Professional Development

Group Performance Pay?

By Elizabeth Rich — June 24, 2010 1 min read
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Today, the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future held a forum in Washington to release its new report, “Team Up for 21st Century Teaching and Learning.” The theme of event, and the report, was that teachers working together can accomplish a lot more when it comes to student achievement than teachers working alone. I’ll be providing more details on Teacher’s website about this study, the components NCTAF considers critical for building successful learning teams, and the event soon.

I heard something interesting today that I haven’t heard discussed much from one of the presenters, Tom Payzant, former superintendent of several school districts, including most recently Boston. Now a professor of practice at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Payzant acknowledged the ongoing debate about performance pay and then said that he believes that teachers should not be rewarded individually, but rather for the work they do together. “I love the idea of teams of teachers working collaboratively together and being responsible for outcomes and results and hav[ing] some performance pay incentive there,” he said.

What are your feelings about this? If you had the support you needed to create a thriving learning team at your school (or maybe you already do), would you be opposed to benefitting financially as a group—as opposed to individually—for your work?

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Teaching Now blog.