Matthew G. Springer

Research Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education

Ph.D., Vanderbilt University, 2006

Joined faculty in 2006

Matthew G. Springer is director of the federally-funded National Center on Performance Incentives and research assistant professor of public policy and education. Professor Springer's research focuses on education policy, with a particular focus on the impact of policy innovations on resource allocation decisions and student outcomes. His current research includes studies of the impact of teacher pay for performance on student achievement and teacher turnover, mobility, and quality; the strategic resource allocation decision-making of schools in response to No Child Left Behind; the impact of school finance litigation on resource distribution; and the role of school choice in contemporary education policy.

Springer's research is funded by the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, Smith Richardson Foundation, and Texas Education Agency. He recently served on the Assistant Secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education's roundtable on teacher and principal performance pay programs. He has also worked on several advisory committees charged with designing performance-based compensation systems for teachers and/or principals at the state and district level, and conducted analyses of school finance systems in Alaska, Kentucky, Missouri, and South Carolina.

Professor Springer's work has appeared in Economics of Education Review, Education Economics, Education Next, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis' Regional Economic Development, Journal of Education Finance, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Peabody Journal of Education. He is co-author of a leading education finance textbook, Modern Education Finance and Policy (with J.W. Guthrie, E.A. Houck, and A.R. Rolle; Allyn & Bacon), and editor or co-editor of four more books including the forthcoming, Performance Incentives: Their Growing Impact on American K-12 Education (Brookings Institution Press) and Handbook of Research on School Choice (with M. Berends, D. Ballou, and H Walberg; Taylor and Francis).

Prior to joining the faculty at Vanderbilt University, Professor Springer was a teacher and administrator at a boarding school in upstate New York. He holds a B.A. in education and psychology from Denison University and a Ph.D. in education finance and policy from Vanderbilt University.

Learn More about Matthew G. Springer:

Projects | Selected Publications
Awards | CV | Media Mentions

Media Mentions

Researchers Probe Pay Incentives for Teachers
Book Explores Range of Approaches to Using Pay for Educational Change

Teacher-designed Performance Pay Programs Offer Smaller Incentives to More Teachers
Performance pay programs designed by teachers, for teachers, have been found to offer small incentives to a large number of teachers, new research indicates.

NCPI Hosts NCLB Conference
NCPI hosts NCLB research conference.

Peabody Hosts National Conference on Teacher Retirement Benefit Systems
Discussions focus on design and implications of teacher retirement systems used in the American K-12 public education system.

Performance-Pay Plans Leave Teachers Divided
Public school administrators in the District of Columbia and Denver say their plans to reward effective teachers are the best way to raise teacher pay and improve student performance.

Springer interviewed on Denver teacher pay incentives program
NCPI director, Matthew Springer, was featured as an expert panelist in a story about Denver ProComp’s performance pay program on CNN with Lou Dobbs. He discussed implications that accompany recent struggles between district officials and the local teachers union that put the future of ProComp at risk.

Researcher appointed to federal committee on performance pay for teachers
Faculty member Matthew Springer has been appointed by Assistant Secretary of the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education Kerri Briggs to a new U.S. Department of Education advisory committee on teacher and principal performance pay programs.

Results mixed in first year of Texas' teacher merit pay plan
A report co-authored by Peabody researcher Matthew Springer shows the first year of Texas' $100 million experiment in school reform produced mixed results.

Matthew Springer quoted in Time Magazine article on teacher pay for performance
Borrowing from the business world, hundreds of school districts are experimenting with new ways to attract, reward and keep good teachers.

Charter School Outcomes
Book brings tested, factual research to the charter school debate

New book explores effectiveness, challenges of charter schools
Charter School Outcomes is a compilation of papers presented at a September 2006 conference at the National Center on School Choice (NCSC) at Vanderbilt University.

Matthew Springer featured in Newsweek story on teacher merit pay
Merit pay might work best in struggling schools

Is traditional certification the best way to assure teacher quality?
Marcy Singer-Gabella and Matthew Springer weigh in on the topic of certification

Initiative with Texas Education Agency to evaluate teacher performance incentives
Vanderbilt University and the Texas Education Agency have teamed up to evaluate the largest performance-based incentive initiative for educators in the nation

New Center Asks: Does Merit Pay Work?
With a five-year, $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, the newly established National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt has put together an ambitious agenda to study such teacher pay incentives in Nashville, Tenn., across the state of Texas, and in two other locations yet to be named.

Vanderbilt Peabody wins $10 million to study teacher performance incentives
The new National Center on Performance Incentives was established through a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.

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