As I have written, D.C. school chief Michelle Rhee’s effort to reform the capital’s poor, largely black system is a real litmus test of Obama’s commitment to improving education. And we now know the Obama administration is letting D.C.’s successful school voucher program die, and also seems ready, in spite of campaign promises to the contrary, to weaken support for charter schools.There are, however, other paths to education reform, including merit pay for teachers—something to which Rhee gives her highest priority, and something else during the campaign Obama promised to support. Merit pay bothers me, because it does set one group of teachers against the probable majority, with the majority likely to prevail [cartoon]. Better, I think, to handle teacher bonuses in the manner the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein recommends for the financial industry:
[Goldman Sachs Chairman Lloyd Blankfein] laid out a spot-on set of guidelines for industry bonuses that would give greater weight to the performance of the entire firm than just individual performance and reflect long-term risks as well as the short-term gains.
Rhee should provide bonuses to entire teacher teams in schools that work.
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