The normally mild-mannered Joanne Jacobs goes off on a former Oregon teacher, principal and superintendent, who writes in a letter to the New York Times that President Obama, if he’s serious about about improving education, should “lose the words ‘achievement’ and ‘rigor,’ which have no connection to the inquisitiveness, determination, creative thinking and perseverance students need for genuine lifelong learning.”
No connection? I remain dubious about the idea that those who’ve learned little in school will become “lifelong learners” at some happy day in the future. As for “inquisitiveness, determination, creative thinking and perseverance,” those traits usually lead to achievement in the here and now without the necessity of waiting till winged pigs are ice-skating in hell. I don’t even think that “achievement” and “rigor” foreclose the possibility of “creative thinking.” Not unless “creative” is a synonym for “wrong” and “thinking” means “making a poster.”
Amen to all that. Click through to the letter in the Times and the writer’s main point (if you can ignore the nonsense about rigor and achievement) actually proposes a provocative idea.
If the federal government wants to reward school success, it should split those rewards among all those who have contributed: parents; the whole school faculty, including the principal; and the students themselves. The government might also reward the community that gave its schools financial and moral support.
Each of these ideas is fraught with baggage and “moral hazard” but each has its champions: New York City has piloted a program to offer cash incentives for things like attending their child’s parent teacher conferences, for example. Roland Fryer and others have promoted pay-for-grades schemes. Merit pay plans are legion. I remain skeptical about all of them for various reasons. But I’m equally skeptical about treating teachers as the only moving part in the incentive equation. If you believe that cash incentives matter, it would be an interesting thought exercise to think through what a Total Incentive Plan might look like.
I like how — on both sides of the debate — folks who use the term ‘rigor’ usually have little knowledge of what it means.
I worry about total incentive plans that don’t include robust efforts to engage the various players more directly in decisions that affect schools and their students. While incentives structures and market forces are not irrelevant to school improvement plans, the “moral hazards” you mention are real.
Consumer choice and incentive structures can actually replace more effective engagement if we’re not careful, because they can distort the motivations for engagement.