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Emphasizes the need for coherence between the reward structure and the organizational culture of effective schools. Provides a framework for discussion which includes a typology of rewards, including pecuniary, non‐pecuniary extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. Analyses several pay‐for‐performance strategies, classified by permanency of increases (merit or incentive) and mode of distribution (individual or group). Explores the perceived advantages and disadvantages of various merit and incentive plans in support of effective schools. Suggests that more attention to a closer fit between compensation strategies, organizational strategies, and workforce behaviours is required to increase the positive effects of reward structures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of teacher incentive pay programs used by midsize to large school districts in Missouri.

This study primarily used the Teacher Compensation Programs (TCP) survey data. The TCP survey was developed by the authors to understand the nature and characteristics of financial incentives that Missouri districts used to recruit, reward, and retain quality teachers.

The data showed that, during the 2009-2010 academic year, 32 percent of the districts offered at least one financial incentive to recruit or retain teachers. Districts were more likely to reward teachers for obtaining National Board certification and for assuming extra duties than for teaching in the subject areas of shortage or in hard-to-staff schools. Larger districts with higher teacher salary were more likely than small districts to offer a larger number of incentive pay programs.

The findings of this study advance our knowledge of local incentive pay policies. It also contributes to the global discourse of teacher compensation and incentives and can be informative to policymakers in the USA and around the world when designing and implementing incentive pay programs to teachers. Further, it sheds light on the important policy question of whether disadvantaged local educational agencies are more likely to use incentive pay programs to recruit and retain teachers and promote an equitable distribution of the teacher workforce. This informs the decision making of providing targeted support to those in need.

In the field of comparative education there is a vast and growing amount of research on how education policy agendas are formed at the transnational level, and how these may influence policymaking in individual countries. Particularly the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) play an important role in the dissemination of education policies. This article seeked to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how the two organizations have formulated their policy advice concerning quality assurance and evaluation of school education toward the intended beneficiaries of such advice, either in standardized form or taking into account local contexts. The case countries were Brazil, China, and Russia (BCR), which in terms of their political power and economic resources differ from the typical World Bank client countries, but at the same time are not OECD members. Our data consisted of World Bank and OECD publications from the three BCR countries published during two decades from the mid-1990s onward. The document analysis was complemented by some factual information gained through interviews of relevant actors. In the analyzed material prescriptions given in the tone of “international best practice” were predominant. This position saw the quality of education as a concept that has a globally applicable definition. In addition, the advice directed at Russia and China has in an ambivalent manner acknowledged the sociocultural context of the concept of quality in the national pedagogical tradition.

Analyzes the impact of recent policy developments in the USA associated with school accountability according to the best interests of the student. With the mandated implementation of the US federal law entitled the No Child Left Behind Act approaching, minimal attention has been afforded to the complex ethical dimensions associated with policies intended to improve the quality of education on a broad scale. When the meaning of “fairness” and “equity” are not negotiated in advance by groups either supporting or rejecting the need for federal intervention, doubts are raised about the fundamental purpose of the initiative. Argues that social conflict arises when the ideological framing of the purposes of the No Child Left Behind Act fails to incorporate the moral responsibility of policymaking and professional practice and attribute the purpose of reform as ensuring students’ best interests. Argues for a greater awareness of the tacit ethical assumptions politicians and policymakers embrace as policy is developed and implemented, and suggests strategies for identifying an ideological common ground.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to examine the impact of Mexico’s national teacher incentive program, Carrera Magisterial (CM), on educational quality and equity.Methodology – I conduct a descriptive analysis of data from two Mexican states, Aguascalientes and Sonora, to explore whether the distribution of teachers across schools and communities has changed since the implementation of CM.Findings – Although more qualified teachers tend to be disproportionately concentrated in wealthier municipalities and urban areas in both Aguascalientes and Sonora, I find some evidence that the distribution of qualified teachers has become more equitable over time in both states.Research limitations – These results suggest that CM’s design, which allows teachers to advance more rapidly through the system if they teach in low-development zones, may have increased equity in children’s access to qualified teachers. However, these trends could result from influences beyond CM, such as salary incentives to teach in less developed areas. We must also take care in extrapolating results from two Mexican states to other states with different populations and geographies.Practical implications – This research suggests that policymakers must apply a careful analysis to the design of CM, especially the allocation of points to teachers based on their students’ test scores. In particular, educators and policymakers must consider the potential movement of more qualified teachers to higher-scoring schools and classrooms.Value – Although substantial research has examined whether CM has improved educational quality in Mexico, this is one of few studies to explore the program’s impact on educational equity.

Enabling and incentivizing organizations to act based on their local knowledge is an important aspect of entrepreneurship. The significance of local knowledge in the context of schools is well recognized, but very little research has been done to investigate how to provide discretion and incentives to schools to use this knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to build a model to guide this understanding for policy makers who may wish to foster entrepreneurship for schools and also use it to critique the literature and provide an alternative approach.

The paper applies fundamentals of principal-agent theory to the ownership and governance of schools, the use of teacher incentive pay, and school reform efforts. Focus is on use of teacher incentives and on school choice initiatives.

The author found that many public school teachers will have attenuated incentives, but mandates to increase test score rewards may be counterproductive. Institutional reform via school choice seems more promising. The author identifies several institutional features that are expected to induce more entrepreneurial and productive activity by schools. The author discusses and critiques school reform efforts in this regard, including Tiebout competition, charter schools, voucher programs, and use of “best practice.”

Reform efforts often lack in addressing critical aspects of institutional empowerment and incentives, and research in this regard also is mostly absent. The author contends, however, that dealing and addressing such issues is a key to effective reform.

While school reform literature calls attention to incentives for teachers, little research or policy making has focused on school administrators′ incentives. Career incentives perceived by a sample of elementary school principals and the influence of career background on those incentives are examined. It was found, using both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis, that principals perceive their career as having economic, ancillary and task‐related rewards. However, principals varied in the kinds of incentives they preferred and the nature of their future goals. Principals who have moved among several school districts in their administrative careers are more likely to be satisfied and to emphasise incentives, such as contact with school constituencies, which come from staying in the principalship. In contrast, principals who have remained in the same district throughout their administrative careers are more likely to prefer those incentives which advancement to central office can offer.

This chapter presents a model of innovation in the public elementary schooling system by drawing on ongoing work on an “Educational Innovations Bank” in India, which seeks to make available a freely accessible forum for innovative teachers and a grassroots innovations resource for administrators. How do some teachers in government elementary schools, working in contexts of socioeconomic and educational deprivation, achieve their educational goals in spite of facing the same constraints as thousands of other teachers? What lessons do they offer for policy reform? The answers draw on the social entrepreneurship and workplace innovation literature to first locate the incentive for innovation in the social value that socio-educationally entrepreneurial and innovative behavior of teachers creates. Next, an examination is presented of how this social value leads to learning for an identity of competence, which in turn provides an incentive for further educational innovation. Finally, the evidence is presented to argue for policy entrepreneurship and a formal framework to help in the diffusion, adoption, and adaptation of both the enabling innovations that result from socio-educational entrepreneurship and the in-school or in-class educational innovations. Such a “bottom-up,” peer-learning-based approach to innovations that also “improve” provides a unique way of visualizing educational reform in resource-constrained public educational systems.

This paper uses two studies to examine taxpayers' knowledge of tax incentives for charitable giving and also explores the consequences of this knowledge on charitable giving decisions. The first study surveys 600 US taxpayers to establish a baseline understanding of how making a charitable contribution affects taxpayers. In the second study, we conduct an experiment with 201 US taxpayers in which we manipulate the knowledge of taxpayers by providing an educational intervention; we also measure, if, how much is donated in a hypothetical scenario under various tax deductibility conditions. The first study indicates fewer than half of participants understand the basic principles of how charitable donations affect tax liability. Our second study reveals that a short educational video is extremely effective at improving taxpayers' understanding and helping them accurately estimate the tax benefit associated with charitable giving. However, through moderated mediation analysis, we also show that participants who received this educational intervention and accurately estimated the tax benefits in turn decreased their charitable giving. We conclude that the majority of US taxpayers do not understand whether they benefit from certain deductions and may be overestimating the benefit they receive from charitable giving, resulting in giving more than they intend.