Duncan has made it clear that he intends to use that $5 billion to pay the best teachers more and to pay extra to those willing to teach in our worst schools.
Very interesting about extra pay for teaching in troubled schools--that's at least the more sensible direction (and the opposite of the current system).
He also wants higher pay for math and science teachers
Math and science? Why? Particularly math is puzzling here--you have so little marking and so little prep compared to most subjects. Math blocks are already kinda fought-over from all I hear.
Yes, there is a huge difference between good math teachers and mediocre math teachers, but offering money...while it might attract a few more good people, it's also likely to attract a whole lot of teachers who aren't enthusiastic about math but are enthusiastic about money.
and more charter schools.
Okay, so looking up what "charter school" actually means in America, it's a public school with fewer government regulations (so can create different curriculums and stuff) but on the condition that the government can close them down if they perform poorly.
On the one hand, this encourages innovation in education. This is good.
On the other hand, statistics so far suggest charter schools might actually perform worse than public schools:
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/choice/pcsp-final/execsum.html"In five case study states, charter schools are less likely to meet state performance standards than traditional public schools. It is impossible to know from this study whether that is because of the performance of the schools, the prior achievement of the students, or some other factor."
I mean, arguably they could be more aggressive about closing down schools, but closing a school is really shitty as an option (you're giving up a whole lot of real-estate and built-up infrastructure).
Personally I take a more evolution theory approach to it--most mutations are crappy, so these aren't going to perform well on average, but successful mutations will be incorporated into the mainstream. However, in evolution there's a delicate balance between how many mutants you have and how many non-mutants you have. Too many mutants hurt too much; too few mutants makes you stagnant.
Also on his agenda, early education programs for poor kids.
Early education has huge scientific backing for being immensely important, so...good.
I think the idea of 50 states doing things, you know, their own way doesn't quite make sense.
Interesting. Even Canada doesn't have, say, nationalized curriculum; that's still handled at the province level.
