Teacher Performance-Based Incentives and Learning Inequality

2023/10/06 by Deon Filmer, James Habyarimana, Shwetlena Sabarwal
Social Sciences · #School Choice and Performance #Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare

paper · doi:10.3368/jhr.1120-11313r2

Abstract

This study evaluates the impacts of low-cost, performance-based incentives in Tanzanian secondary schools. Results from a two-phase randomized trial show that teacher incentives, when sustained for two years, led to persistent, modest average improvements in student achievement across different subjects. Randomly withdrawing incentives after a year didn’t lead to a “discouragement effect”. Incentives may have exacerbated learning inequality across schools. Increases in learning were concentrated among initially better-performing schools. We also find weak evidence of teacher incentives exacerbating learning inequality within initially better-performing schools. Finally, the study finds that incentivizing students without simultaneously incentivizing teachers did not produce learning gains.

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