The Long-term Impacts on Students of Teacher Incentive Pay Programs

• Host
  • Kasie Whitener, Clinical Assistant Professor
• Guest:
  • Dr. Orgul Ozturk, Department Chair, Economics

Dr. Orgul Demet Ozturk is the department chair and professor of economics in the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Her academic research interests are in applied microeconomics fields, specifically labor economics and health economics. Ozturk has written articles on the effects of labor market regulations and minimum wages on female employment, effectiveness of supported employment programs for developmentally disabled, the relationship between occupation choice and welfare independence, and the effects of maternal employment and welfare use on children’s cognitive outcomes. 

Her latest published work is in collaboration with scholars Sarah R. Cohodes of University of Michigan and Ozkan Eren of University of California Riverside. It examines the long term outcomes of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), introduced in South Carolina in 2007. The program is a national model of teacher performance pay, which embeds incentives for teacher performance alongside professional development, the potential for career advancement, observations of teacher performance, and test-score based accountability.

The goal of TAP is to improve overall education outcomes. Some differentiators between TAP and other monetary-incentive programs include:

1. Teachers’ bonus allocation hinges on both their own students’ achievement gains as well as the school’s overall achievement growth,
2. Bonuses are substantial and sufficiently differentiated to cause changes in the behavior of educators, and
3. Teachers have the opportunity to earn bonuses based on their observed performance in the classroom and the resulting performance of their students. 

Where can I read more about the study and its significant findings?

The National Council on Teacher Quality reports findings in their blog post titled, “What are the long-term effects of teacher performance pay on student outcomes?” The Fordham Institute reported on the paper with a post titled, “Look beyond test scores to gauge the impact of teacher performance pay.” and NewsNationNow.com reported on the effect of federal grants to fund these state-level implementations of TAP in “Performance Pay for Teachers Could Have Long-term Benefits.”

The conversation also includes discussion around the role of the Economic Policy Center (EPiC) at the Moore School in informing policy makers as to the efficacy of the programs they enact. 

Art for this episode borrowed from this link.

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This has been Moore Impact; when you learn more you know more and when you know more you do more. Thanks for listening.

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