Merit v Performance

Neuron Culture : Obama's school agenda - Merit pay v 'performance-based pay':

The headline in my local paper, for instance, and in many others as well, was "Obama expresses support for merit pay," and the AP story is getting heds like "Teacher merit pay essential, Obama says."

Actually he didn't say that, and this is a mistake that's going to frighten a lot of teachers even more than what he did say; for what Obama came out for was performance-based pay, which -- functionally and especially politically -- is a different animal and a looser, still-fluid concept that might or might not include merit pay, and which offers a more comprehensive but arguably more compatible challenge to current ties between performance and pay. It's important not to mix them up.

Performance-based pay is the looser of the two terms, and it essentially means that you'll pay teachers more if they do their jobs particularly well, and you pay them even more if they do well the hardest jobs, like teaching in tough schools, subjects, or other conditions. The idea can also encompass -- and to some people implies -- the sort of thing Michelle Rhee is proposing in Washington, where teachers can opt for a much higher pay scale (into the six figures) if they take an untenured track that makes them vulnerable to job loss if they perform poorly. (Tenure, which is virtually permanent, is virtually automatic in most school systems after 1 to 3 years, and is often won as long as a teacher doesn't paw any students or buy them drinks. A few years ago my own district gave tenure to one of the worst math teachers we've ever had.) This performance might be measured by a number of factors such as student scores; peer, parent, and outside-expert evaluation; certification by third-party outfits like the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards; advanced study; and so on - a list to be determined, in a sense. Performance-based pay is a work still in progress, in short, a set of principles with emerging guidelines for practice.

Merit pay, on the other hand -- which might or might not be part of a performance-based pay system -- is understood to mean a system that moves teachers' pay up or possibly down with their students' scores on standardized tests. This can be problematic, as it can punish teachers that teach in the toughest schools or take on the most challenging students and can create a "teach to the test" approach. It's generally unpopular with teachers and teacher unions.

"Performance-based pay" is what Obama's proposing, along lines still being worked out. But many stories conveyed the impression he's proposing the more tainted and limited merit-pay approach. This has already created some confusion.

hmm...new icons out there...

must be spring. :)

I hate AIG's lack of ethics

And more so I detest the fact that some AIG people got "Retention Bonuses" (thanks for staying with us through these dark times), one to the tune of 4.6 million dollars, who then promptly quit the company after receiving the paycheck.

But this idea that neither conservatives nor liberals can come up with any Constitutional reason why AIG bonuses in 2009 should not be retroactively taxed at 90% is utter bullshit.  I fully agree with Mike Dunford and others at SB (and disagree with Mike the Mad Biologist) that this bill is any or all of

1. ex-post-facto
2. Bill of Attainder

and failing that, it is a gross abuse of vocabulary manipulation to avoid hitting 4th and 8th amendment precedents and loopholes in interpretation of the 16th ("without any regard to enumeration")

This is true particularly the way it was specifically targetted not to an generalized populace but a very specific group, where others of the same income are not affected by it.  Such a targetted measure is an utter violation of the *spirit*.  That some people are willing to argue that ex-post-facto is only applicable to criminal law (which is garbage, as it clearly applies to liability instances which are civil court cases) or argue that tax policy overrides BoA clearly demonstrates that essential fact:

• Far too many people are perfectly willing to throw the Spirit of the Constitution away when it gets in the way of what they consider to be "justice".

That "pesky little document" is there TO PROTECT US from the abuses of the majority as much as it is to protect us from the abuses of a powerful, vocal minority.  That pesky little document that has survived 220 years is the only thing that separates us from every other government out there that doesn't have a document nearly that old running it.

The spirit of that pesky little document is equality in the eyes of the law.  A tax on cigarettes is fair not because non-smokers don't get taxed but because all who choose to smoke are taxed equally.

But a tax on corporate executives from very specific companies who make N dollars through such-n-such means by some vague term called "bonus", not legally defined and therefore distinctive to each company, that doesn't affect ANYBODY ELSE even at that same income bracket is so tightly targetted as to be inescapably a bill of attainder.  That it isn't a criminal attainder is irrelevant, as our right to freedom of seizure of property is also protected under the 4th amendment.

That AIG took advantages of loopholes in the laws to get themselves in trouble is true.  But that does not mean we should take advantages in possible loopholes in the Constitution to punish them.

Darth Vader once said, "I am altering the deal.  Pray I don't alter it any further."

Is that REALLY the image of our government we want to project to ourselves and to our economic allies?

There was talk of forbidding bonuses to AIG before the bailout.  *Some* Congressmen voted against that amendment to the bill before it went to the floor vote.

If you want someone to get mad at, go look up who they were and get their constituents mad at them so much they lose their elections in 20 months, because they, not AIG, are the REAL enemy who got in the way when others in Congress saw this coming and tried to stop it.

Meanwhile, I'll go be mad at the 300+ Congressmen who decided that pesky little document can be thrown in the shredder for another month...