{"id":241,"date":"2009-03-30T19:48:47","date_gmt":"2009-03-30T23:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=241"},"modified":"2009-03-30T19:48:47","modified_gmt":"2009-03-30T23:48:47","slug":"merit-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=241","title":{"rendered":"Merit Pay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a bunch of articles out there describing President Obama&#8217;s advocacy of merit pay for teachers; here&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/10\/us\/politics\/10text-obama.html?_r=1&#038;ref=politics&#038;pagewanted=print\">transcript<\/a> of his March 10th speech on education.  He alludes several times to this issue, albeit indirectly. <\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philly.com\/inquirer\/local\/20090330_Second_look_at_merit_pay_for_teachers.html\">Inquirer<\/a> takes it further, enlisting always quotable Ted Hershberg and new Superintendent Arlene Ackerman as foils to dry, conflict averse Jerry Jordan.  Incentives are one thing &#8212; finding a middle school math teacher is nearly impossible &#8212; but systems of pay based on merit&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I wish anyone pushing for merit pay would read Charles Payne&#8217;s exceptional new book &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Much-Reform-Little-Change-Persistence\/dp\/1891792881\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1238456882&#038;sr=8-1\">So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools<\/a>.  His description of many troubled urban schools as demoralized, as essentially irrational places where reforms cannot penetrate is not only accurate but a sound explanation for why these sorts of merit pay plans cannot work in Philly. For such a system to function would require multiple parts that simply do not exist and cannot be created overnight: thoughtful administrators who know instruction, motivated teachers who haven&#8217;t been burned again and again, and a reasonably efficient administrative system.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a bunch of articles out there describing President Obama&#8217;s advocacy of merit pay for teachers; here&#8217;s a transcript of his March 10th speech on education. He alludes several times to this issue, albeit indirectly. Today&#8217;s Inquirer takes it further, enlisting always quotable Ted Hershberg and new Superintendent Arlene Ackerman as foils to dry, conflict &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=241\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Merit Pay<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rNFZ-3T","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}