When I first read this article, I was skeptical. Giving bonuses to teachers and principals at failing schools? Doesn't that undermine the whole concept of merit pay--as in, rewards for meritorious performance? But perhaps not.??
Lest we get strapped to an imaginary bar--and thereby eliminate the idea of improvement--Bloomberg and Klein just may have taken the right approach. These schools are failing, yes, and they will be closed as a result, but they're still open now. And since they're still open, they still have students, who, it must be pointed out, are not mere numbers in a statistical study. In that sense, that these teachers still have an incentive to keep working with the students they have, even if only a third of them are proficient, is a positive thing. That's not to say that strong standards are somehow less important in situations such as these. But sometimes balancing short term and long term goals require seemingly contradictory policies.
