To meet the continued demand for educational reform, the state of Florida enacted legislation in 1998 that required school boards to base a portion of the salary for school administrators and instructional personnel on performance. Although ahead of the required statutory timeline, the School District of Lee County implemented a teacher performance pay plan during the 1998–1999 school year as a result of Florida's legislative direction. The problem of this study was to determine the perceptions of Southwest Florida school-based certified staff regarding the implementation of teacher performance pay in a school district where performance pay had been in operation for the five years prior to this study. The population of this study consisted of the certified school-based personnel employed by the School District of Lee County, Florida. A random sample of 1,000 members was selected from the instructional population. Additionally, this study included the entire population of 176 school-based administrators for an overall sample of 1,176 members. Participants were asked to complete the survey instrument, Teacher Performance Pay Attitudinal Survey designed by the researcher. This instrument was developed to fit the unique requirements and specific nature of this study. Although intended to motivate teachers, the teacher performance pay plan examined in this study was perceived by instructional staff and administrators as not motivating. Findings of this study also show that most teachers and other instructional respondents disagree that teacher performance pay provides an incentive to work harder toward improving student achievement. Additionally, a majority of the instructional respondents did not agree that performance pay encouraged them to participate in staff development or motivated them to change their instructional practice. Finally, most respondents, both instructional and administrative, did not agree that the current performance pay system was fair. These findings suggest that the performance pay program of the current study may have fallen short of its intended goal. This study also found many differences in perceptions of teacher performance pay among the demographic variables. These differences were particularly significant in several survey areas to include the respondent's years of experience, union status, and position. Findings in this study suggest that performance plan design should clearly connect the compensation reward to performance so that educators understand the performance level required. The findings of this study also suggest that improving the alignment between the performance pay plan and school goals should be a consideration in any future plan revision.

Optimal investment in human capital through effective K-12 schooling is critical for building a productive work force. This investment is particularly important for minority and low income students. My dissertation uses econometric techniques to analyze the effects of different educational programs on the academic achievement of elementary and middle school students in Arizona. The first essay evaluates the effect of Arizona's new English program, the 4-hour ELD block, on the achievement of students. In the 2008-2009 academic year, Arizona law required that English Language Learner (ELL) students to be separated from their native English-speaking peers and interact in the same classroom for 4-hour per day with other ELL students. In this study dynamic panel data methods and regression discontinuity design are employed to analyze the effect of the 4-hour ELD block program on the academic achievement of students. Using data from one school district during the school years 2006 to 2010, this study shows that this new program did not have a notable effect on the state-wide test scores of ELL students. The second essay assesses the long-run and short-run effects of Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) program in Arizona. The TIF program is a nationwide performance-based compensation plan that provides incentives to teachers based on the student performance. The TIF program started in Arizona in the 2007-2008 school year and targets high need schools. Using a panel data set from 2006-2007 to 2010-11 school year, the effect of the TIF program on the achievement of students is estimated using the difference-in-difference method. Comparing the short-run and long run effect of this program indicates that the long-run effect is greater than that of the short-run. Finally, by utilizing a rich set of panel data from 2006-2007 to 2010-2011 school years, the third essay studies the raw and value-added achievement gap between first and second-generation students with native students. This study shows that native students outperform both groups of immigrant students in reading and math tests. Within immigrant students, second-generation students outperform first-generation students in reading but not in math, while the achievement growth of the second-generation students has a slower pace.

In the last two decades, ignoring the bulk of educational research findings, policymakers shaped educational policy into a standardized testing movement that now dominates education. Now, to comply with No Child Left Behind, teachers and administrators shape curriculum in a way that maximizes student achievement measured by these tests. Recently, business and educational leaders initiated a reform movement to broaden curriculum, narrowed by this inadequate standardized testing movement, so that necessary 21st century learning skills can be practiced through project-based learning. The Federal Government’s enforcement of power over education created the climate that defined the current educational policy that gave birth to the standardized testing movement. In this climate, this reform to boost 21st century learning skills does not gain practical traction that results in changed policy, because it is impossible for standardized testing to assess most of these skills and this type of learning due to the limitations of bubbled-multiple choice questions. Instead of shaping policy to foster these 21st century learning skills, policymakers push another reform, through TAP (The System for Teacher and Student Advancement) and Value-Added Assessment. This reform attempts to improve instruction through teacher merit pay--a device that has failed many times in educational reform history. Unfortunately, most TAP systems use standardized tests as the only student achievement measurement, so almost all student achievement gains involving 21st century learning skills and project-based learning are not officially measured. Efforts to use portfolios and authentic assessment, the measurement tools that should be used to measure these higherlevel skills, are not supported by policymakers, because the lack of standardization requires more trust in the assessment ability of local school districts and communities. Consequently, a massive disconnect exists where standardized testing is being reinvigorated instead of de-emphasized, and this comes with the potential price of many teachers and administrators not embracing 21st century learning skills and project-based learning as much as they could if they were not bound by standardized test results. Ultimately, these two reforms that contradict each other involve larger issues of jurisdictional power over education at federal, state, and local levels, and ideological challenges to teacher job security and teacher representation.