So the Democratic convention played host to lots of teacher union-bashing, but this week's GOP affair will feature an event co-sponsored by the National Education Association? The times, they are a changin'.

Liam went after Michelle Rhee's pay-for-performance plan (the one for the kids, not the teachers) in Sunday's Washington Post.

Evidence shows that when people are paid to complete certain tasks, they derive less enjoyment and satisfaction from them. Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College, wrote last year in the New York Times that paying pupils for their good schoolwork may render them even less interested in it than they already are.

OK, Liam, no more 50 bucks per blog post for you.

Update: This post was originally and erroneously attributed to Liam Julian, who,??stuffy though he undoubtedly is, doesn't refer to himself in the third person.

Seventeen-year-old Bristol Palin is pregnant, and now we learn from sundry news sources that her mother, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, supports abstinence-only education (or did, at least, in 2006, when she answered a survey question to that effect). The supposition by some in the media is that the foolishness of abstinence-only education is somehow proven by Bristol Palin's pregnancy. Thus, we hear, schools must offer sex education in the classroom. This presumes that Bristol Palin--had she only been enrolled in such school-proffered sex-ed classes--would have made different decisions. Which further presumes that Bristol Palin was several months ago unaware of the existence of contraceptives or could not procure them. Seems a stretch.

In Chicago today, students boycott school to protest their lack of learning.

Gadfly doesn't like it.

Sol Stern offers a wise suggestion in this City Journal Online piece: create an independent agency in New York to verify student achievement results.

In campaigning for mayoral control in 2002, Bloomberg made New Yorkers an offer they couldn't refuse: Give me the sole authority to improve the schools, and then hold me accountable for the results. The mayor promised to give taxpayers a bigger bang for their education buck. If he failed to deliver on that promise, the public would at least know that it was his failure and could vote him out of office... The problem was that the legislation failed to ensure that voters would have access to unimpeachable information about student achievement, a prerequisite to any reasoned judgment about how well the schools were doing under the new regime.

One might point out that state departments of education are supposed to play this role--providing unimpeachable information about student achievement--but it may be that these agencies are too weak and big-city systems too strong for this governance arrangement to work out in practice. So bring in the independent green-eye-shade types, and let the truth be known. But don't expect the arguments over "what the data show" to cease. These are New Yorkers we're talking about, after all, who subscribe to the maxim, "I bicker, therefore I am."

There's a lot to like about this Los Angeles Times op-ed by Newark Mayor Cory Booker, NewSchools Venture Fund CEO Ted Mitchell and iconic investor John Doerr. Hooray for innovation in education! Yes to national standards and tests! But the trio's faith in the federal government's ability to promote good things in education seems to have missed the entire point of the NCLB era:

The federal government, through the NIH (and other programs such as the National Science Foundation, the Small Business Administration and the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency), has proved that it can multiply innovations in many fields and spread the most successful ones. Yet, historically, the federal government has constrained its investment in education entrepreneurship to comparatively small, isolated programs, limited efforts in a bureaucracy that resists change. To fix this, there are key steps the next president should take.

The first is to expand innovation incentives and free them from the earmarks and conditions that have blunted past initiatives. Too many innovators spend too much time and energy raising money to stay afloat and expand. Adequate incentives, coupled with rigorous accountability, would remedy this. We should include two complementary programs, a "Grow What Works" fund and a fund to provide research and development money for promising early stage initiatives. Today, the federal government invests less than $1 billion annually in education innovation -- a paltry 0.2% of our $500 billion total national spending on education. Compare that to the $28 billion we spend on biomedical innovation, a full 1% of our $2.6 trillion on healthcare.

Beyond new funding, the federal government must use its influence over state and local policy to sweep away regulations that hamper innovative thinking, such as caps on the number of public charter schools allowed and excessive restrictions on how teachers are trained and credentialed. In addition, it can use the power of the purse to direct competitive funds to states that embrace urgent innovation. States control 70% of public education funding; a push for state support of entrepreneurial education efforts could have a huge effect.

As someone who helped to create the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement, surely I should laud these ideas. But call me skeptical, mugged by reality. The minute that federal officials place bets on any particular innovation, and use any sort of judgment, political opponents will scream with cries of cronyism and favoritism. (I speak from personal experience.)

What the federal government can do is provide competitive grants, such as those that flow from the Teacher Incentive Fund (which invests in local merit-pay programs), that might lead to changes that would otherwise be politically impossible. More such targeted grants in other areas might be worthwhile. But reformers would be wise to tone down their rhetoric and watch their promises. The federal role in education isn't suffering from too small an imagination but from an excess of hubris. That's the lesson from NCLB.

Yesterday, I bet that Barack Obama wouldn't mention NCLB in his acceptance speech, nor would he say much about education at all. I was right on the first count and wrong on the second. Here's what he said about k-12 schools:

America, now is not the time for small plans. Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy.

You know, Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don't have that chance.

I'll invest in early childhood education. I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries, and give them more support. And in exchange, I'll ask for higher standards and more accountability.

No, it wasn't a major part of his speech--his segment on healthcare was about twice as long--but it was more attention for education than he gave, say, judges.

Don't expect John McCain to say "No Child Left Behind" next week either. With the bases of both parties dead-set against the law, it's just smarter politics to talk vaguely about education reform.

Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein writes today about Michelle Rhee's proposed teacher-pay plan.

Sure, there will be times when teachers will be treated in an arbitrary and capricious way if they give up their tenure rights. Guess what: It happens all the time in the private sector, where hiring, promotion and pay decisions are sometimes made with incomplete information, favoritism, or undue emphasis on one factor or another. But despite this imperfection, despite the numerous instances of unfairness and poor judgment, somehow the vast majority of Americans manage to find a job, move up the ladder and enjoy their work, and companies manage to operate successfully and turn a profit. Pretty incredible, huh?

If the candidates aren't going to take my advice, surely the National Education Association isn't going to either. But still, let me offer one suggestion to its executive director, John Wilson: Find a different line of attack against merit pay than this one:

The unions oppose [merit pay] because it puts too much emphasis on one measure and doesn't consider factors outside teachers' control, John Wilson, the executive director of the 3.2-million-member NEA, said in an interview here.

"It's very tough to hold the faculty accountable for test scores without holding students and parents accountable," he said.

That's a great point, John. Let's figure out a way to hold third-graders "accountable" for learning to read. "Suzy, until you decode those ten words, no recess for you!" Or parents: "Mr. Smith, we're going to garnish your wages unless you show up for next week's PTA meeting."

Mr. Wilson should just be honest: the NEA will support merit pay when hell freezes over. Which, according to Al Gore, is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Here are a few off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts about John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate:

1. Clearly he wasn't looking for someone with a national profile on education. That should surprise no one; how many times do we have to stress that this election ain't about schools? Still, it's noteworthy that both Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty-the favorites to get the nod-built a strong track record on education. Palin might care about the issue but it's hard to know yet; from the little that I could find it appears that she's fairly conventional on the topic, voicing support for more funding, charter schools, homeschooling, and support for teachers.

2. Don't expect to hear a lot about inner-city schools. Let's see, we have a presidential candidate without much education experience, and a vice presidential candidate from Alaska. I'm not sure either one has had to spend more than 15 minutes thinking about how to handle the challenges of urban schools.

3. Bring on the virtual schools. I've got to believe that a governor of Alaska would see the merits in online schooling. And so does McCain; expanding online learning opportunities is a big part of his education plan.

4. She's a mom. She's got five kids, including a son in the army and another newborn son with Down Syndrome. Might she be active on special education issues? Maybe, but who knows.