Recent concern for the quality of education has placed pressure on school administrators to assess and upgrade the competency of their teaching staff. No simple formula exists for measuring teacher competency, however, nor are any new methods guaranteed to improve the quality of instruction. Nevertheless, through a combination of clinical…

Merit pay programs are based on the simple idea that educators should be paid what they are worth; yet these programs face a host of practical problems, mostly centering on the difficulties of developing and administering such systems. A review of research shows that money may not be the best way to motivate teachers, who are more influenced by…

Included in this annotated bibliography of 11 publications on merit pay are reports covering various approaches to merit increases and the successes of a merit pay program in California's Round Valley School District, an Educational Research Service review of current research and practice on merit and incentive pay for teachers, an ERIC…