There’s just one catch. In exchange for more money, teachers need to become more accountable for their performance—and school districts need to have greater ability to get rid of ineffective teachers. So far, teacher’s unions have resisted the idea of pay for performance, in part because it could be disbursed at the whim of a principal. The unions also argue—rightly, I think—that most school districts rely solely on test scores to measure teacher performance, and that test scores may be highly dependent on factors beyond any teacher’s control, like the number of low-income or special-needs
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