Teacher Pay for Performance:

Another Fad or a Sound and Lasting Policy?

By James W. Guthrie & Matthew G. Springer

Here we go again. Remember school consolidation, team-teaching, flexible schedules, open classrooms, New Math, whole-language reading, community control, British Infant Schools, career ladders, education enterprise zones, individually prescribed instruction, zero-based budgeting, teacher-scripting, and self-esteem-enhancing curricula? The list of once fashionable but now faded education innovations could go on and on.

We once closed schools because they were too small. Now we are closing them because they are too large. We insulated schools from partisan politics to preserve effectiveness. Now elected mayors are overseeing schools to enhance effectiveness. Once we eschewed federal involvement in K-12 schooling. Now schools are addicted to federal funding, and there are those advocating a set of national performance standards for education.

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