The structure of teacher compensation in pay for performance policies: A review of Latin American models

• In Event: Standardization, accountability and incentives across schools in Latin America

Abstract

The teacher pay-for-performance movement is one of a long series of attempts to restructure public school systems. It is singled out as important for attracting, recruiting and retaining good teachers, by offering more flexible paths for career promotion, and compensation structures similar to those seen in the private sector. It is also evoked to improve teacher productivity, enhance accountability and results-based management, highlighting the potential to induce a major organizational changes in public education. This paper examines how teacher pay-for-performance is understood in Latin American countries. It takes a widely discussed global policy and looks at how it is implemented in practice.

Teacher pay-for-performance policies have two components: the evaluation of teacher performance and a new compensation scheme linked to that performance. There is literature that describe in telling detail the evaluation component of teacher pay-for-performance, how teacher performance is conceptualized, assessed and measured. Further, other empirical studies take a “one size fits all” approach and examine the effect of teacher performance incentive reforms on student achievement, where differences in the actual design of the performance payment schemes are minimized or overlooked. Lastly, other studies focus on the forces that contributed to the definition and passing of pay-for-performance policies, how reforms are re-contextualize and translated into particular contexts. Overall, the specific features of the new payment schemes associated with the pay-for-performance policies are for the most part ignored in the literature; they are the least understood component of the reforms.

In this paper, I dig deeper into the design of the pay-for-performance policies, focusing on the pay component rather than on the performance evaluation. I use literature on labor markets, public administration and pay for performance. Specifically, using a comparative case-study method, I examine the design (nature and structure) of teacher compensation schemes within pay-for-performance policies in Latin America. I compare the purposes of new teacher pay schemes, their degree of openness to the external labor market, horizontal and vertical mobility, and type of awards. Data come from policy documents, regulations and normative available electronically. Preliminary findings show that teacher pay schemes within pay for performance policies do not radically vary from traditional pay schemes. They introduce some innovations, yet they do not structurally change teachers’ pay schemes, as theory on teacher incentives would indicate.

Author

• Paula Razquin, Universidad de San Andres