Original Story (until 3/10/2005)
It’s something you hear about every so often. I wonder if it will finally come to fruition on a large scale. This article discusses performance pay for public school teachers in a Minnesota district. It doesn’t get into the specifics of how teachers will be assessed fairly (hopefully not another norm referenced test š Joking aside, I think this is a great idea. The problem of worthless teachers showing up for work for 30+ years really taints the profession in general. The rest of the world receives performance pay (including tenured professors), why not K-12 teachers? Now, I know that this could be used for evil as well as good. The benefit is all in the implementation. A performance judged by a god-like administrator would be a big mistake and performance as a popularity contest with peer-reviewers would be just as bad. I’m not going to pretend to know the right combination, but I have to imagine that fairness can be achieved using a combination of the two.