| Summary |
The Collaborative Project (CP) began as a pilot project in five low-wealth, rural school districts in North Carolina in August, 2007. The Project included a performance incentive initiative for teachers and administrators along with a professional development component and a set of after-school programs for underachieving students. The pilot phase continued for three years. The objective of this study was to document and examine principals' perceptions of the performance incentive initiative to determine the challenges and successes encountered during the development and implementation of the program The researcher utilized a qualitative interview process to collect data. The participants in the study were principals from the participating districts who had served in their positions for two or more years of the performance incentive program. Every eligible principal consented to be interviewed for this study with the exception of the principals in the researcher's district, who were excluded from the study because of the researcher's role as superintendent of the district. The principals' responses were analyzed and tables were constructed to show the main types of responses for each question, the number of principals who voiced each type of response, and short quotes illustrating each type of response. For triangulation purposes, the results were compared with survey data from a June, 2009 evaluation completed by the Carolina Institute for Public Policy. Overall, the majority of the principals interviewed believed the student achievement, professional development, and principal's evaluation components of the teacher performance incentive criteria helped their schools. The results of the study provided insight into some of the anomalies encountered by the CP leadership during the development and implementation of this performance incentive program. For example, some principals noted instances of teachers of non-tested grades/subjects receiving more performance incentive for student achievement than some teachers of tested grades/subjects. The interview process revealed some unanticipated results not mentioned in the review of the literature, such as a quid pro quo between some principals and teachers. Therefore, this study may provide a significant contribution to the literature on the development and implementation of performance incentive programs. |
