This is the most interesting element in this conversation to me, simply because it rings true. If principals are held accountable for gains, they’re going to have to work a whole lot harder than they currently are to figure out which “white space” employees are having the most impact, aren’t they?

In my experience, this has always been a barrier—many principals rarely understand the impact of individual faculty members beyond the superficial “this guy’s a team player” conclusions that they draw based on gut reactions.

Now for the real question: Do most principals have the skill and ability to identify white space impacts?

I’ve certainly never worked for a statistician!
Bill

There’s a lot more research on the relative merits of performance pay than you imagine. This is from another Pfeffer piece:

“Merit pay for teachers is an idea that is almost 100 years old, and that has been subjected to much research. In 1918, ‘48 percent of U.S. school districts sampled in one study used compensation systems that they called merit pay.’ The evidence shows that merit pay plans seldom last longer than five years and consistently fail to improve student performance.

“Merit pay also backfires because it sends the message that all that matters is students’ test scores. Economists Brian Jacob and Steven Levitt have shown that the greater the incentive pay for enhancing students’ scores, the more teachers and students cheat. Anthony Bryk, a prestigious educational researcher, tells us that the same problems emerged when merit pay systems were implemented in the 1980s. Bryk observes, ‘It is like policymakers suffer from amnesia.’”

http://www.ssireview.org/site/printer/act_on_facts_not_faith/

As a founding board member of a charter high school a few years ago, we learned a few things through experimentation. This more direct and personally connected level of accountability I’m speaking of is what creates what I would call a “culture of responsiveness” found in these school workplaces. Without it, the school environment can drift toward the culture found at your local Department of Motor Vehicles.

That is a very interesting link, and reinforces some of the difficulties. I agree with Daniel that we need to be (hopefully thoughtfully) experimenting with pay for performance schemes and to see where it goes. It may be the case, that as your article suggests, that collective goals should completely predominate. We won’t know until we try.

Much of the potential gain to be had in reforming teaching compensation lies in reforming the compensation of the teaching profession lies in the the quality of candidates that the profession is able to attract. South Korea pays their 15 year veteran teachers about 2.5 national GDP per person, while in the U.S. that figure is 1.12.

South Korea recruits their teachers from the top 5% of university graduates, while we recruit from (on average) the bottom third. South Korea generates the higher pay for teachers with larger class sizes, and often comes out on top of international test score comparisons:

http://jaypgreene.com/2008/04/25/indiana-jones-and-the-teacher-quality-crusade/