Politics & Governance / Public Policy / Education Policy

Pay Teachers More? The Surprising Truth from India's Biggest Experiment

Teacher Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from India

Karthik Muralidharan, Venkatesh Sundararaman

Does paying teachers based on student test scores actually work? Or does it just encourage cheating and teaching to the test? A massive 2-year experiment in 500 rural Indian schools reveals the shocking truth. We break down the findings from Karthik Muralidharan and Venkatesh Sundararaman's landmark study published in the Journal of Political Economy. Spoiler: performance pay boosted scores by 0.22 standard deviations, with zero negative side effects. In fact, it was 3x more cost-effective than just throwing money at resources. Watch to discover why individual teacher bonuses outperformed school-wide bonuses, and how this could transform education policy worldwide.