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August 10, 2010

Notes on Teacher Merit Pay

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

Susan Troller had a typically good and very substantive article in the Capital Times this week about merit pay for teachers and other dimensions of teacher evaluations.

Merit pay is an issue that highlights the culture clash between the new breed of educational reformers and the traditional education establishment that finds its foundation in teachers and their unions.

Educational reformers nowadays frequently come to education as an avocation after successful business careers. These reformers, like Bill Gates and Eli Broad, believe that our approach to education can be improved if we import the sort of approaches to quality and innovation that have proved effective in the business world.

So, for example, let's figure out what's the single most important school-based variable in determining student achievement. Research indicates that it's the quality of the teacher. Well then, let's evaluate teachers in a way that lets us assess that quality, let's put in place professional development that will allow our teachers to enhance that quality, and let's have compensation systems that allow us to reward that quality.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 10, 2010 7:41 PM
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