Neetu Arnold How Houston Is Holding Teachers Accountable The school district’s merit-pay program will attract top talent, benefiting students.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/houston-schools-merit-pay-teachers-salaries-students
In early April, the Houston Independent School District announced the details of its merit-pay system, which will launch during the 2026–2027 school year. Spearheaded by reform-minded superintendent Mike Miles, the new compensation scheme sets teachers’ salaries based on several performance-based criteria, including quality of instruction, student academic outcomes, professionalism, and school-wide achievement.
With this new program, Houston will become one of the few districts in the nation fully to tie teacher salaries to performance, rather than simply adding incentives or bonuses to a standard seniority-based pay structure. The plan will require significant administrative effort: the district will conduct up to 20 classroom evaluations per teacher, assess student progress on various exams—including the state’s annual standardized test—and rank teachers across six proficiency levels. Those with unsatisfactory scores may be fired
Initiatives like Houston’s almost always face pushback, particularly from teachers’ unions and some education advocates. While supporters argue that these plans reward effective instruction, critics contend that they impose arbitrary evaluation standards and encourage “teaching to the test.” Yet research shows that, when properly implemented, merit pay is supported by teachers, improves workforce quality, and ultimately benefits students.
Teachers’ unions claim that teachers universally oppose merit pay. A 2024 working paper, however, paints a different picture. The author, University of California-Merced economist Andrew Johnston, finds that higher-performing teachers tend to favor performance-based pay, even as unions continue to resist it. “Since unions are typically led by older, veteran teachers,” he writes, “they may bargain for compensation structures that reflect their private preferences.”
Merit-pay programs help districts draw and retain better teachers. A 2021 American Economic Journal paper found that Wisconsin school districts that adopted flexible-pay schemes—a form of merit pay—attracted higher quality educators. Low-quality teachers, on the other hand, tended to exit those districts or Wisconsin public schools altogether.
This is crucial because improvements in teacher quality lead directly to better student outcomes. Dallas implemented merit pay in 2013, when Miles was the district’s superintendent. By 2019, the district had seen significant improvements on state exams: math and reading scores improved, respectively, by 16 percent and 6 percent of a standard deviation. According to a 2020 meta-analysis, the results of nearly 30 studies “suggest that the effect of teacher merit pay on student test scores is positive and statistically significant.”
Teachers’ unions often argue that student test scores are poor proxies for measuring teacher quality. But a 2014 paper found that “high value-added” teachers—those who consistently raise student test scores—have significant long-term positive effects on their pupils. Students taught by high value-added teachers were less likely to experience teenage pregnancy, for example, and more likely to attend college and earn higher incomes in adulthood.
Teachers’ unions and other critics often cite older research showing mixed evidence on the effectiveness of merit pay. But those results largely reflect poorly implemented programs, which often failed clearly to communicate the criteria on which teachers were being evaluated. Newer merit-pay systems, by contrast, have shown consistently positive outcomes.
Houston’s comprehensive merit-pay system is a promising step forward. The district’s transparency on its evaluation criteria signals that it will avoid the communication pitfalls of older, failed programs. As school systems work to reverse declining test scores, hiring better teachers will be essential. For districts looking to attract top talent and restore accountability to public education, Houston points the way.
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