Performance Contracting... Proceed with Caution

Abstract

PERFORMANCE contracting is another promise for education to guarantee more return (output) for the time and dollars (input) invested in instruction . . . a yet unproven innovation in which private corporations and teachers will be paid according to their ability, as assessed by preand post-standardized tests, to improve specified skills of a given group of students. Thus far, the several programs in operation have been geared to improving reading and mathematical skills of students who are performing substantially below grade level. Because of the qualified success of the program operated this past year at Texarkana, Arkansas, under a Title VIII grant from the Office of Education, the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) has decided to expand the program to eighteen school districts, with six firms working with over 15,000 children in a five-million-dollar, one-year experiment. Government officials and the six firms