Awesome article!!! This thing covered a wide range of very complex issues without sounding academic or long winded. We are talking about one of the most pressing issues in education today, and I began to get so frustrated while reading the first half of this thing. I lose my mind when we being talking about what to call something... merit based pay, performance pay, differentiated pay, call it unicorn and leprechaun based pay for all I care. But that is the point, this thing is so tricky, even the name is a stopping point.
I would like to think that we all know, tying pay to standardized test scores, is NOT the way to go. I would like to think that the Obama administration has learned the lessons of districts that have tried this before. But I don't know if that is going to be the case. In today's society where political expediency is king, and policy is dictated by reelection, it seems to me that the quickest way to turn a total system around in four or eight years is just to peg it to test scores.
This will fail.
As proven throughout the article, this issue needs to be discussed. There has to be a large number of people at this table. Ideas need to be flushed out and properly debated. And this takes time. Time, is something that no politician has a lot of. Especially those at the top of the pyramid.
I love the way this article ended. Any time the idea that performance based pay is modeled after the modern economic sector as a whole is brought up, I cringe. Because it isn't. At least not all of it, and from the numbers that were given, only a very small portion of the economy is structured this way.
Great great read!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Leave a damn message so I know your reading this...