preparation for, and the study, planning, marketing, approval, implementation, and evaluation of reforms. He also shows you how to share these reform results with others. Using various criteria, comparisons, practices, analyses, and other studies aimed at local government performance, Lockner delves into the sometimes tricky world of enacting reform. He reveals how local government works and provides a map for maneuvering around bureaucratic roadblocks. In addition, he includes a comprehensive bibliography for research, an appendix of terms commonly used in the reform process, and guides to creating reform models that are likely to work. With this compendium, you can help resolve vital issues, improve your community, and live a better life.

This book offers an ambitious new system for evaluating, compensating, and providing professional development for school teachers and administrators. In this realigned system, new forms of accountability are introduced, but they go hand in hand with new rewards and access to enhanced forms of professional development. A bold and comprehensive plan that includes contributions from many leading researchers, A Grand Bargain for Education Reform is a crucial contribution to contemporary debates about education and the challenges it must meet in the twenty-first century. "This timely volume responds to President Obama's call for a renewed focus on teacher effectiveness as a central component of education reform. With thoughtful contributions from many prominent educators, it offers a range of ideas for improving teacher compensation, professional development, and accountability in our nation's schools." -- Representative George Miller, D-CA, chairman, House Education and Labor Committee, U.S. House of Representatives "A Grand Bargain for Education Reform advocates for increasing the professionalism of teaching by working with educators as full partners in school improvement. Although I don't agree with every recommendation in the framework, the substance of focused professional development, improving teacher evaluation, enhancing career opportunities for teachers who remain in the classroom, and differentiating compensation offers educational leaders an innovative path to improved teaching and learning." -- Randi Weingarten, president, American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO "Considerable consensus has been built around the notion that a high quality teacher is the single-most important factor in a child's education. A Grand Bargain for Education Reform moves the discussion to the next level, proposing new ways to evaluate and compensate the men and women who play such a crucial role in determining the fate of modern school reform efforts." -- Joe Williams, director, Democrats for Education Reform "A perceptive educator focuses on the critical step to better schools: paying teachers more for teaching well." -- Lamar Alexander, U.S. Secretary of Education (1991-1993) "This book offers a dynamic collection of authors, whose combined experience and expertise is unmatched. Their collective message makes this book a good blueprint that school communities can use to build systems that will lead to great success for schools and children." -- Gerald L. Zahorchak, Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Theodore Hershberg is a professor of public policy and history and director of the Center for Greater Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania, and director of Operation Public Education. Claire Robertson-Kraft is associate director of the Center for Greater Philadelphia and of Operation Public Education, and a former elementary school teacher.

The concept of pay for performance for public school teachers is growing in popularity and use, and it has resurged to once again occupy a central role in education policy. Performance Incentives: Their Growing Impact on American K-12 Education offers the most up-to-date and complete analysis of this promising—yet still controversial—policy innovation. Performance Incentives brings together an interdisciplinary team of experts, providing an unprecedented discussion and analysis of the pay-for-performance debate by • Identifying the potential strengths and weaknesses of tying pay to student outcomes; • Comparing different strategies for measuring teacher accomplishments; • Addressing key conceptual and implemen - tation issues; • Describing what teachers themselves think of merit pay; • Examining recent examples in Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas; • Studying the overall impact on student achievement.

Our economies face constant challenges from many different directions. Structural reforms are implemented every day, either to grasp the benefits of globalization and technological change, or to avoid foundering on unaffordable welfare systems or the rise of new economies.Despite this flurry of reforms, many of their effects are insufficiently understood. What makes reforms a success or a failure? Why do we witness systematically ambivalent attitudes to reforms? Can governments implement reforms differently, without inflicting prejudice to large fringes of the population?This book explores these issues by comparing a number of reforms, across a large set of countries and sectors. First, through an innovative multisectorial input-output analysis, the authors compare the effects of liberalisation reforms in the telecommunication and electricity sectors across Europe. Surprisingly, they find that very similar and well-intended reforms can generate highly contrasted outcomes. It is also shown that governments must consider the effects of each reform on all sectorsof the economy. Second, the authors explore how governments can tailor their reform strategy to alter the redistributive effects of reforms. They show that the government's approach to reforms has been very different across time and across countries. A government's approach depends on localinstitutions, on the nature of the opposition, and on the scope of the reform under way. The authors, however, show that governments do have alternatives. Often, there are ways to tailor reforms so as to protect specific parts of the population; and there are ways to experiment gradually, to avoid costly policy mistakes.

This book addresses an important element of public governance, providing a systematic investigation of rewards for working in the public sector, and looks at the impacts of the choices of reward structures. It will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative public administration, international politics and government worldwide.

A look at existing emerging alternative approaches to the single-salary teacher compensation structure found in most school districts in Canada