Teacher Compensation

Here's an interesting discussion on "merit pay" for teachers.

I tend to agree that you can't devise a system that pays teachers solely based on student performance on test scores. That would definitely lead to even more "teaching to the test" than now occurs. What you can do is pay based on an agreed upon set of multiple measures and include value-added data...that is, student growth from the beginning of the year to the end, to encourage teachers to adopt practices that move students forward, no matter their individual starting points.

Compensation structures for teachers should: enable systems to attract strong applicants, help improve retention of the best teachers, encourage all teachers to improve their practice, and provide low stakes exit strategies for the lowest-performing teachers.

Peer and principal evaluation as well as individual, quantifiable value-added performance of teachers and bonuses for mentoring and/or content-specific graduate degrees (mentoring has been shown to boost retention, and content-specific graduate training has been shown to increase student performance) -- parent/student feedback should also be taking into account.