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The National Association of Secondary School Principals has just released a new position statement on "Professional Compensation for Teachers."  Though the statement's authors carefully avoid openly endorsing such systems, they describe their statement as "a template for states and districts considering the implementation of such systems."

The statement's guiding principles are too numerous to list here, but at least three warrant special notice:

• Pay-for-performance plans should consider more than high-stakes tests.  Other important indicators include graduation and promotion rates, participation in advanced courses, college- and work-readiness data, school climate data, parent participation rates, and teacher retention rates.
• "On-going, job-embedded professional development" for principals should accompany any performance-based compensation system. Incentives alone won't do the trick without efforts to build principals' capacity.
• Pay-for-performance plans should avoid exacerbating shortages of principals willing to work in poor and low-performing schools.  "States and districts should provide additional compensation for examplary principals who obtain national advanced certification once such recognition is in place."