Re: Fwd: How Can Schools Be Accountable?

[Gerald Bracey <gbracey@starpower.net>]

My reaction to Terry Moe's article was to suggest to the
editor that now that we had written polar opposite articles,
we should be commissioned to critique each other's essays.

One thing that jumped out at me was the par. Peter cited on
incentives.  A few par.s before that, Terry had mentioned how
lousy American kids do from the middle grades on in comparison
to other OECD countries.  That's partly because there are no
incentives--no pay based on how much the kids learn.  Well,
I'm not an international teacher pay expert, but I can't think
of a country that has much in the way of incentives like Terry
has in mind.

In France, a few teachers might advance along the salary
schedule faster than the norm, but that has more to do with
making a favorable impression on an inspector than on anything
else.  So if incentives are so important they are part of
Management 101, how come no educational systems use them?  I
can write that with some confidence in spite of my factual
deficit because I am quite certain that if any high-scoring
nation had such, Terry or Checker or someone of that ilk would
have trotted that country out as a great success story.

Jerry