Saturday, February 04, 2006

The teacher says we’re dumb

Now for a subject dear to all Clippingers...school attendance policies!

Five thoughts:
  1. If educational funding in the No Child Left Behind era is going to be tied to outcomes, shouldn't attendance-based funding be eliminated? Heck, schools that combine low attendance with good outcomes should be rewarded for their efficiency.

  2. That being said, there should be incentives for good teaching as well as for good outcomes. Call it the Summer School Axiom. Comparative attendance rates within the same school seem like decent measures of teaching quality.

  3. Perhaps it makes me a bad Democrat to say this, but, if attendance is going to be incentivized, the incentives should go to the teachers and administrators, not the students. Base, say, half of each teacher's compensation on his or her comparative attendance rate while outlawing per-teacher attendance management (i.e., class attendance could not be a component of a student's grade). This would provide a strong inducement to retain good teachers...

  4. ...and chase away the bad teachers...

  5. ...which means we would need to pay teachers more. Whew, just in time, the WEA was forming its picket line outside my window.

3 Comments:

Lucy said...

Erm. Errrrm. Wouldn't a Saturn Ion be worth more than ten thousand dollars?

Saturday, February 04, 2006 5:53:16 PM  
James said...

Assuming it's a base-model Ion (sticker price: $12,500), it's probably worth less than $10,000 as a used car. (Why? The used car market is the canonical example of a market with asymmetric information -- the buyer assumes the car must be flawed if the seller is selling so soon.)

Furthermore, the winner would owe taxes on the full $12,500.

Saturday, February 04, 2006 7:05:55 PM  
Lucy said...

Ahhhh, gotcha.

Saturday, February 04, 2006 7:37:07 PM  

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