No Model, Pointless Anyway
Research Professor Of Education, New York University
The DC teachers contract has no lessons for other districts. At this time of budgetary constraint, no district could afford to pay big bonuses or salaries to the teachers who produce the highest test scores. Where would the district get the money to pay bonuses while handing out pink slips to hundreds or thousands of other teachers? Perhaps the Gates Foundation and a few other foundations with lots of money would like to underwrite similar plans for other districts, but it is hard to see the point.
After all, there is now a solid body of research demonstrating that teacher effects are unstable; that teachers whose students get high test scores one year may not produce the same results consistently year after year because students are not randomly assigned to classes. So teacher A may get a big bonus or salary one year, then fall to the middle of the pack the next year.
And to what purpose? To produce higher scores on standardized tests with multiple-choice questions in which students are not asked to demonstrate knowledge or understanding. To do this at the same t...