There’s a key difference. In order for my employer to be successful, we need to beat our competition. Our customers can *very* easily go somewhere else. So there’s a natural check and balance in the system — somebody has to own the P&L, and if it’s in the red, that’s not good. That’s what the public school system doesn’t have — it doesn’t see students [and their parents] as customers, because they can’t easily walk away and go elsewhere.

You give parents the ability to choose where their kids go to school, and you can be *sure* that schools will find a way to ensure they have good teachers on staff.

But that will destroy the unions, so the idea must be killed… with extreme prejudice.

What you propose here seems pretty reasonable. Maybe the top and bottom 1% (or perhaps even half of 1%) of the scores could be tossed aside so that results aren’t skewed by a few outliers. I also agree that teachers (and other government workers for that matter) are disconnected from the real world. The Left is always talking about how “we’re all in this together” (and let’s be real – people who work for the government tend to be on the Left) and how “we need to all sacrifice for the common good.” Well, here’s your chance people. Get in the same sinking boat as the rest of us who don’t get 16% raises (raise? What the hell is that) regardless of how poorly the economy performs.

I proposed this evaluation method: All students are tested in core subjects at the beginning of the school year and assigned grade-based scores. (Example: 2.2 = average score for a child one-fifth of the way through second grade). Students are tested again at the end of the school year. The average student should score one grade higher in all core subjects. Teachers whose mean student scores increase by less than 0.8 would be scrutinized and mentored the next year and fired if they don’t do better. Teachers whose mean student scores increase by more than 1.2 would get bonuses. I believe this would be an unbiased measure of teachers’ abilities. It also would provide an incentive to teach well.

My brother-in-law claimed that my proposed evaluation system would be unfair, though he couldn’t explain why. In his view, teachers should be tenured early, be assessed never, and be given annual cost-of-living and years-of-teaching-experience pay raises. The striking Chicago teachers have the same viewpoint. Their failures as teachers are irrelevant to their demands for job security, high pay, and phenomenal benefits.

This post is by no means an exhaustive analysis of what is at issue in the strike. I focused mostly on compensation – only one item at issue for the strike. I should have also pointed out that the teachers want to have a 30% increase in their salary, 30%! You know how much my pay has increased in four years? About 1%. If you factor in the cost of living, I’m actually making less than I was four years ago. Yet these “underpaid” teachers have the nerve to demand a 30% pay increase while delivering very pathetic results.

I don’t know if test results are the best metric for determining a teacher’s performance either but they should be held to some standard shouldn’t they? Salespeople are measured by the number of sales they make. Coaches are measured by wins and losses. Is this a good metric? Probably not, but at some point you have to deliver some kind of results.

It’s Rahm Emanuel who wants to base it on test scores. I don’t know if test scores are the *best* way to provide accountability. But I haven’t yet found a teacher accountability methodology that the unions have not fought against…

Personally, my approach for accountability relies on the one thing that both school administrators and the teacher unions oppose: market pressure. Let parents decide where their kids should go to school, and schools will be *forced* by market discipline into improving.

Also, anytime I see someone complain about teacher “accountability” and want to base it on test scores, I know they have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. You cannot judge teachers based on student test scores. Not possible. There are far too many factors completely out of their control when it comes to students.

I don’t see a compelling reason why a 16% raise is not enough, but I also understand that those claiming that’s the only reason why they’re striking are ignoring a lot of other factors.

The teachers were offered a 16% raise over the next four years – a salary of $88,000 by my math*, and the teachers rejected it as it’s still not enough.

You’re mischaracterizing their position. They’re not rejecting the pay raise as too small — they’re rejecting any semblance of accountability being placed on their performance.

They’re opposed to the idea that test scores have any bearing on evaluating teacher performance, and the ability to get rid of low-performing teachers. They further want laid-off teachers to be given absolute preference in hiring decisions over other prospective candidates, despite the fact that those teachers *might* be laid off under the new system specifically because they’re low-performing.

So their position isn’t just that they want more money. They want more money and no accountability. And they’re striking over the accountability piece.