| Hey, remember merit pay? Statistically, it has no impact on student performance and, in fact, have led to scandals of cheating-for-money in Atlanta and Washington D.C.? It shambles forth, resurrected at the Detroit News. Merit pay should be part of this equation, too. Some districts are embracing pay based on performance, with teachers unions supporting the change. It could become a trend, says Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
The problem, as noted, is that merit pay has been tried before, elsewhere, and hasn't delivered the promised results. In fact, out experience tells us that when you base pay on educational outcomes, what you mostly get is a lot of cheating. I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to sort out why conservatives continually and regularly insist on policy directions at odds with real world experience and the facts. |
