This examination of data from the 1987–88 Schools and Staffing Survey challenges the common supposition that most teachers oppose merit pay. The authors find that teachers in districts that use merit pay do not seem demoralized by the system or hostile toward it, and teachers of...

Ballou and Podgursky analyze the issues surrounding the debate over whether increasing salaries for teachers leads to a more qualified teaching workforce. The authors find little evidence to support the link between increased salaries and teacher quality, then address two questions: 1) What went...

This examination of data from the 1987-88 Schools and Staffing Survey challenges the common supposition that most teachers oppose merit pay. The authors find that teachers in districts that use merit pay do not seem demoralized by the system or hostile toward it, and teachers of disadvantaged...

Private school salaries are substantially below those in public school systems. Nonetheless, private school heads are as satisfied as public school principals with the quality of their new teachers and substantially more satisfied with their experienced instructors. This difference remains after...

In recent years many states have raised teacher salaries to attract more capable teachers. Since teacher labor markets are typically in a state of excess supply, success of such policies is contingent on containing perverse feedbacks which arise among exit decisions, vacancy rates, and the...

Returns to seniority account for a substantial share of public K-12 expenditures. Over the first ten to 15 years of a career, public school teachers enjoy average wage growth at least equivalent to that of other white-collar workers. Explanations for this structure in terms of human capital or...

Conventional value-added assessment requires that achievement be reported on an interval scale. While many metrics do not have this property, application of item response theory (IRT) is said to produce interval scales. However, it is difficult to confirm that the requisite conditions are met....

Despite a surplus of candidates for most teaching jobs, a strong academic record does little for an applicant's job prospects. This does not appear to result from lukewarm interest on the part of such applicants or choosiness about the positions they accept. Administrators' lack of interest in...

The Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT) was a three-year study testing the hypothesis that rewarding teachers for improved student scores on standardized tests would cause scores to rise. Results, as described in Springer et al. (2010b), did not confirm this hypothesis. In this article we...