Thursday, January 05, 2006

This Just In...

Check out this editorial in USA Today regarding merit pay and some other items of interest regarding compensation and teacher evaluation.

I'll be all for merit pay when I can have merit students who can actually be held accountable for at least attempting to do the work that is assigned them.

Of course we'll also need an objective method for evaluating teacher effectiveness.

If the evaluative process is subjective, I strongly feel that in many cases such a process would be corrupted by those three plagues that infest public education in all too many school districts: favoritism, nepotism, and cronyism. In a subjective evaluative scheme, powerful administrators could distribute "bonus pay" like so much Halloween candy.

Teachers who work in tough-to-staff inner city schools should receive increased compensation. That's just common sense.
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