While I know that some forms of determining merit pay for teachers can be unfair, in general I think tying pay to performance is an excellent, indeed necessary idea. Now the Florida Education Association is trying to block $700 million in grants from the federal government because it’s tied to incentive pay. Bad idea, I’d…
I have been wanting to respond further to the excellent discussion over at Reclaiming the Mind, to which I linked a couple of days ago, but I’m not really an academic, and Karl Barth notwithstanding, I’m not really a theologian either. (I now am close to 100 comments behind on keeping up with the thread…
The idea of equally dividing incentive bonuses between all teachers, good, average, or bad apparently makes sense to the Boston Teachers’ Union. They want to block incentive bonuses given to teachers based on performance and instead divide the money between all teachers equally. Note also that the money is coming from private foundations. That’s at…
There has been a good deal of discussion of this around the blogosphere, related to graduate school and job applications as well. Nels P. Highberg provides an interesting example at ProfHacker. (HT: Exploring Our Matrix)
CBS is reporting on a school that has children singing songs about President Obama’s accomplishments. I note that the story compares the reaction to this to the reaction to Obama giving a speech. I thought the speech reaction was way overblown. The president of the United States should be able to address the nation, and…
I recently wrote with appreciation about my Seventh-day Adventist education in Biblical studies over on my Participatory Bible Study blog. Today a friend sent me an e-mail directing me to a post on Inside Higher Ed, discussing a problem with the teaching of evolution at La Sierra University, a Seventh-day Adventist school. I didn’t attend…
Because of many of my political positions, not to mention my theological ones, many people suppose that I would think public education was the be-all and end-all of education. And I do believe that making education available to everyone is an essential of civilized society. The problem is that writing a health care bill titled…
… on their new Master of Arts in Biblical Languages. In growing up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church I got used to the idea that in order to teach Bible or become a pastor one started studying theology/religion at the undergraduate level and then continued at the graduate level with the fundamentals out of the…
… the legislators, that is. He makes it here. I’m also wondering how many voters who won’t finance education feel they have a right to it anyhow. There’s probably a subset of the voters who voted “no” on funding, would be horrified at Chris’s suggestion, and think education will happen magically anyhow.
I’d like to get some more information on this story about a charter school that would target high school dropouts. I know we’re all fighting over money right now, but it seems like this is a good place for innovation. It’s always possible that there really is a problem with the way the money will…
