In this era of high-stakes accountability, it is important to take steps to increase student achievement and to reduce the achievement gap between rich and poor students. The education profession now recognizes that teacher quality is the most important school-related factor affecting student achievement. Thus, it is necessary to take steps to attract highly competent and effective people into the teaching profession and then motivate, develop, and retain them. This recognition of the importance of high-quality teaching naturally raises questions about teacher compensation. In this article, the author talks about a system of performance pay that would allow the hardest working, most talented, and most effective teachers to be paid more. He also discusses the problems with a performance pay system and the challenge of creating a system in which salary differences are accepted as fair. There are many ways to design performance-based compensation systems for teachers. The challenge is to get those who question the efficacy of performance pay to work with advocates of the policy to reach agreement on a definition of "fairness."