Denver Performance-Pay Plan Yields Student Progress

By Julie Blair

A compensation system designed to provide Denver teachers with monetary bonuses for their extra efforts to improve student performance has produced considerable achievement in many classrooms, the final report on the nationally watched pilot project says.

What's more, researchers suggest that the pay plan served as an engine for positive change throughout the district. And yet the nation's first so-called pay-for-performance endeavor is difficult and expensive to implement, the report says. School districts that hope to accomplish similar goals would be wise to evaluate whether they have the resources and commitment to try such a plan, it suggests.

"The pilot has demonstrated that the focus on student achievement and a teacher's contribution to such achievement can be a major trigger for change— if the initiative also addresses the district factors that shape the school," concludes the Community Training and Assistance Center, a nonprofit organization based in Boston that has been studying the project for four years. The initiative, it says, "can provide a basis for improving the entire school system by tying district activities...