The second YouTube video was great–I suggest skipping the first.
I have read elsewhere about the Douglas County, Colorado education reform movement, and it is truely radical. First they totally threw out the union, which was not mentioned in the video. Then they decided to hire and pay teachers totally on merit, unlike the military-style time-in-grade approach favored by unions. The latter method increases pay every year (step increases), for x number of years, whether the teacher is good or bad. The union-dictated approach also also calls for more pay for additional silly degrees, whether they make for a better teacher or not (research suggests not). I suspect Douglas County also eliminated tenure.
The County also uses supply and demand to determine teacher pay among the different disciplines. Why should a science or math teacher get the same pay as a PhyEd (read ex-jock) teacher?
The result…48,000 applicants to be teachers in Douglas County. I bet only the best candidates in the nation applied–people who wanted to escape their union-dominated school district and be free to excel and be paid accordingly.
If these new policies are in place for a while, it will be interesting to see the student outcomes. It should be a good empirical test of the two approaches.
