Concerns about poor student performance have led schools to diverge from traditional teacher compensation and base a portion of pay on student outcomes. In the US, the number of school districts adopting such performancebased financial incentives has increased by more than 40% since 2004....

I use the 2007 Schools and Staffing Survey to estimate the effect of tenure on K-12 teacher behavior. Estimates are obtained by exploiting the cross-state variation in the probationary period length of novice teachers. I find that in the year that teachers are evaluated for tenure, they spend...