<story><title>Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master&apos;s degrees and seniority</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19gates.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wheaties</author><text>This is easy to say but hard to do.  &quot;Based on excellence&quot; is the mantra I&apos;ve heard from software development circles for years and yet...&lt;p&gt;1. How many of us have lost productivity because some other developer ran rough-shod through code caring not for maintainability, readability, or even extensibility?  Which one was praised and which one rewarded?  Doesn&apos;t apply to teachers?  Ever have a dud who couldn&apos;t do simple math in charge of the algebra class?  Guess what the next teacher has to deal with.&lt;p&gt;2. How do &quot;normal&quot; people in managerial roles judge competency between two people in such roles?  When looking at our own industry we see how difficult it is for &quot;normal&quot; people to make those sorts of judgement calls.  Some schools require only 2 years teaching experience before moving on to superintendent roles.  Some states more.  With such divergence what can we expect?&lt;p&gt;3. How will we measure such excellence?  What metric?  What new system will evolve to capitalize on this metric despite the spirit of the metric?  Unintended consequences?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>WalterBright</author><text>There is no bureaucratic rule that can be devised that can separate good teachers from bad ones. Every such rule can and will be gamed. It&apos;s like the difference between art and porn - the difference is obvious by inspection, but impossible to codify.&lt;p&gt;With a free market school system, people will know who the good teachers are and will pay for them (supply and demand).&lt;p&gt;With a government school system, this simply will never work, because the people paying the salaries will never be the ones judging the teachers.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bill Gates: End teacher bonuses based on master&apos;s degrees and seniority</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19gates.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wheaties</author><text>This is easy to say but hard to do.  &quot;Based on excellence&quot; is the mantra I&apos;ve heard from software development circles for years and yet...&lt;p&gt;1. How many of us have lost productivity because some other developer ran rough-shod through code caring not for maintainability, readability, or even extensibility?  Which one was praised and which one rewarded?  Doesn&apos;t apply to teachers?  Ever have a dud who couldn&apos;t do simple math in charge of the algebra class?  Guess what the next teacher has to deal with.&lt;p&gt;2. How do &quot;normal&quot; people in managerial roles judge competency between two people in such roles?  When looking at our own industry we see how difficult it is for &quot;normal&quot; people to make those sorts of judgement calls.  Some schools require only 2 years teaching experience before moving on to superintendent roles.  Some states more.  With such divergence what can we expect?&lt;p&gt;3. How will we measure such excellence?  What metric?  What new system will evolve to capitalize on this metric despite the spirit of the metric?  Unintended consequences?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alphaoverlord</author><text>This might sound trite, but I think the solution would be to couple standardized testing with performance based pay. Unlike code, it&apos;s hard to aim for solely short-term gains. As long as teachers aren&apos;t cheating, I can&apos;t imagine many ways to teach students that aren&apos;t inherently beneficial to the student. Teaching better study habits, etc might not be directly related to their material, but it still helps the students.&lt;p&gt;Also, I think there are fairly generalizable development timelines for children. While standardized testing can never be a gold standard in determining progress, I think we can both agree such testing does measure a worthwhile metric. I would definitely agree that there are edge cases, both in terms of individual students and in terms of school districts, but linking pay with progress seems on face value to be a good idea. That, plus independent school districts, is system-based evolution. Such selection depends on creating the right relationship between effort and reward.</text></comment>