A Straightforward Guide to Teacher Merit Pay: Encouraging and Rewarding Schoolwide Improvement

Reward your best teachers for the great work they do!

Is your school system considering teacher merit pay? Now is the time to know the potential pitfalls and learn from the experiences of other districts. Respected experts Ritter and Barnett provide a step-by-step approach to merit pay that draws on best practices from effective, successful programs. You’ll find:

• A user-friendly summary of existing merit pay programs and their strengths and weaknesses
• Six essential principles for designing a program that supports teacher professional development, schoolwide progress, and student achievement
• How-to’s and tools for every phase of program development, including collaborating with teachers to create balanced assessment tools

Gary W. Ritter is a Professor of Education Policy and holder of the Endowed Chair in Education Policy in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. He is also the Director of the Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas, which serves as a source of evidence and data on K-12 education in Arkansas to all interested constituents. Currently, his primary area of interest is the development of alternative strategies for teacher compensation in public schools. His research interests also include program evaluation, school finance, standards-based and accountability-based school reform, and racial segregation in schools. Gary has been a faculty member at the University of Arkansas for the past ten years after earning a Ph.D. in Education Policy in 2000 from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Gary currently teaches courses in Education Policy, Program Evaluation, and Research Methods to graduate students. His work has been published in various outlets, including Phi Delta Kappan, Review of Educational Research, Education Finance & Policy, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, the Journal of Education Finance, the American Review of Public Administration, The International Journal of Testing, The Georgetown Public Policy Review, Black Issues in Higher Education, Education Next, and Education Week.

Joshua H. Barnett is an assistant professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. He also serves as a co-principal investigator on two Institute of Education Sciences grants and is an affiliated researcher with the Learning Sciences Institute at ASU. His primary research interest focuses on educational reforms leading to improved adequacy and equity in education, specifically related to teacher quality. His other research interests include school finance, performance incentives, and teacher and leader preparation. He has worked with schools in Arkansas, Arizona, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, as well as internationally in New Zealand. He earned his Ph.D. in Public Policy in 2007 from the University of Arkansas, and he has published work in Review of Educational Research, Teachers College Record, and Educational Leadership. He has also served as a consultant for the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences′ What Works Clearinghouse.