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>Second, the unions have convinced teachers that any measurement of quality will be inaccurate, arbitrary, and a front for administrators' political and personal animosity.

But this is true. How do you suggest measuring performance? Standardized testing is not an acceptable answer.

The same as in any other job: we rely on the honesty, skill, and self-interest of their bosses and peers. Honest and accurate evalution of performance is the signal, stupidity and bias is the noise. Somehow, though it's pretty frickin' amazing when you think about it, people who are chosen, guided, and evaluated by biased, flawed, mostly stupid human beings manage to treat disease, build bridges, publish newspapers, maintain sewage systems, and do everything else required to keep society going.

I mean, I work in a vast and faceless corporate bureaucracy driven by the most idiotic politics imaginable, but when I think back to my favorite teachers from high school, they got a raw deal compared to me. Even though I got laid off my first job because of the dot-com bust. Even though I left my last job because of an abusive boss. Even though my review process is cookie-cutter and somewhat divorced from reality. It would have been better than having no opportunity to differentiate themselves from the stupid, lazy, coasting teachers who climbed right up the pay scale with them. Heroic, good, average, bad, and sleepwalking, they all have the same job title and same pay all the way to retirement -- it's no wonder teaching isn't respected as a profession.

There's one critical area where assessment of teachers varies from those in medicine, law, etc.: many states require consistent salary and retention policies across all their schools. Given the limited resources available to do any sort of meaningful performance measurement, that pretty much means that any "pay for performance" model will necessarily require a single set of standardized tests that can be delivered to every student in the state.

...and we all know how well those sorts of tests measure real learning and intelligence, right?

How consistent do they have to be? Law abounds in absolute-sounding formulations that are never interpreted absolutely in practice. By policy (though probably not by law) my company has a consistent salary scale across the company. There are hundreds of people of my position and rank, managed by dozens of managers, many of whom have never met each other. (Yes, my company is really that epically huge.)

Is a Software Engineer B in my group exactly the same as a Software Engineer B in every other group in the company? Of course not; a pay grade is just a vague description interpreted by many different managers from diverse backgrounds. Yet people are content to say that we have a consistent pay scale.

The union would fight against it because they oppose giving any discretion to management, but teachers might defect from the union if it meant a chance at making teaching a rewarding and respected profession.

My point is precisely that most state employees are not free to interpret law as they see fit. The rules defining hiring, retention, pay raises, etc., are written quite precisely across the board, not just for teachers. Trying to game the system is a breach of ethics, if not an outright crime.

I'm not trying to defend the public-sector model -- there are obvious inefficiencies, and many of the best potential hires would never even consider a government job for many of the same reasons you suggested. I'm just not sure how better to balance the need to be accountable to the taxpayers with the desire of administrators to pay their staff according to ability, not just seniority.

"A salary spread of $50k to $100k is too much for the same job, and I never noticed older teachers being much more effective than teachers with five years of experience."

First, there are similar margins in engineering as well. It is not unique to teaching.

Second, as to your effectiveness claim, anecdotes != data. I would have a tendency to believe the contrary and would need to see evidence otherwise to be convinced.

Third, part of the pay differential is probably due to the turnover rate in teaching. Why pay someone top dollar when something like 1/2 teachers leave before their fifth year (in the US)?

To the best of my knowledge, such a salary spread in engineering would span different jobs with different job titles. Inside software engineering, you don't get promoted from Junior Software Developer to Architect by seniority. Heck, being a senior citizen doesn't even guarantee you a promotion to Senior Software Engineer. Outside of software engineering, only about 5% of people earning engineering degrees end up doing design work at all, so the work roles of different engineers can be very different.

You have a good point about retention in the early years, which is why I mentioned five years of experience. I also believe that the best teachers just keep getting better. However, among average teachers I couldn't tell much difference between the thirty-year-olds and the sixty-year-olds, except that the thirty-year-olds were better-looking and told better jokes. I had dozens of teachers and cared deeply about the performance of each one (me: valedictorian, mathlete, AP whore) so I expect I would have noticed the pattern if older teachers tended to be significantly better than younger ones.

To the best of my knowledge, such a salary spread in engineering would span different jobs with different job titles.

I've lived the 50K-100K salary spread for the same programming job. Also, at my last "real" job Amazon stole away one of our interns. He was offered a job for $86K whereas the other intern was offered almost the same position for $67K. She was the better of the two developers. I'd like to believe there wasn't any gender discrimination going on with that situation, but I don't.

Anyway, there's definitely huge spreads for the same work in software. Sometimes, even in the same company! In my experience, salaries are completely arbitrary for software engineering. I've gotten paid the most for the easiest work I've done. The only constant I've seen is that salaries are higher across the board when the economy is good.

I must be naive, why is $50k a poor starting salary when there are families who get by on $50k-$55k?

It's a shame that the best teacher still starts at $50k, especially when the worst teacher at the same school will make $100k at some point. If a star teacher could make $100k from the start, it would be a lot easier to attract them.