New York Times reporter Diane Jean Schemo wrote a fine profile of Denver's new teacher pay-for-performance scheme (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=141#1740). While voters still have to approve it (and a concomitant rise in property taxes), teachers have already given it thumbs up, and the process by which it was put together is worth understanding. No, the plan is not perfect. (For example, it relies too little on the academic value that teachers add to their pupils.) But because its architects took time to get teacher input and allay their fears, a majority of them were willing to jump into the unknown, despite pressure from the national level to reject the plan. Increasingly, the arguments against such plans - too scary, too liable to abuse, too divisive - are being consigned to the dustbin of history.
"When teachers' gains help students' bottom lines," by Diane Jean Schemo, New York Times, May 9, 2004 (registration required)