During the 1920's merit pay became the most preferred system of teacher compensation; however, today fewer than 4 percent of the school systems in the United States use merit pay plans. The National Education Association suggests that merit pay is a "bogus issue" obscuring more significant areas of education needing reform, and the…

This report highlights major issues, techniques, and directions in the evaluation of public school teachers. The paper begins by setting a perspective on the process of, and needs for, evaluation. The main body of the report is devoted to a summary and critique of various teacher evaluation methods. A discussion is given of the efficacy of, and…

This paper discusses some of the issues behind the current debate on merit pay for teachers. A brief history is presented of performance-based compensation systems. The difficulties in arriving at a consensus on a valid definition of merit pay are pointed out, and examples are presented of various merit plans, such as master teaching plans, career…

Evaluation of educational personnel presents problems to both the evaluators and those evaluated, maintains this publication. In spite of these problems, respondents from more than 400 school systems replying to a survey indicated that their systems had evaluation procedures. The author suggests that the true challenge to school administrators is…

Contracts that base the compensation and job security of teachers on seniority may promote the goals of public education more effectively than performance-based contracts. Public school teaching is a very complex process requiring constant adaptation to changing students, situations, methods, and dynamics. Measurement of teacher performance under…

The purpose of this book is to share successful instructional and learning processes with educators. The focus is on three types of variables in classroom learning and instruction: (1) active learning time; (2) feedback and corrective procedures; and (3) instructional cues. The literature on the nature of each variable is discussed, and the…

Many teachers resist staff development programs because they believe that "staff development" is a euphemism for "staff evaluation" and are suspicious of an administration collecting quantitative material on teaching for any reason. Similarly, there exists a competitiveness among teachers that precludes complete trust. In recent years, an increase…

The pedagogical studies that are relevant to a theory of teacher leader behavior are surveyed. Numerous investigations of the similarities between leader and teacher behaviors tend to confirm the hypothesis that teaching is a type of leadership. One of the problems of developing a theory of teacher leader behavior is the difficulty of identifying…

Criticizes the "effective teaching" movement and offers principles of effective teaching that research has shown to improve the practices of ineffective teachers. (SRT)

This publication explores the future of schooling and the role of teacher leaders. Several questions are examined: (1) why teachers must take primary responsibility for creating a new context for teaching and learning; (2) how "constructivist leaders" create meaning out of learning; (3) how the roles of leadership with adults and with…

This review of the literature on performance appraisal for college and university faculty was undertaken to serve the ultimate goal of improving student cognitive learning. The starting point was to ask what is known about performance appraisal. What are its positive and negative consequences? How does the manner in which it is conducted relate to…

This presentation discusses strategies upon which to base teacher incentives, and also assumptions within these strategies. The first strategy, influencing teacher turnover rates so that good teachers remain in the profession longer and poor teachers leave teaching sooner, includes consideration of occupational rewards, career structure, benefits,…

The insights of various theoretical perspectives on school improvement can be integrated in a common framework called "the institutional perspective" when the sensitivity of each theoretical perspective to the nature of decision making for school improvement is taken into account. The institutional perspective thus generated considers the…

A series of research studies were examined to investigate the relative effectiveness of teaching evaluations at the college level. The six research variables considered are: teaching effectiveness and its relationship to research productivity; grades given and the relationship to teaching effectiveness evaluation; immediately administered…

Based on a synthesis of research and on telephone interviews with representatives of 22 school districts, this study analyzes the effectiveness and problems of two types of motivational plans for teachers: merit pay plans in which at least part of a teacher's pay is linked to performance, and nonmonetary performance-by-objectives plans in which…