A lot of what passes for debate in the educational policy blogosphere is really about efforts to privilege discourse. Some people think that if a person from the union says that it’s going to rain, it’s only because they don’t want their members to be held accountable for students getting wet, no matter how many clouds there are in the sky.  In my blogging, this is often an issue with the guys at Education Sector.  The most recent case of it was over discussions of changing teacher compensation and the need to have adequate base compensation if you want your plan to last.  After going back and forth with Kevin Carey on this for a bit, I got this from Andy Rotherham:

AFTie Ed is all worried that the momentum for incorporating performance into teacher pay might be jeopardized by poorly designed plans. I had no idea these guys cared so much!

To which I’d like to respond by writing this:

But regardless of the evaluation system, teachers aren’t going to buy into a performance-pay system that pegs a substantial percentage of their compensation to their performance evaluations. Unlike on Wall Street, where large sums of performance pay often are stacked on top of already generous base salaries, teachers, who earn an average of about $50,000 a year in the United States, want the majority of their pay in the form of a fixed annual income.

That’s one reason why the members of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers in 2002 rejected by a vote of 1,892 to 73 a performance-pay plan based on the city’s Danielson-inspired classroom evaluation system.

Except I didn’t write that.  Who did?  Hmm. Given that they haven't been put in their place with a snarky aside, it must be someone that Andy thinks should have the privilege to say a hard rain’s gonna fall when the clouds are in the sky.  Early next week, we'll give a shout out to the first blog that can solve the riddle.