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Comment by rcoder | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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