I hear you about test scores. I thought @charlie’s ideas about giving it to folks doing specific work was good, and that often happens with stipended positions/tasks within contracts.

The main difficulty is, as Herndon noted, there should be a rational basis for deciding who gets the “bonus” money so that everyone understands why one person did, and someone else did not get it.

Speaking for myself, I won’t/don’t work harder for more money. I don’t do anything just for money. I went into teaching knowing that I wasn’t going to make a lot of money – which isn’t the same thing as saying I don’t care about money – but there are other job-related things that I also care about.

I believe a lottery system would work better than one that’s tied to test scores.

The study done by Ariely does show some benefit in performance for small bonuses. I think it might be that those are not perceived as “monetary” but more a “social” transaction, such as Charlie talks about? I imagine if they were perceived as being handed out randomly, or with favoritism, they could have a very pernicious effect on morale though.

I think it’s work at how we do compensation and seniority just to keep ourselves intellectually honest. I’m concerned about what is happening with largely seniority based layoffs in my district, that we’ll end up with a teaching staff that is all about 10 years from retirement if things keep up as they are. There is also not a lot of evidence for seniority making teachers better after the 5-10 point (although by what measure?), which is the basis for pay and job retention in most places. But if those are problems, abolishment of the system for a “market-based” is not to palatable either.