School- and Group-Based Pay: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

It has been difficult to improve teacher performance in schools through incentive-based pay models. Two overarching questions that this volume addresses are (1) why attempts to improve teaching and schools through incentive-based pay models have been so difficult to implement in schools and (2) whether some new teacher pay models are promising enough to move in newer directions. This volume focuses on school- and group-based pay. Over the past fifty years, most experimentation with alternative compensation approaches has focused on individual performance-based pay (teacher merit pay), which establishes a link between the salaries of individual teachers and evaluations of their performance. Studies of states and school districts that have implemented teacher merit pay plans and later abandoned them suggest that teacher rivalry and dissension, administrative problems (such as record keeping), and issues of personnel evaluation (such as problems in determining who deserved extra pay) were among the primary reasons for discontinuing such pay plans. Therefore, numerous scholars (Johnson, 1986; Malen, Murphy & Hart, 1987; Murnane, 1986) have questioned the appropriateness of linking the compensation of teachers to the system of personnel evaluation, at least as a basis for determining individual teacher pay. Recently, Odden and Kelley (1997) maintained that problems with previous efforts to institute merit pay reside in the fact that these plans were attempting to calculate ‘‘merit’’ on an individual basis. Thus, they have suggested that school- and group-based performance awards are a promising alternative teacher compensation strategy. Groupbased performance awards, or collective incentive pay plans, do not focus on individual performance. The quality of education, proponents contend, may be enhanced to the extent that teachers ‘‘act as a group, evaluating each other’s performance, disseminating new ideas, and working together to solve common problems’’ (Bacharach, Lipsky & Shedd, 1984, p. 49). Currently, school-based performance award programs allocate monetary awards to teachers for their performance during a specified period of time (typically one year). The amount of the bonus is normally divided equally among the teachers in the school and is provided in addition to the teachers’ base salaries. Variations of plans that allocate monetary benefits to teachers in individual schools are being developed and implemented in several states. 1 School-based performance award programs are viewed as ways of encouraging schools, and people who work within them, to accept and implement new state-level student achievement standards and assessments. Although the concept of group-based pay has recently been applied to individual schools, it could be applied to work groups within a school as well. Indeed, as the concept of