Merit pay is coming to Houston under Mike Miles' go-big-or-go-home plan

Paying teachers for performance -- not just seniority and useless master's degrees -- is a popular idea that's hard to pull off in real life. It's difficult to persuade teachers they'll be judged on effectiveness, rather than rewarded for having easy-to-teach students or penalized for being assigned the toughest kids. Principals find it easier to rate every teacher as "satisfactory." Often, merit plans end up as small bonuses with little impact.

Houston will go big on merit pay for teachers, starting in 2026-27, writes Neetu Arnold in City Journal. "Reform-minded Superintendent Mike Miles, who implemented merit pay in Dallas, plans to tie teacher salaries fully to performance, she writes. It won't just be an add on to the traditional salary structure.

Pay will be based on "quality of instruction, student academic outcomes, professionalism, and school-wide achievement. . . . 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."

” Research shows that, when properly implemented, merit pay is supported by teachers, improves workforce quality, and ultimately benefits students," writes Arnold.

While unions oppose merit pay, higher-performing teachers support it, according to a 2024 working paper by University of California-Merced economist Andrew Johnston, she writes. "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," while low-quality teachers left those districts.

Dallas implemented merit pay in 2013, a go-big-or-go-home program that completely changed teacher compensation. The reforms in Dallas show "a large and durable positive impact on teacher quality and student learning," report Eric Hanushek and colleagues in Education Next. Within four years, "student performance on standardized tests improved by 16 percent of a standard deviation in math and 6 percent in reading, while scores for a comparison group of similar Texas schools remained flat," they write. "Teacher turnover . . . was concentrated among lower-rated teachers."

Furthermore, offering "sizable financial incentives to reassign top-rated teachers to struggling elementary campuses immediately improved teacher quality and student achievement and had dramatic, lasting, positive effects on student learning through middle school."

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed a bill allowing districts to offer merit pay plans, but not requiring it.

Vivek Ramaswamy's has made merit pay for teachers and school administrators a plan in his campaign for governor of Ohio.