As much as I despise union rules that make it impossible to get rid of misfits, there’s no reason to think that “fire at will” won’t lead to equally deplorable results if the head honcho resorts to “Well, he’s not producing good results today, so I’ll enforce accountabilty and fire him”.

“The Drunkard’s Walk” by Leonard Mlodinow has an interesting look at the “hot hand” theory, using examples such as Sherry Lansing and George Lucas. Around page 18, I think.

I think Palmieri was right:

“. . . The currency of the charter rewards system is respect: knowing that your peers — other teachers — have their jobs because they deserve them”

Two figures? You make under $100 a year?

One of the things that has always bothered me about teaching is how little autonomy teachers actually have. In other “professional” fields (quotes because the term is really kind of meaningless, although I’m using it here…), the lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc. do typically have a boss and work within a hierarchy, but have a great deal of autonomy within their area. (At least after they have a few years of experience). Having the autonomy is, in fact, precisely the point of hiring the “professional.”

In the legal and medical fields, minor administrative duties are part of the workload. Greater administrative responsibilities re generally taken up by lawyers and doctors who are perhaps seeing fewer clients/patients in exchange for doing the administrative work, but who aren’t full time administrators; if the practice is large enough there *may* be a doctor/lawyer working as a full time administrator…but at least in the legal field, working as an administrator typically involves a lot of working with the individual lawyers on particular cases.

The analogy isn’t perfect, of course; practices tend to be private and owned by some of the practitioners, which gives them the right to call the shots. Also, as money-making enterprises, the incentives are different from schools and a lot easier to measure.

Finally – and this points again to the autonomy issue – there aren’t the kind of regulations that micromanage doctors/lawyers the way that they do teachers. There is no Dept. of Law mandating that closing arguments be 45 minutes long, or requiring that doctors spend 15 minutes with every patient, etc. The reason for this is because the lawyer/doctor is the person who is best situated to determine the appropriate length of a close, or to determine how much time needs to be spent with the patient. (And – importantly – the consequences of getting this wrong are both real and significant. Which is why practices look for individuals who will be able to make the appropriate decisions.)

So I’ll be very interested in seeing how this experiment pans out. It probably won’t work in all schools, but I can imagine it working in many schools, and I can see parts of it working in more.

(Also, this is a decent salary, even in NYC, but there are teachers in NYC who earn 6 figures)

This is an attractive idea, but (1) there aren’t enough new teachers with these qualifications and (2) what do we do about all the current teachers who don’t have these qualifications? If we want to use this idea and also emulate The Equity Project, we need to find teachers who have a bachelor’s in a real subject and a master’s in teaching AND who are willing to work longer hours than a regular teacher. That will be a small applicant pool.

This phenomenon now exists in medicine. The structure of medical practice has changed with the advent of large numbers of women physicians; they very commonly choose shorter and more regular hours, even if it means less pay and they tend to prefer straight shifts, not an on-call schedule. They also tend to choose primary care, not the higher-paid specialties which have more demanding and unpredictable hours and on-call schedules. Obstetrics and gynecology is the exception; most OBGs are now women.

Cardinal Fang — maybe with the streamlining of administrative tasks this high pay level would make schools more efficient, allow classrooms to take on a few more students per teacher and attract much better quality teachers to the classroom and administrators to lead the schools. I believe strongly our current education schools take on many lower performer college students who could only go into education. I also believe the schools of education provide a very light weight degree.

By being willing to pay competitive salaries with the real world and requiring students to have a liberal arts subject matter degree and a teaching master degree (the only way I believe one should be able to get a teaching certificate) then I believe this idea would work across the country. It will take a long time to get there. Sadly…our public school kids have been cheated out of a quality education for too long. They cannot wait any longer. We need more innovative schools that can provide this high quality education. The country cannot wait any long either…