PAY TO PLAY
There’s a pretty good Op/Ed on the subject of teacher pay in the Rocky Mountain News. Gaynor McCown calls for increased pay for teachers, but only if it’s tied to pay for performance.
And so the Teaching Commission proposes an ambitious bargain: our nation once and for all must step up to raising teacher pay, but at the same time teachers must offer sizable increases in quality and accountability based on student achievement – a quid pro quo that’s virtually unheard of in today’s classrooms.
I could actually back that idea. How ’bout this for a concrete proposal? Raise the average pay of all teachers 10 percent, but the best would get 20 percent and the worst zero. That’s zero, as in the chance that the NEA and AFT would go for it. The best would know that the union was screwing them out of a 20 percent payraise. So, they’d quit the union. So, dues would go down. So, there’d be less money to devote to politics. So, they’d have less influence in statehouses and in DC. So, it’d be more likely that education reforms would pass that would further diminish the union’s power.
A virtuous cycle. Like I said– it’ll never happen. (Hat tip: Deb)