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New Center Asks: Does Merit Pay Work?

In the 1980s, school districts dabbled with programs that offered teachers cash inducements, such as bonuses or raises, for doing their jobs well.

But those merit-pay programs were mostly short-lived, hotly debated, and understudied. Even after all this time, no one knows definitively whether children learn more when teachers are paid extra for boosting their students’ achievement.

Now “pay for performance” is in vogue again, with programs operating in Florida, Minnesota, Texas, and Denver, among other places. This time, though, a group of researchers at Vanderbilt University is seizing the chance to put those...