Teacher Performance-Based Incentives and Learning Inequality
基于坦桑尼亚中学的两阶段随机实验，评估低成本绩效激励对教师的影响，发现持续两年的激励能小幅提升学生成绩，但可能加剧校际和校内学习不平等。
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.