Two of the great mantras of our time are the need to improve test scores and the need for performance pay to satisfy the first.
One article that seemed to make sense was "The Uncertain Impact of Merit Pay for Teachers", Edwin Glaeser, New York Times, 2010-06-08. Even though some studies were not solid on merit pay, Prof. Glaeser still supported merit pay for teachers.
In trying to retrieve this article, I stumbled on "Let's Have Merit Pay for Economists Who Muck Around in Education Issues", Jim Horn, School Matters, 2010-06-08. Horn counters with other studies that showed performance pay doesn't work, including a study presented at the conference that Glaeser wrote about.
See also Horn's "More Research on Teacher Performance Pay for Duncan to Ignore".
What all this clamor for performance pay misses is that schools aren't really about test taking and getting good scores. They are about learning to learn and learning to be creative. I read that East Asian kids may be much better at passing tests than American kids, but they don't seem to have the innovative skills that are far more abundant in the U.S.
A refreshing antidote is "History for Dollars", David Brooks, New York Times, 2010-06-07. He wrote that many students are opting for college degrees in "practical matters" like accounting and that the portion of humanities majors has dropped as much as 50 percent in a generation. He argues that humanities gives communication skills, "a wealth of analogies", and the ability to think in different ways.
Ah! Think in different ways! That certainly beats thinking in differing ways.
