Sunday, March 27, 2011

Paying Teachers For Performance

Florida has become the first state to sign into government a performance-based pay system for teachers. I am hesitant to endorse this. On the one hand, teacher pay needs an overhaul. Our education system is crumbling and it's only getting worse. Talented people are becoming teachers at a declining rate, and those spots are being filled by idiots.

On the other hand, basing performance analysis on standardized testing will simply force teachers to concentrate on getting those grades up, resulting in a drop in education quality. It incentivises educating by rote to score highly on tests to maximize money and minimize the threat of termination. This is bad.

In the end, while I think that this system is just as broken as the system that it replaces, it is at least different. It rocks the boat a little, which we desperately needed.

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