Texas recently completed Governors Educator Excellence Grant (GEEG) went against the grain somewhat by encouraging participating schools to design their own merit pay plans within state-provided parameters. Seldom have schools and teachers played key roles in the design and development of pay-for-performance plans. This study utilizes teacher and principal interviews, school proposal documents, and teacher survey data to address two fairly broad questions: 1) What occurred in schools from the time they were notified of inclusion in GEEG until their pay-for-performance applications were approved by the state? 2) What changes occurred within participating schools once their pay-for-performance plans were implemented? Teachers generally reported heavy involvement in plan design, although some delimiting factors appeared to subvert full participation. Similarly, teachers reported understanding their schools plan, although GEEG program and school plan details not related to student achievement directly were often unclear to them. Teachers generally believed their merit pay plans to be fair but reported little change in effort, enthusiasm, and teaching practices. In conflict with much of the previous research literature, teachers frequently indicated that merit pay in the form of GEEG had a positive impact on their professional learning communities and collaborative settings. Possible reasons for these divergences are explored.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-12042009-062501 |
| Date | 06 January 2010 |
| Creators | Meyers, Coby Vincent |
| Contributors | Professor Joseph Murphy, Professor Matthew Springer, Professor Mark Berends, Professor Deborah Rowe |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-12042009-062501/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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