Thursday, July 17, 2008

Un-Advanced

John McCain spent a lot of time in his NAACP speech in Cincinnati yesterday talking about the many teacher reforms he'd put in place--performance pay, a greater role for principals in staffing matters, and peer evaluations, among them. If McCain's education advisors had been on the ball, they would have told the presumptive Republican presidential nominee that those very reforms are already in place in Cincinnati, with the blessing of the local teacher union, no less. The question is, What have the reforms wrought there?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love when people outside the Ed system think they can 'solve' the school problem just by implementing personnel techniques from the commercial world:

Merit pay! peer evals! let the principal fire 'em!

Do they even know that soon THERE WON'T BE ANYONE TO FIRE? The majority of teachers are from a generation that will retire within the next 8 years. And considering the paltry salaries offered (professions with similar years of of post grad education make 100% more) it's not like new teachers are flooding into the profession. How many young people want to enter a field were your salary is set to a hard and fast top amount that will never change after ten years on the job?

So by all means, enact jihadist rules to "get rid of " or "compel" teachers to be better. Jst don't wail and whine when you have no candidates to fill those positions.