This is a case where Kevin’s style is imitable. If I’m functionally against pay for performance, he’s functionally against a program that will last more than one contract cycle and is functionally for programs that teachers will resent and seek to subvert at every turn, even if their union negotiates it. 

Kevin suggests capping us where we are now, and sending lots of new money to a pay for performance program. For Kevin, adequate base pay might be “just” but it isn’t viable and we’ll never change compensation by working diligently to do it in a smart and fair way.  Instead, Kevin wants to:

create a methodologically sound system for evaluating teacher effectiveness, in conjunction with labor, and then send the new money to the most effective teachers.

I appreciate the nod to collective bargaining.  And it had to be painful to write that he wasn’t exactly advocating for justice for all workers. But Kevin’s desire for reform is leading him to search for a program that can get in the front door, but which experience tells us is likely to do as much or more harm than good and which will not last. I mean, really, Murnane is a smart guy.  The fact of this work should raise a yellow caution flag.

My fear is that Kevin is treating this issue the way many reformers treated NCLB at the turn of the century. The desire to do good leads to impatience and hence to policy that – a priori – we should have known better than to pursue. We thus endanger momentum for reform. I’m already quite concerned that this is where one of the most promising state level reforms, in Minnesota, is heading now that the state has gotten the power to require doing away with the salary schedule all together as a condition for participation. And many of the people I work for appear to be pretty reformed out as a result of this method.