Here’s an interesting concept: Peg teacher’s compensation to the performance of their students. If the students retain and succeed, then the teacher is showered in bonuses. I first caught the story in this morning’s New York Times:

“Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts has a bold plan to improve public education in his state. It involves new laptops for students, new science and math teachers and, the most ambitious component of all, merit pay tied to classroom performance that could add $5,000 or more to a teacher’s annual salary.”

I’m not sure how I feel about this concept yet. I think on the surface it sounds like a great idea, but I would have to see what happens to the quality of education as a result. Will it skew teacher’s priorities, or will it truly push them to serve their students to the fullest extent possible? Will it prompt them to focus on the high achievers to lock in a certain bonus, or will they be concerned with the advancement of all of their students?

TAGS: Education | School | Teacher | NYT |

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2005 at 8:05 am and is filed under Business Ethics, Interesting News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.