Performance Pay: Minnesota

Retaining Effective Teachers Policy

Goal

The state should support performance pay but in a manner that recognizes its appropriate uses and limitations.

Meets goal
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Performance Pay: Minnesota results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/MN-Performance-Pay-9

Analysis of Minnesota's policies

Minnesota supports a performance pay initiative. The state allows local districts to implement an alternative teacher professional pay system, Quality Compensation for Teachers (Q Comp), in which 60 percent of compensation is determined by teacher performance. Performance is based on school-wide student achievement gains, measure of student achievement and objective teacher evaluations.

Citation

Recommendations for Minnesota

State response to our analysis

Minnesota recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.

Research rationale

Research on merit pay in 28 industrialized countries from Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance found that students in countries with merit pay policies in place were performing at a level approximately one year's worth of schooling higher on international math and science tests than students in countries without such policies (2011). 

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/.