September 27, 2011 – Yahoo News
NEA President Challenges Merit Pay

About merit pay schemes, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel says, “They're a little naive and short-sighted. Vanderbilt University did a study over three years. And what it says is when you offer bonuses of up to $8,000, it doesn't change student achievement. Daniel Pink's work says if you're doing a repetitive task, an incentive actually enhances performance. But as soon as you move into complex tasks, not only does it not enhance performance; it actually hinders it. So, with that as a background, what do we do about pay? There isn't enough money there. The pie that's available to distribute to teachers, it's going to have to be bigger.”