Denver's performance-pay system for teachers has long been hailed as a model, in good part because it was jointly conceived and implemented by the school district and the local teachers' union. However, that collaborative spirit is now in jeopardy, with union and district leaders engaged in a protracted battle over proposed changes to the system.…

Leaders in a handful of school districts are pondering the idea of "front-loading" teacher compensation by paying novices more than they would typically earn under traditional salary schedules. Boosting new teachers' salaries, officials in Denver, the District of Columbia, and New York City contend, would increase the applicant pool and…

The author reports the results of a study on the effectiveness of the Teacher Advancement Program in Chicago that contains performance-pay model pushed by the U.S. secretary of education Arne Duncan. The study by Mathematica Policy Research finds that student test scores were no better for schools following the national Teacher Advancement Program…

This year's "Quality Counts" report, the 15th edition of this annual report produced through the joint efforts of the "Education Week" newsroom and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, arrives at a time of continued fiscal anxiety and education policy ferment in the wake of what has been widely described as the…