Performance Pay: Mississippi
Retaining Effective Teachers Policy
Analysis of Mississippi's policies
Mississippi supports performance pay. The Mississippi Performance Based Pay plan "may provide monies from state funds to school districts for the purposes of rewarding certified teachers...at individual schools showing improvement in student test scores." The state does not address the amount of the award and the plan is only supported if funding is available.
Recommendations for Mississippi
Ensure performance pay is connected to student achievement.
Although Mississippi is commended for supporting performance pay, it should guarantee a connection to student achievement and prevent local districts from basing financial incentives on other elements that may not be indicative of performance in the classroom.
State response to our analysis
Mississippi recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.
-
Mississippi
Select another topic
Delivering Well Prepared Teachers
- Admission into Preparation Programs
- Elementary Teacher Preparation
- Elementary Teacher Preparation in Reading Instruction
- Elementary Teacher Preparation in Mathematics
- Middle School Teacher Preparation
- Secondary Teacher Preparation
- Secondary Teacher Preparation in Science
- Secondary Teacher Preparation in Social Studies
- Special Education Teacher Preparation
- Assessing Professional Knowledge
- Student Teaching
- Teacher Preparation Program Accountability
Expanding the Pool of Teachers
Identifying Effective Teachers
- State Data Systems
- Evaluation of Effectiveness
- Frequency of Evaluations
- Tenure
- Licensure Advancement
- Equitable Distribution
Retaining Effective Teachers
Exiting Ineffective Teachers
Research rationale
Erik Hanushek found that a teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates $400,000 in student future earnings for a class size of 20. See Hanushek, Erik A. "The Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality," National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 16606 (December 2010).
In addition, numerous conference papers published by the National Center on Performance Incentives reinforce the need to recognize the limitations and appropriate uses of performance pay. See: http://www.performanceincentives.org/.