For half a century, merit pay for teachers has been intensely debated in school systems of various sizes and in virtually every state in the nation. Yet current data on the extent to which merit pay and incentives are actually used in education have not been available. To help fill this void, Educational Research Service conducted the most comprehensive survey to date on merit pay and incentive plans for teachers, as well as administrators, and support staff. The results of this broad study are presented in three companion reports. The data in these studies are reported separately by four school enrollment groups (large, medium, small, and very small), and, in many tables, by eight geographic regions. School systems are identified that used merit pay or incentive plan for 1977-78 and those systems that reported having a merit plan in the past but had since discontinued it. Of the 2,848 school systems responding to the survey, 157 (5.5 percent) reported having a merit pay or incentive plan for school support staff and 61 (2.1 percent) as having such a plan in the past but not currently. Two important aspects of the reports are examples of merit pay or incentive plans that were in operation when the study was conducted and an analysis of the reasons school systems discontinued such plans in the past. Examples of school support staff merit pay plans for 10 school systems in nine states are included, as is a summary of the research on merit pay for support staff at the beginning of the report.