Performance Pay and Teachers' Effort, Productivity and Grading Ethics

Victor Lavy

No 10622, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Performance-related incentive pay for teachers is being introduced in many countries, but there is little evidence of its effects. This paper evaluates a rank-order tournament among teachers of English, Hebrew, and mathematics in Israel. Teachers were rewarded with cash bonuses for improving their students' performance on high-school matriculation exams. Two identification strategies were used to estimate the program effects, a regression discontinuity design and propensity score matching. The regression discontinuity method exploits both a natural experiment stemming from measurement error in the assignment variable and a sharp discontinuity in the assignment-to-treatment variable. The results suggest that performance incentives have a significant effect on directly affected students with some minor spillover effects on untreated subjects. The improvements appear to derive from changes in teaching methods, after-school teaching, and increased responsiveness to students' needs. No evidence found for teachers' manipulation of test scores. The program appears to have been more cost-effective than school-group cash bonuses or extra instruction time and is as effective as cash bonuses for students.

JEL-codes: I21 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-07
Note: ED LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Published as Lavy, Victor. "Performance Pay and Teachers' Effort, Productivity, and Grading Ethics." American Economic Review 99, 5 (2009): 1979-2011.

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Journal Article: Performance Pay and Teachers' Effort, Productivity, and Grading Ethics (2009)
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