IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v30y2011i3p394-403.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Teacher opinions on performance pay: Evidence from India

Author

Listed:
  • Muralidharan, Karthik
  • Sundararaman, Venkatesh

Abstract

The practical viability of performance-based pay programs for teachers depends critically on the extent of support the idea will receive from teachers. We present evidence on teacher opinions with regard to performance-based pay from teacher interviews conducted in the context of an experimental evaluation of a program that provided performance-based bonuses to teachers in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. We report four main findings in this paper: (1) over 80% of teachers had a favorable opinion about the idea of linking a component of pay to measures of performance, (2) exposure to an actual incentive program increased teacher support for the idea, (3) teacher support declines with age, experience, training, and base pay, and (4) the extent of teachers' stated ex ante support for performance-linked pay (over a series of mean-preserving spreads of pay) is positively correlated with their ex post performance as measured by estimates of teacher value addition. This suggests that teachers are aware of their own effectiveness and that implementing a performance-linked pay program could not only have broad-based support among teachers but also attract more effective teachers into the teaching profession.

Suggested Citation

  • Muralidharan, Karthik & Sundararaman, Venkatesh, 2011. "Teacher opinions on performance pay: Evidence from India," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 394-403, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:30:y:2011:i:3:p:394-403
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272-7757(11)00007-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven G. Rivkin & Eric A. Hanushek & John F. Kain, 2005. "Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(2), pages 417-458, March.
    2. Fehr, Ernst & Falk, Armin, 2002. "Psychological foundations of incentives," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 687-724, May.
    3. Victor Lavy, 2009. "Performance Pay and Teachers' Effort, Productivity, and Grading Ethics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1979-2011, December.
    4. Edward P. Lazear, 2000. "Performance Pay and Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1346-1361, December.
    5. Dale Ballou & Michael Podgursky, 1993. "Teachers' Attitudes toward Merit Pay: Examining Conventional Wisdom," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 47(1), pages 50-61, October.
    6. Dante Contreras & Tomás Rau, 2012. "Tournament Incentives for Teachers: Evidence from a Scaled-Up Intervention in Chile," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(1), pages 219-246.
    7. Figlio, David N. & Kenny, Lawrence W., 2007. "Individual teacher incentives and student performance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(5-6), pages 901-914, June.
    8. Atkinson, Adele & Burgess, Simon & Croxson, Bronwyn & Gregg, Paul & Propper, Carol & Slater, Helen & Wilson, Deborah, 2009. "Evaluating the impact of performance-related pay for teachers in England," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 251-261, June.
    9. Caroline M. Hoxby & Andrew Leigh, 2004. "Pulled Away or Pushed Out? Explaining the Decline of Teacher Aptitude in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 236-240, May.
    10. Jonah E. Rockoff, 2004. "The Impact of Individual Teachers on Student Achievement: Evidence from Panel Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 247-252, May.
    11. Karthik Muralidharan & Venkatesh Sundararaman, 2011. "Teacher Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from India," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(1), pages 39-77.
    12. Michael Kremer & Nazmul Chaudhury & F. Halsey Rogers & Karthik Muralidharan & Jeffrey Hammer, 2005. "Teacher Absence in India: A Snapshot," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 658-667, 04/05.
    13. Victor Lavy, 2002. "Evaluating the Effect of Teachers' Group Performance Incentives on Pupil Achievement," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(6), pages 1286-1317, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Karthik Muralidharan & Venkatesh Sundararaman, 2011. "Teacher Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from India," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(1), pages 39-77.
    2. Woessmann, Ludger, 2011. "Cross-country evidence on teacher performance pay," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 404-418, June.
    3. Balch, Ryan & Springer, Matthew G., 2015. "Performance pay, test scores, and student learning objectives," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 114-125.
    4. Derek Neal, 2011. "The Design of Performance Pay in Education," NBER Working Papers 16710, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jones, Michael D., 2013. "Teacher behavior under performance pay incentives," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 148-164.
    6. Roland Fryer & Steven Levitt & John List & Sally Sadoff, 2012. "Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives through Loss Aversion: A Field Experiment," Framed Field Experiments 00591, The Field Experiments Website.
    7. Johnston, Andrew C., 2021. "Preferences, Selection, and the Structure of Teacher Pay," IZA Discussion Papers 14831, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Roland G. Fryer, 2011. "Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from New York City Public Schools," NBER Working Papers 16850, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Andrea Lepine, 2016. "Teacher Incentives and Student Performance: Evidence from Brazil," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2016_18, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    10. Baethge, Caroline & Fiedler, Marina, 2016. "Aligning mission preferences: Does self-selection foster performance in working groups?," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Betriebswirtschaftliche Reihe B-18-16, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    11. Bourdon, Jean & Frölich, Markus & Michaelowa, Katharina, 2007. "Teacher Shortages, Teacher Contracts and their Impact on Education in Africa," IZA Discussion Papers 2844, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Roland G. Fryer, 2013. "Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from New York City Public Schools," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(2), pages 373-407.
    13. Hanushek, Eric A., 2011. "The economic value of higher teacher quality," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 466-479, June.
    14. Goldhaber, Dan & Walch, Joe, 2012. "Strategic pay reform: A student outcomes-based evaluation of Denver's ProComp teacher pay initiative," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 1067-1083.
    15. Felipe Barrera-Osorio & Dario Maldonado & Catherine Rodríguez, 2012. "Calidad de la educación básica y media en Colombia: diagnóstico y propuestas," Documentos de Trabajo 10078, Universidad del Rosario.
    16. Victor Lavy, 2009. "Performance Pay and Teachers' Effort, Productivity, and Grading Ethics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1979-2011, December.
    17. Emiliana Vegas & Ilana Umansky, 2005. "Improving Teaching and Learning through Effective Incentives : What Can We Learn from Education Reforms in Latin America?," World Bank Publications - Reports 8694, The World Bank Group.
    18. Montalbo, Adrien, 2021. "Schools without a law: Primary education in France from the Revolution to the Guizot Law," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    19. Murphy, Richard & Weinhardt, Felix & Wyness, Gill, 2021. "Who teaches the teachers? A RCT of peer-to-peer observation and feedback in 181 schools," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    20. Ludger Wößmann, 2008. "Efficiency and equity of European education and training policies," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 15(2), pages 199-230, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:30:y:2011:i:3:p:394-403. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.