Last Stand for Children First: Roland Fryer, Snooki, and Building the Perfect Teacher

Last Stand for Children First: Roland Fryer, Snooki, and Building the Perfect Teacher:

Roland Fryer, Snooki, and Building the Perfect Teacher

by Last Stand for Children

By Monica Caldwell

People are always surprised to find out that I wasn't an education major in college.   As a hotel/motel management major I learned a lot about how to deal with employees.  This knowledge was further augmented when I began managing a tanning salon at the tender age of 20.  Teaching was the hardest job I ever had and the five weeks of training leading up to it was even tougher than the nearly 2 whole years I spent in the classroom.

Recently, a couple of studies have come out that really got me thinking.   The first study was by the awesome Roland Fryer.  He says that the key to making merit pay work is loss aversion.  Now math is hard, but the way I understand it instead of giving teachers money if they show improvement on tests, you give them the money up front and then if their students' test scores don't improve they either cough up the dough, or your Uncle Rocco pays them a little visit.   If