Study: Teacher bonuses don't affect student tests

ATLANTA — A new study shows that giving performance bonuses to teachers does not raise student test scores.

Vanderbilt University researchers found that students in classrooms where teachers received merit pay did not outperform the classes where educators got no bonus.

The report comes as the Obama administration pushes states to adopt merit pay for teachers as a way to overhaul public education and raise student achievement.

The study by Vanderbilt's National Center on Performance Incentives looked at fifth- through eighth-grade math teachers in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools from 2007 to 2009.

It was billed as the first-ever scientific look at teacher merit pay in the United States.