America's teachers are the key to successfully educating America's children. Recent studies confirm what parents have always known -- the quality of a teacher is one of the most important components of how well students learn. Every child in America deserves a quality teacher.

Performance pay should play a significant role in recruiting and retaining teachers. One cannot overstate the importance of a quality teacher in a child's education. That is the reason I made available more than $5 billion in funding to support teachers through training, loan forgiveness, tax credits, and financial incentives.

In my second term, I will provide a $500 million Teacher Incentive Fund for states and school districts that choose to reward effective teachers. This Teacher Incentive Fund would provide, on average, a $5,000 award to approximately 100,000 teachers across the country. The Teacher Incentive Fund will:

• Reward teachers and schools making great progress in closing the achievement gap that exists between students of different socio-economic backgrounds. States would receive funding to design and implement rewards for schools and teachers that have made the most significant progress in meeting adequate yearly progress and closing the achievement gap under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
• Reward effective teachers who raise student achievement and produce real results for all children. School districts would be able to design programs to individually and fairly assess and reward teachers based on growth in student achievement in the classroom.
• Provide incentives for the most effective teachers who choose to teach in low-income schools. Grants could also be used to give stipends to effective teachers who agree to teach in low-income schools, which will assist states in carrying out the NCLB requirement to ensure that low-income and minority students are taught by highly qualified teachers.

Teachers deserve to be compensated like other professionals. I will create a new Great Expectations Fund that supports school districts that offer increased pay to teachers who go the extra mile, increase their skills, and excel in improving their students' achievement.

Working together with unions and principals, districts developing those proposals will have open and fair plans for teachers to earn more pay and responsibility. I believe that teachers should be rewarded for demonstrating more skill or better results. My plan will offer increased pay and responsibility to teachers who excel, using measures that include improvements in student performance.