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Education News for 10-03-2012

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State Education News

  • Field trips might as well be ancient history (Cincinnati Enquirer)

    • No one saw it coming at the time, but when then-President George W. Bush came to Butler County in 2002 to sign the historic No Child Left Behind act…Read more...

  • State releases preliminary schools report (Portsmouth Daily Times)

    • After weeks of delay, the Ohio Department of Education has released the preliminary 2011- 12 Local Report Cards…Read more...

  • Feds find district failed to stop discrimination (Springfield News-Sun)

    • A federal investigation found that the Northeastern Local School District failed to adequately investigate, effectively address and prevent recurrences…Read more...

Local Education News

  • Reading instructors in short supply (Columbus Dispatch)

    • The Columbus schools will face a shortage of teachers certified as reading-intervention specialists…Read more...

  • Big cuts predicted if levy fails (Toledo Blade)

    • If the Perrysburg Schools levy fails in November, students may need to make their own way to school, spend a shorter time in a bigger class…Read more...

  • Cardinal Autism Resource and Education School in Mentor flourishing (Willoughby News Herald)

    • The hallway at Cardinal Autism Resource and Education School is silent thanks to special soundproofing around classroom doors…Read more...

  • Clergy comes together to support Cleveland (WKYC)

    • Members of the Cleveland clergy came together Tuesday afternoon to show their support for the Cleveland school levy/Issue 107…Read more...

  • Lack of nurses, social workers in schools (WKYC)

    • Through budget cuts, the Cleveland School District has cut nurses and eliminated social workers all together…Read more...

The Debate over Teacher Merit Pay

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The term “merit pay” has gained a prominent place in the debate over education reform. First it was D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee trumpeting it as a key to fixing the D.C.’s ailing public schools. Then a handful of other cities gave it a go, including Denver, New York City, and Nashville. Merit pay is a big plank of Education Secretary Arne Duncan‘s reform platform. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has just launched his own version of merit pay that focuses incentives toward principals. There’s just one problem: educators almost universally hate merit pay, and have been adamantly opposed to it from day one. Simply, teachers say merit pay won’t work.

In the last year, there’s been some pretty damning evidence proving them right; research showing that merit pay, in a variety of shapes and sizes, fails to raise student performance. In the worst of cases, such as the scandal in Atlanta, it’s contributed to flat-out cheating on the part of teachers and administrators. So, are we surprised that educators don’t respond to monetary incentives? Is that even the right conclusion to draw?

[readon2 url="http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/09/20/the-debate-over-teacher-merit-pay-a-freakonomics-quorum/"]Continue reading...[/readon2]