Jon Chait’s post on performance evaluations for teachers is correct on one level, and gets the best of Eugene Robinson there. If you’re attacking performance evaluation because people are cheating, then you’re attacking the means rather than the ends. The stronger argument is that, really, it’s really hard to evaluate what makes a good teacher. It’s a complicated skill set, much of it involves skills that can’t be quantified, and subjective evaluations would be unworkable to say the least. The stronger argument is, essentially, to question the premise of improving education through testing.

I’ve not seen convincing evidence that we have a widespread teaching crisis, certainly not of the sort that could benefit from some sort of Galtian billionaire principles to get everything running smoothly. However, I’m not ideologically opposed to modifying the terms of tenure. There are always some obvious cases that often come up when a teacher ought to be let go, and the extent to which tenure stops that is not so good. Then again, swapping tenure for performance pay is not a good trade, teachers tend to fight it tooth and nail (they certainly did under Michelle Rhee in D.C.) and I hardly blame them. It’s a bird in hand question: asking someone to drop a nonmonetary form of compensation in exchange for the possibility of some additional monetary compensation is politically sound, but ultimately it ain’t going to work because teachers can see that play. My (politically nonstarting) solution would be simply to pay teachers competitive rates for what they could expect to earn with their majors. Not in exchange for any concessions, just do it, and while you’re at it, sharply reduce all the extra hoops you have to go through to become a teacher. Limit student teaching to a few months at most, and streamline the credentialing process. This would have the effect of making teaching an incredibly attractive career option: competitive rates, good benefits, and job security. It would cost more money, of course, but it would also create a larger recruiting pool, which would lead to better teachers. In particular, every school district everywhere has a difficult time recruiting qualified math and science teachers because if you’re good at those subjects, you can earn a hell of a lot more in the private sector. Paying competitively (i.e. a lot more) would solve that. Might cause some tension between science and English teachers, for example, but that tradeoff is probably better than the temporary solutions that most school districts use to fill the shortage, or even worse choices. My sister’s junior high school has had a former P.E. teacher teaching math for the past ten years. This man has no degree in math and had no experience teaching it when he got the job, and is by all accounts still terrible at it. He’s the only one who teaches seventh grade math at the school.  The school–which is in a suburban district with ample funds–hasn’t been able to find an adequate replacement for the last decade. This is how sparse such teachers are, and there’s no way around it beside more money being spent.

The beauty of this is that, after instituted for a little while, the leverage on tenure would flip. Right now, teachers are paid less, but they get tenure. It’s a trade-off our political system decided to make, and if you try to change tenure you come up against a brick wall because tenure is seen as part of the bargain. Under the new system, the bargain would be different: teachers would be making competitive pay and they’d get tenure, which would mean a very different political reality, and would lead to greater leverage if an administrator wanted to dump the guy who just has his class watch videos all day. I doubt teachers give tenure up altogether, but the other side’s argument would be a lot stronger if they wanted to make modifications to get rid of the worst cases, or to rethink the entire system and turn it into, say, a requirement for “for cause” firing. There’s nothing inherent to unions and tenure as a concept–Chait mentions baseball, which is a sport but also a business where everyone’s unionized but there’s no tenure. It’s strictly an alternative form of compensation.