| Tuesday, May 31, 2005 |
| A Noble Idea |
Maureen Dowd's temporary replacement (thank god - though I agree with her sentiments, I often can't stomach to read her) on the NYT op/ed page, Matt Miller, wrote on Saturday of a plan to attract better teachers to poor public schools by committing to make the best teachers millionaires by the time they retire. He'd do this by starting pay at $60,000, paying the top-performing half $90,000 (he doesn't say how he'd measure performance), and pay the best of those $150,000, thereby enabling them to save enough to retire with $1m.
Could it be done? I don't know. Judging by test scores compels teachers to teach to the test. And if you put the decision in the hands of a couple of administrators, you open up the potential for bias, discrimination, personal relationships, etc. It's also expensive - $30 billion a year, which Miller likens to the amount the government would stop collecting if it repealed the estate tax, as the GOP wants to. He doesn't say, however, where to get this new amount of money from.
A noble idea, but an impossible one too, at least for the time being. |
posted by CB @ 3:21 PM   |
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